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Luckily, not yet. (I am still a year out!) But I am interested to hear if any other bees have had backfires trying to cut costs!
I'm interested in hearing also! I'm a little over a year out so I'd like to know how things have worked out and if DIY things really save $.
buying a gown on sale at kleinfeld for only $599 then paying $700 in alterations whew!?
well, it was a size 22 I am a size 2, but the design was exactly what I wanted-I looked at 12 before the dress and cried when I tried it on; its just so incricate and beaded and embroidered so she has to deconstruct everything
my heart and practical side sinks at the cost but when I wear it I feel like a bride and special; despite the cost I feel very happy when I wear it because I waited my whole life to wear a gown like this for this special day--probably why I cried when I first wore it
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Ouch! I'm so sorry to hear about your alterations costs!! But I bet you will look amazing.
I thought changing from a destination wedding in Savannah to a local wedding in Atlanta would help cut costs - and based on my original budget it did, and then my "guesstimates" for a lot of things came in wrong. For example, I thought 1K for photography was plenty - ha!
Limiting the number of guests didn't really help to keep our costs down as much as we thought it would. Truth is, the photographer costs the same amount whether you have 30 guests or 300, same for the DJ, same for the dress, etc. etc. A lot of the major expenses just aren't based on your guest count!
We got a more inexpensive venue, but it didn't come with *anything*. Rentals of tables, chairs, glasses, linens etc etc ended up being pricer per head than we otherwise would have calculated. In the end it was still cheaper than most local venues, but it wasn't the huge savings we first imagined.
I partly agree ali-o, but we have rented a tent and I have to keep the number down or the next tent up was like $300 more and more chairs, more food, more table, more linens, more favors, more booze, etc.
But so far I wish I had hired a wedding planner, just like for the day of so I can relax.
I thought I'd DIY my own invites and save SO MUCH money. Yeah right. THAT didn't happen. I bought stuff I didn't end up using and couldn't return, and wasted a lot of money. Not to mention that I got to the end and thought they looked cheap so I ended up hiring a letterpress artist anyway to make an insert to jazz them up. I ended up spending about the same as if I'd had a pro make them, and I bet the pro would have done them way better. I told my MOH to have her invites made professionally. It is SO worth it, in saving so much TIME that you could be spending on other details. Sigh. I'm crafty, but I'm a very SLOW crafty!
I'm with @MightySapphire - my invitations didn't save any money. But ours did end up being a huge success and we got a much better invitation that we could have bought with the same amount of money. Not to mention, I loved making them with my family!
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Ali-o, that is what fiances friends wife told me. She said that there is no difference in 100 or 300.
oh DJ; I originally hired for $250 but didnt have a contract they jacked it up to 750 but I brought them down to 700 again
still think I could have found a better deal; but others I found at 400 and 500 did shabby job looking at their websites
finally found someone good for 500 here but too late I had signed the dotted line
I disagree about keeping the guest list down ... the amount of money cutting your guest list will save you truly depends on what you are serving for dinner! At $35 a plate, no it's probably not going to save you all that much to cut, but at $65 a plate plus gratuity, you bet your butt it will. Plus, if you are renting chairs or tables you pay PER chair = per guest, number of tables/table cloths/centerpieces all goes down when you cut guests along with your costs!
I agree cutting my guestlist helped me afford my wedding, at 4 people running $1000; I get upset when my mom wants me to add extended family, nope uh-uh unless someone is shelling out money to help I'm sticking to my 60 person guestlist
oh, there's no doubt it will cost less with fewer guests, I meant that I thought the savings would be *significantly* less, which won't be the case in our particular situation. I could have double the number of guests and my total cost would only increase by 15 percent, because the only thing I'd have to pay more for is meals (@$65/person) and alcohol (supplying our own). Seems impossible, but it's true.
ali, what about the number of tables? Surely you wont pay for tablecloths/napkins and centerpieces for extra tables if no one is going to be sitting there right? Not to mention wedding favors/invites etc., those are all per person.
We ordered some kegs of beer, but weren't sure how much to order. I think we didn't use it all, and lost money. Might have been better to go with bottled beer.
Also, I had two DOC's who I was going between. I went for the one with the lower quote, but had a lot of problems with them post wedding- they tripled their quote by the time everything was over, and most of the charges were snuck in under my nose!
I found what I thought would be a great, inexpensive ceremony program bundle that came with the ribbon and paper. Well, by the time we formatted and printed everything, we'd wasted hours plus we then had to put them together. Then we realized we didn't have quite enough so we bought another package...which we then printed incorrectly...bought two more packages...printer ink ran out halfway through, ruining like, 10 programs so we had to print even more. So we spent about $300 between all of the bundles we had to buy and the printer ink. I could have gotten a really awesome personalized program designed by someone on Etsy for that price. I like my programs, but they are so not worth what I paid for them.
One word: invitations. I thought I was being clever and resourceful advertising on Etsy Alchemy with my budget and wishes, but the seller I decided to work with was a nightmare. I did finally getting my invitations (4 months after I paid for them, after several crying jags wherein I tearfully apologized to my fiance for hiring this woman), but it was a close call -- her feedback is now down to 65%, with negative reports from several frustrated customers who never got their orders. (When I accepted her bid she had 100% positive feedback, btw! Lesson: go with someone who has more than 5 buyer ratings.) If I'd been willing to spend a little more, I could have gotten invitations from a much more experienced and reputable letterpress vendor!
As far as the per-person cost goes, I think that inviting fewer people does save significant money, but a tiny guest list isn't the be-all and end-all of budget wedding planning, since (as ali-o said) you can still end up spending quite a bit on the dress, the photographer, the venue, the bouquets, and other costs that aren't guest-dependent. I calculated it out, and if we had 1/3 less guests (100 vs. 150), we'd only come in about 1/6 under budget, even factoring in rentals, centerpieces, and servers, because of the other fixed costs. That definitely took me by surprise!
letterpress printing my own invitations was my big-spend-that-was-intended-to-be-a-big-save.
Now, i have a bunch of letterpress paper I can't use, printing plates that I can do nothing with (besides throw them away or store them), over $600 spent on the invitations (we sent about 90 of them) - and I wasn't happy with how they turned out because I made some miscalculations when I designed the printing plates in InDesign (which I taught my self, for this purpose).
I should have just done wedding paper divas or papeterie store and left it to the pros.
I admit that I did save a ton by purchasing the table linens (tablecloths, napkins, chair covers) and selling them afterwards, and also saved a bundle on dishes by buying them all and then putting together a brideshare where 2 other brides shared in the cost of them!
Hugest backfire was hiring our cupcake caterer to cater the meal -- they ran out of food about 110 people in, when we'd planned for 160! We didn't end up spending extra, but we did end up feeling like jerks as guests had to leave to get food!
EngagedToPanda, I think you're missing my point. I am just not saving AS MUCH money as I thought I would by keeping the guest list small. I am not doing favors and my centerpieces are flowers cut from a garden, so there is no "per person" cost there, and my venue charges a flat rental rate including tables and chairs, etc. no matter how many people I have. Again, this is only my experience, and may be significantly different from yours.
Ali, not trying to be argumentative, I had never thought you might have free centerpieces, no favors, etc. I'm really jealous of those centerpieces by the way! You're right, I was just looking at it from my perspective when I tabulated costs minus some heads, and was like dang, this goes down, dang so does this! lol :P
My original plan to not hire a videographer backfired. Because partway into planning, I decided I wanted one. Only thing was, we had already made our budget and there wasn't enough wiggle room for a videographer. So now we're over budget (which I did NOT want to happen). Luckily, the final payment to our photographer isn't due until one year after the wedding, and that payment equals how much the videographer is, so we'll have the money for it.
I also wanted to DIY the invitations, but after DIYing the STDs (including a DIY pocketfold, wax seals, etc.) I realized I was too much of a perfectionist, and I'd rather have a professional do it. We're getting letterpress invites! I did buy some samples of papers and envelopes, which I had to throw away. But we're getting a good deal on the invites so it all works out.
depends on how much you spend per head; for me per head at venue is 75% of my budget so a small guestlist while making it the most special event was the way for me to go
of course if youre paying less per head it doesnt account for as much
MY DIY PROGRAMS!!
I bought some paper and had them all typed out on my computer. I even added some pretty designs and colors. Well, I ran out of ink 2 times in the corse of printing!! That was over $50 each time to buy more ink! I should have just had them professionally done - it would have costed the same! But in the end I like how they look - it just sucks I had to put more money and time into them then I wanted.
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I've just started to plan things so I can't tell you what DIY backfired...but I was really hoping to do my own invites. I'm starting to worry now they may be a HUGE stressor. I guess I've just never read anywhere else that the DIY invites were a big backfire. Eeeek!
I'd definitely say my dress. I thought I'd cut costs by buying a cheap dress, and ended up having to buy four to find one I really liked (and the one i finally loved was more in line with the original budget I'd given myself. Whaddyaknow.)
Almost all of of my cost-cutting ideas have worked out...so far! The DIY flowers almost didn't when my mom thought it would be too much work. I talked her out of that quickly :) the one backfire thought, has been the ipod reception. We thought we could just hook up our ipod our venues sound system, as they had told us it was possible. after talking with them more, I found out that their 'sound system' is actually a 'pa system'. not quite right for dancing music to be blared out of...in the four corners of the room. so we had to bite the bullet and hire a dj...which we found through connections for only $300. but that's $300 we thought we were saving...ugh.
I'm right in the middle of my DIY invitation project. It's going well so far but this thread has me a little worried. So far I've spent $400 on everything I need for the invites which is $450 less than the best quote I got. I've checked my measurements like 50 times and so far so good.
Fingers crossed!!!
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With me, everything has worked out pretty well except for my dress. I elected to get a knock-off, didn't check the business' BBB rating (which I later found out to be a rating of F!) and got a dress that broke my heart. I got a lot of wedding essentials off of eBay and other online businesses because I HATE shopping and have limited time.
So has any of your cost-cutting ideas backfired?