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I look back at my initial budget from when I first started preliminary planning back last year and LAUGH. I majorly under budgeted for almost everything, but the biggest I would say is on photography. I didn't even budget for it at all, and now I'm paying 3300!!
Yikes. A five grand wedding ballooned into a ten thousand dollar wedding and now a fourteen thousand wedding. And let me pray it doesn't grow any more than that. haha.
I had no idea what chairs cost! I figured maybe two dollars per chair to rent and set up basic white folding chairs. I mean, I didn't want anything fancy and I'm only using them for the 30 min ceremony... hahaha. We got lucky and found someone who will do the whole thing for about $5 a chair after set up and delivery fees, etc, but some of the quotes I got were came out to almost 12 dollars a chair. Just for these:
I seriously underestimated food/venue costs. Well really I underestimated everything! But venue/food was the biggest chunk. I wanted to spend no more than 5 k for ceremony + reception venue, food, rentals, alcohol, tax, and tip. haha. hahahahahahha.
sigh.
@greenleafmountain: oh yeah...when I first started planning I was like Oh, I'll use the free brown folding chairs my venue provides. HA. Now I feel like I need to spend money on chivari chairs.
@kate169: yeah, I've had to try really hard to resist the chivari chair temptation. They're so beautiful, but I just couldn't justify the cost (especially since my photographer isn't so hot, and probably wouldn't have a clue if I asked her to get a good chair shot!)
ladies, chivaris really aren't that comfortable, and besides, my friend had them at her wedding, and i didn't even notice them!
I didn't realize I'd have to pay the limo to wait for us during the reception! WHOOPS that doubles the transport budget (actually, no, I will just get a cab for us all after I'm not paying for that many hours of waiting)...
I totally agree with ms. meowerson. We have chiavari chairs at my school's library and they are SO uncomfortable. But I guess if you are only sitting i them for dinner it wouldn't be too bad.
Floral costs for sure...I think I estimated around 4k, and we're spending about double...in part because of those darn chiavari chairs! I don't know why our venue couldn't just have them as the standard chairs like every other venue in NYC...
Also, cake. I think I wanted to spend around $500 on it. Yeah, that's not possible in NYC when you have around 180 guests. So again, our budget is at least double for that. Sigh...
I would say photography! We went about $1000 over our budget. Oops.
I really underestimated the cost of food/alcohol/venue. I budgeted for about 8-10k and its going to end up being at least 12k! It's only for about 75 people too! :(
Im with Ms. Meowerson and babyboo, I just went to a wedding this weekend where they had the chairs and only noticed because I feel the wedding industry has made us brides believe we NEED them, haha. Otherwise, no one else at my table noticed/cared, so I say don't spring for 'em, not worth it.
I will say that before I was engaged I never noticed chairs and after I was engaged I really wanted chivari. Luckily they came free with my venue!
I underestimated everything except for transportation. That was the ONLY thing we didn't go over budget on! Photography was a huge underestimate, as were our invitations (we wanted to spend $100 bucks total...THAT didn't happen). Also underestimated our honeymoon.
@hilsy85: You do know you can order a smaller cake for the display and pics and then serve your guests sheet cake in order to make that dollar stretch....
I underestimated EVERYTHING!!! A NYC wedding is MUCH more expensive than the rumors, OOPS.
So I'm changing the topic to what I overestimated --- we found an officiant almost free, and my "beauty allowance" -- meaning veil, shoes, lingerie, (real) diamond jewelry (because I rented it), were much less than I thought. I was able to push WAY under budget with these. That's my only success story.....
@evalague: our baker said that it wouldn't make that much of a difference in price. Or maybe it's just that she doesn't do that...either way, I should probably bring that up to her again.
Also, makeup. I had NO idea how expensive it was to have your makeup done (especially once you throw in the word bride). It's worth it (for me) to look great and have someone else do it, but man, it's definitely more than I thought!
transportation (wow really $800+ for just a couple shuttles 2 miles away?)
invitations (ended up doing them myself with alocal print shop for much cheaper)
and cinematography (wasnt gonna even get it until i saw the wedding movies that are out these days...unbelievable and must have for me....)
oh and photography went over budget for me too....
we started with a $10K budget, its up to about 18K now i think....
@hilsy85: At the bakery we are getting our cake its about 1/4 the price per person for the sheet cake out back!
The food was my biggest issue. When I was doing my planning I was going off the paper work the venue emailed me and later we found out it was old pricing and pretty much everything was DOUBLE the price now!
@mishelleez: our venue did the same thing - they raised prices. unfortunately we forgot to check the contract to say it locked in prices. added about $600 to the food prices in total. and drink prices went up...
flowers! i had no idea! i mean, i had an idea (thats why i was not doing centerpieces...) but $250 for MY bouquet? yikes...
photography is my major hit... but i didnt place a budget on it because that was my thing to spend on.
Rentals such as linens, china, silverware, tables, chairs, etc. were definitely something that not only did I underbudget, I didn't budget for at all! I don't know why, but I think at first I assumed they just came with the catering. And now I'm looking at having to rent everything and it adding up to over $1000. Thank goodness we decided to go with a place that doesn't require us to rent a tent!
I would also have to say that we underbudgeted for transportation. We adamantly want to have a shuttle for guests so no one drives drunk and I kinda figured it would be like $100 tops to get people to and from the hotel. OH BOY was I wrong. It's at least a couple hundred if you want a school bus and wayyyyy more if you want something classy.
+1 Hilsy85, Makeup. I was thinking around $180 or something. Let's try $320 for the day, then the same again for the trial, then travel costs, mother of the bride, sister of the bride, all of a sudden I'm quoted waaay over 1k.
I under budgeted for basically everything. At first I thought we'd have a simple barbeque with about 15 people. We'd spend maybe $2K. That did NOT happen. Times ten.
I would say flowers & hair/make up - both ended up being almost double what we thought it would be!
The only thing I didn't underbudget for was flowers. Everything else is almost double of the original budgeted cost, mainly because I didn't have a clue how expensive things were.
Venue! I thought it would cost me a couple grand, but I found a great place for about $800
Invitations! I went to a stationer and picked out a simple but pretty suite and it was like $1200.00 for 100!! I budgeted $200.00 so I was WAY off on what they cost. I ended up with walmart invites which in my opinion are way prettier.
oh!!! i misread!
haha. i under budgeted for the cake (thought it would be $200-300 and it was $600) and flowers (thought I could do it for $200, ended up at $400)
Um...other than that...I'm amazed at what this wedding is costing. We too started with $5000 budget and I am not even keeping track anymore because we are doing everything as cheap as we can and we're still way over. (We're at well over $10 at this point)
food, alcohol, cake, wedding album. SO.MUCH.MONEY.
also, due to me being in la la bride land--gotta get this done i signed contracts and should have breathed a little and not signed off on the cake or album.
i underbudgeted for all the "extras"--accessories, transportation, shoes, gifts for family and wedding party, guestbook, and every other possible extra you could imagine. i budgeted $500 for ALL of this stuff. HAHAHHAAHHAA i must have been drinking when i did that.
Linens. I forgot to even include them, since all of our other rentals (tent, china, silverware, chairs, tablets, etc) are included with our venue fee. My fiance was absolutely STUNNED when I came back with pricing information after my meeting with the vendor. And while I realized it would be expensive, even I had a substantial case of sticker shock.
I am actually suprised that I thought I did a "good" job by DIYing and recycling (buying pre-owned) myself down to 12K budget for 80-100 people in Houston but now I am seeing all these folks saying that is a typical wedding budget and I am saying... REALLY? All this buying used, and DIY, and avoiding things and all I did is push it down to "average???!?!"
Then again, I have to factor in that buy spending 12K with all the recycled and DIY, it will LOOK like a 15K+ wedding....
I completely underbudgeted for transportation. I knew that we had to shuttle all of our guests because our venue does not have parking, but I figured it would be about $400-$500. Ha! Try $1700!
Everything. My parents paid for our wedding and they started out giving us a number they had given to my older sister 10 years ago. Hello? Time value of money? I quickly crunched the #'s and said I was fine with the budget, but I couldn't even copy exactly what my sister did, it would have to be scaled way down.
But after getting through that, we way underbudgeted for the music. I was going to cut down on costs by going with a DJ, the same one my sister used who I think charged under $2K. Then my parents put the hard sell on DH and I to use.. the most expensive wedding band in the philadelphia area.. So needless to say, that part was totally shot.
Oh, and the flowers. We were totally screwed by our florist budget wise. They ask you for a budget upfront then ask you what you want instead of saying "Well roses will cost $50 more than peonies.. etc" So magically no matter what you say you want it costs what you said your budget was. This screwed us because we added things on afterwards which were all extra and probalby would have been included in the original 'budget' if we had thought of them earlier.
Yep! Chairs for us, too. We planned to rent just chivari chairs for both the ceremony and reception when we saw how hideous our venue's chairs were. But then, a few months before our wedding, the decided to tell us they couldn't move the chairs from outside to inside without disrupting cocktail hour, so we had to rent white folding chairs for the ceremony, too.
I had no clue how expensive the chivari chairs were, and then on top of that, the while folding chairs were more than I thought, too.
Bar far, our most unexpected expense!
@spaganya: What venue are you using? I see you're a Williamsburg bride...I'm a Yorktown bride. So we're wedding town neighbors :)
So far most things have been where I budgeted them, dress, invites, dj, photographer, but we are about to have our first meeting with the caterer and florist and I can feel the hives already. Oh, but I will say that the officiant's fee was way more then I thought it would be!
Photography, hands down. Everything else, I did the research, chose a budget, and basically made it work. But we are paying almost triple for photography.
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