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I didn't think that I would say that we spent too much money on anything, but I honestly feel like we spent too much money on flowers. Looking back, we should have had WAY less flowers. We had long rectangle tables and they each had five smallish square vases of flowers. For some reason, in my mind I thought that we needed this, but when I saw it, the tables looked so lavish! I was a little embarrassed to have so many flowers. We didn't really give our florist a set budget -- we just told her what we wanted -- and it ended up being $3600! Granted, we did have a large wedding, but I feel guilty that my parents, who graciously hosted our wedding, spent this much. I wish we had scaled it back considerably and put that money towards draping for our tent.
Does anyone else have regrets about how they allocated their budget?
I agree, our flower budget went a lot over. We ended up paying $1600 but I still feel guilty since my parents paid. We also spent a lot on food, but totally worth it!
We haven't gotten to the flowers yet, but so far its been the art work for the STDs. My FI is really into tattoos so we are having one of the well known local tattoo artists paint us a picture that will be shrunk down to postcard size. We are gonna end up paying him around $300 (and thats not even including the postcards). Its way more than I planned for STDs but its the one thing that FI wanted to be incharge of and he is really excited, so its worth it. We do get to keep the original artwork and put it in a frame, so that will be a cool keepsake.
My dress was much more than I had hoped to pay. With the veil and alterations, it will be over 2K. I'm paying for all but $500 of that, and I work a minimum wage job. Ouch.
Totally feel you on the flowers. That is definitely what we spent too much money on. I can justify spending more on food and booze and even my expensive beautiful dress, but the flowers looking back seemed kind of frivilous. Also, I think we were taken for a ride by our florist by not being smart at our approach with them.
I am paying too much for the hotel room I will be staying at the night before the wedding and we will be staying at the night of. Way too much. I got caught up in the moment when I went to check out the hotel. Oops. Really really great room though. Big enough for everyone to get ready in the day of.
we didn't really spend too much on any one thing- but we waaaay overbought on alcohol. My mom kept telling us "oh you can return the extra" to which we replied "or we could drink it" lol. Since it was only beer and wine we kept it and we have had lots of parties since! It is nice to be invited somewhere and be able to just show up with a couple of 6 packs and a bottle of wine! We did probably buy double what we needed though.
There were other things that wound up costing way more than I originally thought but once we considered it they were really worth it, like pohotography. Our original budget was about 1/2 of what we spent, but our photographers let us pay it in payments (which we are still making) and they were so worth it! When I think of all the photos we have and how amazing they all are it makes me really glad we decided to go for quality over original budget.
Maybe the photographer? Hmm... I wouldn't even say that. We only spent $1,000 which is pretty much right where we wanted to be. I guess we have done pretty well throughout the whole planning process as far as not buying anything that is insanely expensive.
So far, it's photography for us as well! We are spending over twice as much as what our orginal budget was for photography (based on guidelines from bridal books/websites in comparison to our overall budget) but this is something that we all (including my parents who are footing majority of the bill) feel strongly about. It was a really tough decision so I hope we're all happy with it looking back!
@daniellemybelle: your flowers sound beautiful! do you have any photos of them?
Well, I don't regret any money spent in terms of our wedding because we had the means and it all came together so beautifully. But we definitely paid through the nose to have the added 'extras' I really wanted--we rented gold chivari chairs, fancy gold and silver china charger plates and ivory satin napkins. I'd say this accounted for over $5k of the total cost. We might have been able to get these elsewhere for a little cheaper if we had looked. Oh and LIGHTING. I definitely shopped around for that one, but good lord that took up more of the budget than I would ever imagined in the planning process!
Like @ vistagirl, we way over bought booze (most of DH's family left MUCH earlier than we anticipated, and due to the heat people drank more water and cut down on alcohol). We were hoping to return it, but since the wedding was in our hometown rather than where we live, and we immediately left for our honeymoon, we left it with my brother who proceeded to cater his own summer BBQs with it. He basically stole $450 worth of alcohol. I even tried guilting him into stopping using it by suggesting we use the leftover for a 40th anniversary party for my parents in Nov. He agreed...then hosted another party. F*cker.
Looking back, I over-bough decorations (we only used 1/2 the paper lanterns I ordered. Thankfully they were super cheap), and while we came in under-budget (yay!), if we'd needed to save money we could have pared back on the food. It was great, but we could have downgraded some apps etc.
We paid $400 extra for a 2nd photog which was a waste since she only took roughly a dozen photos. Seriously. Of the 1,003 images we got, I can discern about 10 that she took.
Knowing what I know now I would have chosen a much different wedding band. I love my ring, but the prongs on a full eternity band are WAAAAAY too high maintenance for me. I literally never took off my ering (plain solitaire setting), wore it to shower, work out, cook, clean...it was always on. My wedding band is a shared prong eternity band and gets caught on everything and gets dirty SO fast, I'm trying to train myself both to take it off for certain things AND remember to put it back ON after. I know as soon as I loose the first stone I'm going to scream and wish I'd gone with the old-school simple metal band.
As I mentioned, we came in under budget (by almost a quarter!), so there's nothing I sincerely regret spending money on fortunately!
@Twalila, could you post a pic of your wedding band or one like it? I'm on the hunt and I'm a super low maintenance girl like you so I'm hoping to find something that won't take much cleaning etc...
I spent way too much on my veil (I later worked out that I could have made my own slightly inferior version for about a fifth of the price + maybe 6 solid hours of work). It's so beautiful that I refuse to regret it!
Wedding favours. I think they're pretty useless myself, but my mum insisted on them. Not only that, she insisted on getting the most expensive kind there is (not really because they were the most expensive, more like because they were the most traditional).
I'm really glad I saw this thread.
We haven't paid deposits on or bought anything major yet. It is nice to know where some feel they could have held back, a little, on. I was thinking a little over board with the flowers and the alcohol up to this point.. It's good to have an idea of where I don't need to splurge.
So far I've spent too much money on my dress. I ended up with two and spent over 4 times my budget. But it was a pretty small budget to begin with and I get to use one for a TTD session. I also ended up with a veil and I swore I wouldn't wear one. It was hard to pass up after the consultant put it on my head.
We met with our caterer today and we are spending $600 over what I thought we would spend. But I know it will be worth it, and my guests will love it. Plus I get to keep the leftovers which is unusual for caterers, at least in California.
We've booked our photographer and we actually booked her for an amount below our budget. It remains to be seen if we end up with additional costs/fees.
We're not doing a florist, but I am slowly working on accumulating decor items. It will probably still be more than I had planned to spend, but the items I am purchasing are resellable, so at least I get some money back.
I think mine were the invitations. They were completely awesome invitations that I absolutely loved, but it kind of kills me that we spend almost a grand on them. The flowers I think were the most expensive for sure... I was worried that they weren't going to "fill up" the room, so I went a bit overboard. Once we got to the reception I was surprised by how intense all of the flowers were though! It looked great, but I'm sure I could have scaled back. I think I just had that whole "almost to the wedding, everything must be perfect" paranoia going on.
As I am getting closer to the wedding I am starting to second guess spending on almost everything. But the thing so far we have spent the MOST on that at times I feel I should have scaled back on is the venue. The venue alone is $6,000. Yikes! It's an amazing place but doesn't include food or alcohol or anything else.
I definitely feel like I spent too much on our venue/food. This portion of the wedding planning is a priority for me, but I still feel like we could've negotiated it to be cheaper. It's going to be waaaayyyy too much food.
Wedding dresses. Bought 3 of them. I call that period temporary insanity.
For me I think it's my rings. My husband picked out a tacori engagement ring, so then I "had" to pick a band that matched. I feel guilty that the money could have stretched a little farther if we hadn't gone brand name.
My venue was WAY over budget. I was planning to spend 1800 and went up to 2900! However, this venue includes both the ceremony and reception site and the chairs and tables. So, it took up what I budgeted for those. Still, I feel a bit guilty. Luckily, I'm coming in under on a few other big things like my dress, cake, and photographer. So, in the end, I think it will be okay....
Food. We went WAY over budget. We had to cut down our guest list and such because of it. I think we spent too much but I still wouldn't change a thing.
my dress. i loved it and it was the last one, fit me perectly, but i think i could've found another dress that i loved that was within my budget. oh well, i plan to sell it.
I think the food and drink budget was way more than it should of been. We spent like 1/2 of our entire budget on feeding people it was crazay!
I haven't had my wedding so our budget isn't complete yet, but the most over-the-top thing thus far is our quote for a $300 rose petal walkway path. Our flowers were quoted at over $2000 but the florist was able to bring it down to $1,100 luckily.
A cake isn't worth $600 to me. I'm rarely impressed by wedding cakes and don't eat them when I go to weddings so we're skipping a cake, by a bakery anyway, so we don't waste that kind of money.
Our photography quote is at $2600 for two photographers. I need to cancel the assistant, though, because we're planning on hiring a $1300 videographer as well.
Lol ohh boyyy how the prices add up!
After the wedding, I felt really good about where we spent our money. Both flowers and the DJ were a "lot" - and especially the DJ was more than many people pay, from what I've gathered, but I really don't regret it. People loved the music at our wedding, we loved the music, and our DJs were amazing to work with. I absolutely don't regret hiring them, and don't feel bad having paid them for their amazing work!
The flowers were a lot of money for not a ton of flowers at the end of the day, but they were beautiful, and DIY flowers would have stressed me out way too much.
We also had an open bar, which cost about what we expected. Again, expensive, but it really made the wedding that much better for our guests.
Overall I don't have much money regret - we really stuck to our budget and had a venue that wasn't through the roof expensive, and I did enough things myself or just cut back on things (like DIY invitations and decor) that our larger expenses didn't break the overall budget.
photography. i'm going way over what i originally budgeted, but i really want awesome photos, so i think this will be money well spent.
It's definitely phototgraphy.. it's almost triple the amount I budgeted it for. eeeeks!
I think I probably overspent on invitations. In fact, they were so much that I refuse to even tell anyone how much they cost.
Having said that, I truly don't regret it. They are absolutely beauitful and really set the tone for the wedding. I've gotten so many compliments on them.
So, did I spend too much? Yes. Was it worth it to me? Yes.
right now i'm having palpatations over my veil. i was so wrapped up in the moment trying on dresses that i wanted it all....$400 on a veil i'm gonna wear for an hour or 2 is really starting to make me want to faint! but i know my FI would tell me 'it doesn't matter, it's what you want, and we are only doing this once'
oh and the photographer.....WAAAAAYYYYY more expensive than i thought we were gonna find one for, but their work is amazing!
Honestly.... I dont really feel like we've overspent on anything. I mean, in terms of a typical wedding we are spending much less than average overall, not to mention that we are $1k under our budget still.
I feel like we've gotten really good deals on what we've booked so far. The only thing I think that went overboard is probably my mom's dress. She spent more than I did on mine! Like, a couple hundred dollars more.
Can I say everything? B/c honest to God, I've overspent on everything. From my DIY 'Thank you for being my Bridesmaid' cards that I purchased self-sticking gold rhinestones and the same fabric as their DRESSES for, to the escort cards that I had to buy individual stamps and ink for in order to indicate various meal choices, to the 150 LEDs, batteries, and lanterns I just bought to make throwie lanterns to hang in the tent. I have gotten way out of hand with $$$ to make this the best freakin day EVER.
@bloodgo1 I know what you mean about the invitations! I can't help but think "Why am I going to pay so much for fancy paper?!" A friend of mine who is also planning her wedding found this site called Mixbook (it's a photo card making site) and she was able to order a whole bunch of invitations she designed herself for WAAAY cheaper! I personally would rather have extra $$ to spend on my honeymoon so I'm thinking I might have to steal her idea...
I'm pretty happy with what we're spending on the wedding. If anything was unnecessary, it was probably the hotel that we are staying at the night before and the night of the wedding. We live in the city that we are marrying in so it wasn't strictly necessary, but we're also delaying our honeymoon so we wanted to at least stay somewhere special. I'm also paying for professional hair and make-up for myself and my BMs which is expensive considering our budget but I felt like I would regret it if I didn't spend that time getting ready with my gals the morning of my wedding. And I did find a comparitively good deal on the salon.
But overall, as long as at the end of the day, we don't spend more than we budgeted for, I'll feel absolutely great about what we spent.
I wish I'd stuck closer to my dress budget -- I ended up paying about twice what I'd wanted to. Oops -- someone got carried away! :)
Paid way too much for my shoes, too. I panicked and bought the first shoe I found that fit the bill, because I was afraid I was running out of time, and it's always a major hunt to find shoes in my size (11). Oh well!
ditto on invitations/stationary -- after factoring postage, ink costs, wedding programs, rsvp envelopes, thank you cards, etc., we're on our way to triple the budget.
As much as I ADORE our photographer, I think she was over-priced. We paid $5K, and her work is amazing, but I think if we had searched more, we could have found an equally good photographer for a little less. Although, in the end, we love our photos, so I dunno, it's not really a regret, just more of a "I can't help but wonder ..."
We also had a very small floral budget, and I don't regret that at all. I knew from the beginning that unless I was a platinum bride, I didn't want to spend any money at all on floral centerpieces. So, we made our own, and we only got bouquets and bouts. We spent about $350 total and all the flowers we used were in season.
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