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I think it depends. I usually break it down to what WE paid, versus what my parents paid. ours was $18,500...including the whole wedding, NOT including rings, honeymoon, my dress ($400, don't hold your breath), or rehearsal dinner ($700).
Totally. Definitely. Doable. If you factored in our rings and honeymoon though....it's safe to say our wedding budget just doubled. I wanted a big fatty diamond ring set and a nice honeymoon and we both were totally A-OK with it. So i sympathize--those were EXTRA important to us. Rings you wear for years and years...lol
heheheheh EJ, i love your ring comment... i once asked my best friend if it pissed her off that she had a very small diamond ring (she often said to me how she wished it was bigger) but was paying $25K+ for a wedding.. i would prefer the ring over feeding people.
Yeah, if we had ONLY, say, 25K to spend. Rings would become priority numero uno, sorry. You don't need the chicken dinner, but i need me some blingy bling.
I LIKE diamonds and I will not apologize for it. The bigger the better, as long as they are clear and sparkle well.
@ejs- I actually just snorted out loud. My fiance is all confused now. lol
Everyone means something different, so the numbers are usually pretty meaningless to other people.
Personally, I don't think leaving things off makes any sense. Why does not wanting to skimp on rings or the honeymoon mean that they shouldn't be included in the budget? Should those people who don't want to skimp on the reception dinner leave that off the budget? Saying these things aren't part of the wedding budget doesn't t mean you've spent any less!
That said, your budget isn't any one else's business so it really doesn't matter how you group things. :)
I have seen it too, e.g. "we spent $30k on our wedding but $60k if you include rings and the honeymoon". I *think* people do it because the rings and the honeymoon aren't really the "wedding", which most people would consider to be a ceremony followed by a reception. So what you wear, how you get there, the person who marries you, and what you do afterwards are part of the "wedding". The rings and honeymoon are more like extras. But like I said, I *think* that might be why people split it (or they don't want to say the full amount in case you assume they hosted a $300/head dinner for 200 friends) - personally when we did our budget, the rings and honeymoon were certainly included in that.
I agree with the other posters - budgets mean different things to different people! Right now our wedding budget is between $8000-$10,000, and includes my dress, the rings, tux rental for the groom, venue fee, flowers, decorations, catering, alcohol, classical guitarist for the ceremony, photography, and paying for the officiant (I think I got it all). This is for a small-ish wedding of about 60 people, and $1500 of it is to pay for me and FI to fly back home for the wedding. Our honeymoon budget is completely separate, becuase we are going to take the trip of a lifetime to Europe for about a month (Yay!)
When looking at your budget, the number of guests tends to drive your costs up. That is one of the reasons we wanted to keep it smaller. More guests = more mouths to feed, and up goes your catering bill. It is $2500 alone to have an hors doeurves reception, not including cake or alcohol, for us to feed our guests. It is by far the most expensive part of our wedding.
I do echo what other posters have said - pick your priorities and budget your money accordingly. Elminate or scale down things that are not as important for you. For example, we are not having favors at our wedding. I also bought a less expensive wedding dress so that we could spend more on photography, which I felt was really important.
Good luck with your wedding planning!
Thanks for your comments everyone. Just to clarify, we are fine with our budget and how much we will be spending total. Essentially, we came up with a number that we were comfortable spending on just "one day". Those are the costs we are most trying to minimize and so far we are having no trouble sticking to our budget. In my mind, the rings and honeymoon don't really fall into that which is why I tend to think of them separately; however, we still set a budget for them. I guess what spurred my question was an article I read stating that the average cost of a wedding these days is circa 20K or so. I was just thinking about how our spending compares to that and to other numbers I've seen on these boards, but it all depends on what you include in what group.
for me, my budget is what's coming out of my pocket. if parents are paying for it, i don't count it because i don't really have to worry about it. so alcohol and rehearsal dinner aren't included.
I never include rings, honeymoon, or rehearsal dinner in my "total". If we were paying for everything (as in, my parents and his parents were not contributing) I would probably factor these things in.
We split up the expenses based on who is paying. IE, my parents are paying for the wedding and we have managed to keep total costs under $4k. His parents are paying for the honeymoon, which is around $2k, as well as the ehearsal dinner (not sure about the cost), and we each bought the other's ring, so that brough our personal costs to around $300 each. But on here when people talk about wedding budget I only talk about how much the wedding istelf, paid for by my parents, is costing.
It does get confusing, but each piece of the process has it's own budget, so when people say "wedding budget" I automatically go to what my parents are paying for the wedding itself.
i had a full out melt down to a friend of mine who is planning on getting a ring for his gf soon. he was planning on just grabbing one from a chain store here, and i just freaked. and asked him what all he knew about rings... lets just say he is better educated now about diamonds and gold and intends to take me along with him when he gets the ring the gf pointed out to him, but now from my jeweller thatdoes wholesale work! i would rather see a diamond that is good quality and shines like crazy, then a monster sized diamond that is foggy and not clear. thank goodness my fiance understood that too and took great care in finding my ring.
our wedding budget is $5000, this includes location, transportation, photography, food, officiant, etc. it does not include our rings or honeymoon, if we did include that it would be another $5000 on top of that.
well, for us it's different. my parents gave us $40k for our wedding, but we paid for our own rings and are paying for the honeymoon, i'm hoping FIs parents cover teh rehearsal dinner. for us "budget" is the cost of the wedding day.
We based our budget on what we were spending and did not include what our parents were giving us. Our budget is $10,000 and that includes the honeymoon and the rings. Our parents are giving us about $6,000. So I guess you could consider our grand total to be $16,000.(So far it looks like we will spend about $12,000) Our venue which includes the ceremony and reception site, food, flowers, cake, photographer, DOC, DJ, rehearsal and rehearsal dinner is costing about $6,200. It is a beautiful place and in no way looks like it costs what it does. I think you can have a nice wedding on a small budget, especially in a smaller town.
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When someone says they spent $X on their wedding, what does that usually include? Just the ceremony/reception? Rings? Rehearsal dinner? Honeymoon? We consider our wedding budget to be $15,000, and that amount includes the rehearsal dinner but not the rings or the honeymoon -- two things we really dont want to skimp on! Reading these boards I'm often amazed at how much wedding people seem to be able to have for very little money, but then I wondered if I just have a different idea of what falls under that number.