BUDGET

Jayepyt, it is TOTALLY doable. You just need to prioritize what you want to spend on. If you want to invite all your friends and family, be flexible with the date and location and cut back on the bells and whistles that your guests may not even care about. You want beautiful pictures and splurge on video? Cut your guest list. It's totally feasible!!

Also try and be creative and do research when it comes to vendors. My budget is $26K and we will have just under 200 people there...and right now it looks like we're only a few hundred dollars over budget, if that. I booked a photographer who wanted to build her portfolio so she gave me a great price...now she has been featured on all the wedding and style blogs! FH and I really wanted a band but couldn't spend 20% of our wedding budget on that, so we booked a band from upstate (whose gigs we visited) for just about the price of a DJ. It might take some elbow grease, but you can definitely get the wedding you want!

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Posted by riapots

Jayepyt, it is TOTALLY doable. You just need to prioritize what you want to spend on. If you want to invite all your friends and family, be flexible with the date and location and cut back on the bells and whistles that your guests may not even care about. You want beautiful pictures and splurge on video? Cut your guest list. It's totally feasible!!

Also try and be creative and do research when it comes to vendors. My budget is $26K and we will have just under 200 people there...and right now it looks like we're only a few hundred dollars over budget, if that. I booked a photographer who wanted to build her portfolio so she gave me a great price...now she has been featured on all the wedding and style blogs! FH and I really wanted a band but couldn't spend 20% of our wedding budget on that, so we booked a band from upstate (whose gigs we visited) for just about the price of a DJ. It might take some elbow grease, but you can definitely get the wedding you want!

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Agreed.

Remember once you set a budget to try and stick to it. If you do research you can definitley save a lot of money. Write a list of the things that you must have bc as some of the PP's said sometimes when we are on this site you might get great ideas and some of those ideas will make you throw your budget out of the window. Do what you and your FH can afford and it will be just as beautiful.

We never figured out a budget (bad move) and with EVERYTHING (except the HM) i think we are looking at about 40K...thats for 150-200 people and hopefully my dad stops adding people to the guest list!

Edited this to say that I do wish I had set a budget and stuck to it.. I can't seem to justify spending 40k on ONE day..but I am happy with all my choices so ill get over it.

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Posted by riapots

Jayepyt, it is TOTALLY doable. You just need to prioritize what you want to spend on. If you want to invite all your friends and family, be flexible with the date and location and cut back on the bells and whistles that your guests may not even care about. You want beautiful pictures and splurge on video? Cut your guest list. It's totally feasible!!

Also try and be creative and do research when it comes to vendors. My budget is $26K and we will have just under 200 people there...and right now it looks like we're only a few hundred dollars over budget, if that. I booked a photographer who wanted to build her portfolio so she gave me a great price...now she has been featured on all the wedding and style blogs! FH and I really wanted a band but couldn't spend 20% of our wedding budget on that, so we booked a band from upstate (whose gigs we visited) for just about the price of a DJ. It might take some elbow grease, but you can definitely get the wedding you want!

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great post!

We didn't have a budget because I had no clue I should even have one (Hindsight is 20/20 lol). I roughly estimate that we spent about $30,000 not including the HM. We had about 100 guests. A good rule of thumb is that the RH will be about 1/2 of your total wedding cost Like other girls have posted, it depends on so many factors though. There are definitely ways to keep your wedding within your budget though....decide what's important and which things you can live without, try to work out prices with your vendors (What else can you do for $-------? WIll you accept cash and include the tax)?), post on here for our help-girls on here are amazing as you know!!!!, and do as much as you can DIY (such as menus, programs, cardbox, etc!!)!!
GL

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Posted by Snick n Nick

Honestly it depends on how many people you are hoping to have, the time of day, day of the week, month that you are planning to have the wedding!

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Ditto - I say the two #1 $$$ is HOW MANY invites & WHICH RC....will take up most of the budget...

wow i give you all credit who are actually able to stay under your budget cause i am way over mine already. i cant believe how much it is to have a wedding today and this wedding world is just CRAZYYY!! but whatever, im just hoping with all this money spent on my wedding its all worth it and goes as planned and as beautiful as i want it to be.. honestly we are having 175-200 people, we are trying not to go over 225 people and we already garanteed our hall 175 and we are at 35 thousand just for the hall itself, but i think we went crazy too cause we are having a full cocktail deluxe with everything you can imagine and the whole one hour vinetian (i know i spelt it wrong, lol).. and we arent even closed to being done with booking these venues for our wedding.. we actually just went today and booked our dj with starlight express (and we are having a live singer for our cocktail and dinner time) and we booked our photography and video with duet today as well =] and those 3 things alone, dj, live singer and photo/video we are at almost 12 thousand dollars.. and we are still looking for a BAND to add to our list!! =]]

good luck girls with staying on your budgets.. i really wish i could say the same!! grrr!! =]]

We're hoping to stay under $60K (170ppl, Saturday night in July affair). I know that may be a lot but like others have said, it's all relative. I have certain friends who have had or will have $200K+ fancy shmancy weddings so to them they probably think our budget is tiny. I almost feel weird talking about my wedding around them b/c the word 'budget' wasn't in their vocabulary when they were planning.

Everyone has to do what's best for them and their budget. I agree that the best thing to do is to pick and choose what's most important to you and splurge in that area and then save in other less important areas. Good luck!!