What is your Budget?????????????

Our budget for the RH is 20K. We are having help from both sets of parents for other things so I can't be too much help there...

I can def tell you from what I've seen that if you DIY you can save tons of money! I've even done do being a BM in a wedding party - we legit made her invites and cut them, glued them - everything. In the end it took a lot of time, but only cost her $200 bucks! You can skip out on favors - that saves a ton of money!

Any chance you can be flexible with your time of year? I know you want to get married outside...but maybe doing an April wedding will be less. I know at WM the price per head was less for April.

Sorry that's probably not much help....I tried

We are going into this blind, we are planning so far in advance so we get what we want and know what we need to save.

To cut costs you can do off season, or maybe do a afternoon wedding or Sunday... I am WM bride and they were willing to work w us, but we needed to maintain warmer weather b/c FH family lives in wisconsin and we didnt want to risk them missing the wedding b/c of a snow storm.

We are also weighing out what we feel is important and in the end what isnt. For us, it is about the sacrament so if we are unable to get Orchids we let it go.

I love the outside of WM, i am sure whatever you decide it will be right for you guys. There was not a large difference btwn April and May for us when we went to WM, or the Swan Club, but March was lower and January would be even lower....

sorry i do not know if this helps...

A day wedding with less guests willl def be able to keep your costs down! ALso - for centerpieces you can DIY or go with silk flowers. Always an option if you find a place you love. Don't worry - I was freaking out too.

My FH is a fireman so basically he had to go & get a second job (which he starts next week lol) and we had to physically write out our expenses per month.

Little things helped - it may sound stupid, but I got my cell phone bill lowered by $10 per month for changing things around. I also switched car insurance carriers & I am saving $55 per month. I paid my student loans 2 months ahead so I didn't have to pay right now. It's the little things.

FH and I started out at 20k also, because like you we are paying for our wedding also. We're getting some help from my dad and a little from my mom but majority is on us. I went into this wedding planning blind also. I haven't been to many weddings and definitely no big weddings so I had no idea what things costs. After seeing what everything costs we've increased our budget by 10k and that doesn't even include the honeymoon. Makes me want to lol. But that is why we planned a long engagement so we can take our time planning and have plenty of time to pay it off.

Our budget for photo and video was 5k. I was figuring about 3k for photo, 2k for video. We ended up booking with the same company for both photo/video and got a really amazing package that came in just under our budget.

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Posted by JulesMarie27

A day wedding with less guests willl def be able to keep your costs down! ALso - for centerpieces you can DIY or go with silk flowers. Always an option if you find a place you love. Don't worry - I was freaking out too.

My FH is a fireman so basically he had to go & get a second job (which he starts next week lol) and we had to physically write out our expenses per month.

Little things helped - it may sound stupid, but I got my cell phone bill lowered by $10 per month for changing things around. I also switched car insurance carriers & I am saving $55 per month. I paid my student loans 2 months ahead so I didn't have to pay right now. It's the little things.

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FH and I are doing the same thing also. My second job starts tomorrow, I should be asleep but Im addicted to LIW you girls are so cool. Thanks for the support. Hopefully i wont go over my budget tooo much. hehehehe.. Maybe santa will drop me a pile of money

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Posted by Pretty_In_Pink

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Posted by JulesMarie27

A day wedding with less guests willl def be able to keep your costs down! ALso - for centerpieces you can DIY or go with silk flowers. Always an option if you find a place you love. Don't worry - I was freaking out too.

My FH is a fireman so basically he had to go & get a second job (which he starts next week lol) and we had to physically write out our expenses per month.

Little things helped - it may sound stupid, but I got my cell phone bill lowered by $10 per month for changing things around. I also switched car insurance carriers & I am saving $55 per month. I paid my student loans 2 months ahead so I didn't have to pay right now. It's the little things.

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FH and I are doing the same thing also. My second job starts tomorrow, I should be asleep but Im addicted to LIW you girls are so cool. Thanks for the support. Hopefully i wont go over my budget tooo much. hehehehe.. Maybe santa will drop me a pile of money

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FH is FDNY and seems to be the only one WITHOUT a second job... meanwhile all of our school programs were cut so I am SOL for an after-school job.
We don't really have a budget. I've always been the type to book what I want and then just worry about it later...

our budget is actually $9k, not including our honeymoon. in order to achieve this, we were open to almost any kind of venue, any season, day and time. we've made lots of concessions, but in the end, we just want to be married and not look back on our wedding day and cringe.
the only things it looks like we'll be getng help for are my gown (mom wants to buy) and the rehearsal dinner (fh's parents want to host).

we're having our ceremony at the RH, so we decided we dont need a limo, we're having a late afternoon wedding on a sunday in March and i'm DIYing everything under the sun.

we have a photographer, but no videographer and we'll be having about 100 guests. my main goal is to pull off something we can be proud of, but only focusing on whats really important to us. good luck!

Budget??? Oh, I used to have one of those lol

Seriously though, we tried to stick to a budget, but realistically it was money we didn't have yet, so we have just been trying to estimate what we think is a 'good price' and stick to it or under. We originally said that we didn't want to go over $30,000 total but we are already up to about $50k

ETA: Also, try to estimate your monthly expenses and see how much you can stretch it every month- FH and I are just giving the venue $1500 a month, plus we take another $500 and give it to a random vendor to pay off our balance as we go, rather then leaving it all for the end

We want to keep it under 30k (not including honeymoon), but Im thinking we may go a bit over. Luckily both parents are helping out! My parents are paying for the RH, Church, DJ, Photo/Video, Florist and Limos. FH's parents volunteered to throw us an Engagement Party as well as host the Rehersal Dinner and have mentioned they want to help more. If our guestlist wasnt so big, we would definitely have kept it under 25k but we need to invite those cousins who I havent seen since I was five

I hate saying that amount out loud though.. it feels irresponsible to spend so much money for one day. But hey, you only get married once right!

these answers depress me!

BUDGET... yes we had one of those that went completely out the window once we decided on our venue!!! but we had to have it it's my dream place and I am in love with it ..

Luckily we are planning with so much time, and we save alot of money besides sending monthly payments to our RH to bring the balance down as much as possible...

Difference between us and many of the you ladies and FH's is that we are already married ( city hall) have 2 daughters, live together all the bills that come with that, have 2 car notes, kdis are in private schools etc. so we already have the expenses that are suppose to come AFTER the wedding which is why again we are planning so far in advance..

what we have is a spread sheet with all the diff vendors, and if we dont already know the price we put an 'estimate' on what we think ' is the right price' and try to stay within or under.... right now we are at 62k but alot of it is off of estimates we may be under, our photographer is already 1800 under what we estimated and our florist that we will be booking is about 1k under

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Posted by hildie

BUDGET... yes we had one of those that went completely out the window once we decided on our venue!!! but we had to have it it's my dream place and I am in love with it ..

Luckily we are planning with so much time, and we save alot of money besides sending monthly payments to our RH to bring the balance down as much as possible...

Difference between us and many of the you ladies and FH's is that we are already married ( city hall) have 2 daughters, live together all the bills that come with that, have 2 car notes, kdis are in private schools etc. so we already have the expenses that are suppose to come AFTER the wedding which is why again we are planning so far in advance..

what we have is a spread sheet with all the diff vendors, and if we dont already know the price we put an 'estimate' on what we think ' is the right price' and try to stay within or under.... right now we are at 62k but alot of it is off of estimates we may be under, our photographer is already 1800 under what we estimated and our florist that we will be booking is about 1k under

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That's so cool, who is you photographer are florist??? Please let me know. I'm working with a tight budget

Bencwerk, I am meeting them next week to book and Florist will be Dana from Stylish events which I am going back to book her next month.. She's AWESOMEEEE and knows how to work well with budgets.. u should def meet her, tell her Hildalin sent you!

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Posted by lauren1802

these answers depress me!

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Who you telling!!!! OMG! It's so crazy the amount of money everything really is.

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Posted by hildie

Bencwerk, I am meeting them next week to book and Florist will be Dana from Stylish events which I am going back to book her next month.. She's AWESOMEEEE and knows how to work well with budgets.. u should def meet her, tell her Hildalin sent you!

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That's awesome!!! I'm gonna try her. I saw benchwerk's prices and they were far from 1800. But now I know I would love to meet with them. I'm super excited now. Whoot whoot!