So How Much Will All This Cost?
By TwistieI’m a great believer in the concept that a wedding will cost precisely what you are willing to spend on it. I believe in figuring out how much you have available to work with and then tailoring the day to your budget, rather than trying to fit your budget to the party you want to throw. After all, it’s possible in most places to get married for less than a hundred dollars, if you’re fine with simply getting a marriage license and finding a budget JP to do the honors. It’s also possible to spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s all a matter of deciding what your resources are and making smart decisions about how to spend your hard-earned cash.
But what does it cost in your area to hold a typical wedding?
I found this fun tool for getting an idea what the average wedding in your area tends to set people back. Just enter your zip code and see what number comes out. Remember, this is an average and your wedding will probably be either more or less expensive, depending on your tastes, circumstances, and resources.
For my hometown, incidentally, the ‘average wedding’ will cost $35,140. Yikes! That’s a far cry from the $2,000 I spent not quite fifteen years ago on getting married.
So, in addition to this amusing window into averages, I’m going to share a few thoughts on how to have a wedding that looks like it cost a lot more than it really did.
1: Choose the prettiest wedding venue you can afford. If you choose an unattractive place, you can spend a fortune trying to make it pretty without succeeding. If you choose a pretty place, you can save a bundle on decorations. After all, if you get married in a gorgeous garden setting, you don’t need nearly as many flowers and a lot of other sorts of decoration will just get in the way of the natural setting. If you marry in a building with great architechtural details, why cover them up?
2: Concentrate your budget on things that will have a large impact. People will forget quickly whether you served a buffet or a set meal, but they will never forget that they couldn’t get enough to eat. They will also forgive a multitude of missing details if you’ve got a really great live band or a killer DJ who keeps everyone dancing at the reception.
3: Remember that little things add up more quickly than you realize, and some extras entail other extras you probably haven’t thought about. Those cute personalized ribbons for the favors are only a few dollars…but once you’ve got those, the personalized napkins (both dinner and cocktail), the personalized bubbles, and the personalized match books, you suddenly discover that you’ve spent several hundred dollars on things that are purely optional. Those extra-large (or extra-small!) invitations are going to require extra postage, too. budget for these things in advance or be ruthless in refusing to consider them.
4: DIY is your friend. If you can learn to do it yourself, chances are you can do it cheaper than you can hire someone else to do it. This is the perfect time to ask your handy friends for help, too. If you’re asking something big of someone, be sure to tell them you are happy to consider it a wedding gift. If you’re asking something huge, do offer to pay at least some nominal fee, too.
5: Don’t ignore unlikely resources. If something says wedding or is marketed specifically to brides, chances are it’s been marked up hugely. What’s more, you don’t have to use exclusive bridal resources. You can find great things in dollar stores, if you shop carefully. Sales on discontinued lines can reveal treasures everyone else walked right by. Friends and family members may have leftovers from other weddings or parties you can use. You can look for clothes in a department store or eBay or a consignment shop. If you find the perfect touch in a thrift store or at a garage sale, don’t turn up your nose because it’s used.
6: If you can’t afford to do something properly, don’t do it. Concentrate on doing a really good job on what you can afford. If your budget won’t allow an open bar, don’t have one. Serve a more restricted selection, or just have enough good champagne for a toast and leave it at that.
7: Remember the most important things about a wedding don’t cost a dime. Put thought into the vows. Choose readings that say something about you as a couple. Find ways to relax and enjoy your own party. Long after everybody has forgotten what your invitations and decorations looked like, what people wore, or what music was played, they will remember your happy smile, gracious attitude, and meaningful ceremony. And isn’t that what really matters in the longrun?
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I love Cost of Wedding — in fact it’s one of the resources featured early on in iDo! The thing that irks me about those ‘average cost’ calculators is that they make people think it’s impossible to have a wedding for less than, say, $30K. I spent far less than that in an area where house prices are in the high seven figures! It’s important for people on a budget to remember that just because a lot of people are spending that much doesn’t mean you can’t have a beautiful, elegant wedding for less.
It really is the small choices you make — one thing that saved The Beard and me a bunch of cash was that we chose to serve a cold buffet rather than a hot sit-down meal. Because the buffet wasn’t warmed, no one needed to monitor things like chafing dishes…and in the Florida heat no one really missed having a hot meal. And not having to pay for on-site staff meant HUGE SAVINGS.
March 2nd, 2008 at 6:00 pm
This is all right on the money, pun only somewhat intended. A close friend of mine had her wedding for next to nothing, but she wouldn’t have been able to do it without the love and support of those around her. Members of the church who normally played as a band during youth service volunteered to provide the music for the wedding and part of the reception for free, partially to make up for the fact that the church originally promised her the sanctuary for the date and then accidentally gave it to someone else so she had to rearrange the wedding into a local park with only a couple months notice. Family members and friends pitched in to make food, flower arrangements, decorations, and invitations, and to steam tablecloths, set up the whole wedding area, build a backdrop for the vows, and problem-solve all morning on the day of. Fortunately, she was the kind of bride that made it easy for us to help her out without any resentment. She was very easy-going, flexible, un-demanding, and most importantly, genuinely thankful for everyone who had chosen to spend that day with her and her husband. And she never lost sight of what was really important about that day–that she was marrying the love of her life. It is one of the few weddings that has ever made me cry, and I was so happy to have been a part of making it happen for her, even if my contribution was only a small one.
If you can afford it, you can always buy the help you need. But for those of us smart enough not to mortgage the house for our wedding, we need to remember how valuable the help and support of our loved ones can be. Getting married should be the opposite of an excuse to take out your stress on everyone around you. If you focus on giving love and being thankful for what you have, not only will you get it back in spades in ways that will massively reduce your stress level, you will also be far less likely to be stressed out about those things in the first place. A wedding should be about love, not keeping up with the Jones or showing off or impressing anyone. It should be about sharing, thankfulness, and joy–and you can’t buy any of those things.
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:43 am
Those are all great ideas, Twistie. I agree NtB that the assumption that you have to shell out upwards of 30K for a nice wedding is absurd. We spend just under $20K for a 125 guest wedding in central PA (according to the calculator average wedding cost: $36,290), 5 star honeymoon in Mexico, AND an open house for 100 back in Salt Lake where we live.
We cut costs by only serving wine instead of having a full bar, having a luncheon reception, DIYing all our paper goods (invites, programs, place cards etc.), and by doing all the food/beverages ourselves for the open house.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:54 am
Wow, I apparently save $15000! I totally agree about the location, that helped us save a ton of money on decorations. I got most decorations and serving trays, etc and goodwill or ebay. I also made my own invitations which was a big help. Since my mom made my dress it was only about $100. I did a lot of bargaining to have a gorgeous wedding for about $6000
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:42 am
That’s awesome, Dianasaur — now I feel twice as good about that fact that pretty much all of our wedding leftovers (platters, decorations, etc.) went to the Goodwill after the wedding!
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Leah, you and your gracious bride friend are clearly ladies after my own heart! That’s a lovely story.
And yes! add me to the chorus saying it doesn’t have to cost that much. It costs what you are willing to spend. I’m so used to thinking that averages in cases like this are more interesting trivia than requirement that I sometimes forget there are people who think that’s actually how much you have to spend to have a wedding.
March 9th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
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