How much to spend on wedding?
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Anonymous
| My fiancé and I are trying to come up with a reasonable budget for our wedding. We will have around 150 guests. We will be having a church ceremony followed by a reception. We will be paying for the wedding and planning it. We have no idea what a wedding should cost. We want a nice elegant wedding but nothing over the top. |
Anonymous
| What do YOU consider over the top? Some consider that an open bar, or videographer, or professional DJ, etc. Where is YOUR line? |
Anonymous
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It depends on your HHI and your budget. Don’t go into debt for an extravagant party.
How much was your engagement ring? |
Anonymous
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Truly this can cost whatever you want it to cost. For 150 people your big costs are going to come down to food and alcohol. A wedding that size could probably be done from anywhere from 5k to 150k depending on the choices you make.
To achieve the pinterest type look for a wedding like that I would expect something in the 30-50k range and seriously like most of that will be food. But if you went woodsy vibe, were able to do it in a relative's backyard and got a good deal on food and table rentals and did most of the decorating yourself and starting buying beer and wine gradually now you could probably take that down a lot. It is really just a world of options and cheaper is not necessarily better or worse but it is going to be a lot more physical labor so I'd start early. |
Anonymous
OP here. We will have all of those things. |
Anonymous
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You really want a budget first and then a headcount.
It would be easy (and fun!) to spend $100k on a wedding for 150 people but you could also have a nice party for half that so it just depends on your preferences. |
Anonymous
OP here. We will be getting married in Chicago ( my hometown). We have two contenders for a reception hall. Both are more of a rustic warehouse kind of vibe. I make $120k/yr and fiancé makes $150k + bonus. We have a little over 500k combined savings. I’m not sure how much my engagement ring costs. It’s a 1.5-2ct round diamond with 6 prong solitaire band. Possibly 15-20k. We are also not sure if we cover bridesmaids/groomsmen costs or if that’s on them? Our bridesmaids will either be wearing a dark green or wine color. We are thinking maybe $30-50k budget? |
Anonymous
OP here. We will also be moving back to Chicago this summer and plan to buy a condo/townhome sometime this year and will use some of the savings we have for down payment + closing costs, etc. |
Anonymous
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This is how people wildly overspend on weddings.
Unless you are wealthy enough to not care if you drop $50k or $100k on a wedding, you cannot start from the premise of what you want ("we want a nice elegant wedding for 150 guests"). You need to start by asking yourself how much you can afford to spend on a wedding. Just using myself as an example, if I were looking to host a wedding a year from now, I could probably see my way clear to spending $30k on a wedding. So the question I would be asking here is: what kind of wedding can I have on $30k? |
Anonymous
| As little as possible. |
Anonymous
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No one can answer this for you. You need to figure out the maximum amount you can afford to spend, then figure out how much you want to spend (because those two things are not necessarily synonymous). If you have a decent amount of money and feel like you can't answer that question because you don't know what things cost, then you need to start looking at what you would consider to be acceptable venues in your area for the reception and look into how much it would cost just for the space and the food for 150 people. Then you can start to ballpark cost and go back to this question-- how much do we want to spend? Then you set a budget and start playing around with it.
My wedding dress was about 2k. My sister, whose wedding came about 15 years prior to mine, was shocked and thought that was an outrageous amount to spend on a dress. Out of my work friends (I'm a lawyer), it cost less than anything they would have even considered. And that is just the dress. You need to choose venue, food, drink, cake, flowers, entertainment, etc., and all of it varies wildly in price (common denominator being that anything to do with a wedding will have a price tag that would shock many). Maybe you have always dreamed of a tall fancy cake, but you don't even want flowers. Maybe roses are important to you, but you don't like dancing so don't want a band or dj or whatever. Maybe you want "the best" of everything and in your social circle that is important, or maybe you have zero interest in spending much money on a party that lasts for one day. You have to figure this out. So, yeah. No one can answer this for you. The only certain thing I will say is this: don't go into debt over it. |
Anonymous
Do the rustic warehouses provide food or will you be bringing in a separate caterer? |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
Have you checked on prices at all? For the venues you like and for catering? Because I think $30-50k is (unfortunately) pretty low for 150 people in Chicago for a bride and groom that make what you make in the midwest. Certainly 30k is very low. And I'm not one to spend on luxury and parties, so if I think that budget is low, it's probably low. No, you don't cover costs for bridesmaids and groomsmen. You can, and would be much appreciated, if they will struggle to afford it and you decide you have the budget for it, but it isn't traditionally done. |
Anonymous
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For $30-$50k you can probably do a heavy appetizer and bar. Sit down dinner would be tough. Or you could make it more fun and do a Chicago themed wedding - pizza, or hot dogs and cheesecake, or whatever. I've been to weddings where it was Red, Hot & Blue barbecue and peach pie. Serve wine and beer instead of cocktails.
For my DDs wedding we spent at least $5k on flowers, same for photographer, plus hair and make up for the bridesmaids, rental tent, tables and chairs, linens and china. Plus the dress, venue rental, catering, cake, DJ, wedding planner, etc. All in it was $90k for about 110 guests. That's the medium end but it was definitely elegant. You can have a lovely wedding for $50k, but you'll need to decide where the spend your money. |