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SWMN | Set the budget to stay under when we got married for ALL expenses: food, venue, invitations, rings (mine, hers, and engagement), gifts to attendants and the photographer (pics were her gift to us), groom's supper, flowers, dress, tux, thank yous and postage, beer, church (customary here to give $100 to cover electric/utilities), priest, singers, pianist, etc. We paid for it all and I knew what everything cost. Came in slightly over budget (would have been under if I had gotten the titanium ring, rings were a big portion of the cost).
A wedding is like any other project, the little bills add up. For example. the postage bill was over $100 to send out 200 invitations and invitations were another $160, another $100 was spend on postage for thank yours; can't see how people claim they get married for $500 and invited a couple hundred people and accounted for ALL of the costs. We could have saved some on the venue (I suggested at home in machine shed, but parking would have been an issue since we got 4" of rain that evening) and the meal (we had catered prime rib sandwiches and the roast beef dinner would have been $1 less) and no open bar (16 gal root beer and 2 16 gal beer kegs were not cheap). Knowing what I know now I would not change a thing. I know that we covered more of the expenses that most due their wedding and feel we got buy fairly reasonable. I kept track of expenses for 1 reason: so I can tell our kids when they get married that our wedding cost xxx as compared to yyyy that others were spending at the time.
The keys to a successful wedding:
don't have bad food (we still get comments today on how great the food was at our reception and most do not remember what we had
don't run out of food (people who don't get food remember)
keep everything moving along (nothing worse than waiting)
have a good time
FWIW I instructed the caterer to start serving food at 6:30 whether or not the wedding party was present; there is no reason the guest should have to wait had we been drug to a bunch of bars and I hate waiting for food. Everyone wanted to know who we had cater because it was so good and a lot of friends (whom were planning weddings) were surprised that it only cost $8/plate and the cheapest anyone else could find was over $15.
On a side note, the meal cash-flowed itself: there was enough gift money to pay the cater. When we attend weddings, graduations, and birthday parties, I always try to give enough money to cover the cost of my meal so we are not a burden by attending. | |
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Weddings expensive
