Wedding Cost

So I was browsing the internet for how much the average wedding costs and I found that the average is $19000-$25000!!! Whoa!! I do NOT have that kinda cash laying ariound for my wedding. ctually I have NO cash for my wedding that is why we are waiting until March 2009 so we can save up some money! I was thinking more along the lines of $5000-$10000. Really I have NO clue though so I thought I'd take a poll. How much did your wedding cost?

I spent about $6,000 on my wedding (around 50 people, with a really nice reception at a golf club), and $3,000 on my honeymoon (2 weeks in Switzerland).

Uh.. yeah... the average wedding is that much.

We're aiming at $15,000 excluding help from her parents and mine.

i'm all in favor of open bars at wedding, but here's a cost estimate for alcohol:

$10 per person per hour that the bar is open.  SO, if you have 100 guests and the bar is open for 4 hours that alone is $4,000.

I don't know the exact figures, but I think somewhere around $2500-$3000 for mine.  I got a cheap (but beautiful) dress, we did cold cuts and salads for the dinner, a friend of my mom's did the pictures, my mom made the centerpieces and flower arrangements.

If you're willing to do a lot of it yourself, or have family that will help out, you can save lots of money. 

It is an important day, but keep in mind that it's only one day!  It's the marriage that's forever (hopefully), not the wedding.  You definitely don't want to go into debt for it. 

A friend of mine is getting married next month, and we just had a flower arranging party last week.  All the bridesmaids and mothers and such got together and made the flower arrangements.  She bought the (fake) flowers last year when they were 50% off right before Christmas.  She also got a bridesmaid's dress instead of a wedding gown (way cheaper).  One of her friends is doing pictures, another friend is doing video, another friend is singing...

If you have a negative attitude about "cheap" stuff, or don't want to do things yourself (or aren't able, or don't have friends and family who can), then you'll spend a lot more.

Yeah, we did things inexpensive and informal and kept it around $5000.  My dress was $100 and it was gorgeous ... very untraditional though.  We splurged on the cake, the flowers, and a catered lunch.  Dad did all the music, my brother (who works for a wine distributor) supplied the wine and champagne, and for the location we rented a party boat and got married on the water.  It was loads of fun.  Don't think you have to spend gobs of money just because other people do.

Well my aunt is making my dress and my mom is making the cake. There's a friend of the family that is a photographer the hardest thing would be flowers, decorations, food, drinks and centerpieces! I don't want a HUGE wedding something nice but simple. The most important things are that the dress is drop dead gorgeous, that it's at my church, and that everyone has a great time! Other than that I couldn't care less.

it costed me around 27000 including a honeymoon in Florida (Sheraton Vistana), Universal Studios, ....

I am still paying thou :)

but you can do yours by much lower than that. it all dep[ends upon both the bride and groom and if there are any traditions or customs for the families. (like for Indian people, the min number people should be around 500 :)

Iam not indian, but my wedding was 250 people.

I wish you all the best and good luck in that AMAZING day.

Advice: do not be cheap, but be wise too!

my wedding cost $30 which was the cost of the marriage license.  my husband and i had a friend who was a notary, and she signed our papers and it was done.  i haven't regretted that once since the day we made it official.  it's not the wedding that really mattered to me...but spending the rest of my life with the person i love.

maldonado, sometimes I think about doing that but then I think I'd regret it. I really want to go through tradition and celebrate with my family and of course look gorgeous in my dress!! LOL

I started planning a really big wedding, but then I got so sick of it and said screw it, lets go to Vegas! I always wanted a really big wedding (I always said I would never go to Vegas), but then as I was sitting down planning everything I realized that I didn't even care about the wedding anymore, I just wanted to get married and I didn't care how it happened.

hmm Vegas you say? an how much did that cost?

Wedding dress, my tux, rehearsal dinner, reception after the wedding and the honeymoon probably cost a total of $2500-$2600, most of which was the wedding dress. :D

Also I am such an unorganized person, if I could I would hire a wedding planner, especially since I'm not too concerned with details! I've never planned anything in my life, let alone a wedding!

My husband and I paid for our own wedding cuz it was second for both of us. Neither one of us had big weddings the first time and this time we wanted the whole 9 yards! I would say we spent about 15 to 20 thousand minimum. The good thing is most places you can pay as you go. make deposits on stuff and then keep paying on it until usually right up to the week before the wedding. That was what we did so we knew how much money we needed. It was hard and ALOT of work! My one year wedding anniversary is Sunday and i am so excited! But really start now and get a wedding planner book with pockets and then you get organized and start paying on the stuff.

Not much at all. I don't know the exact cost because my mom did pay for some of it and she paid for my sisters to come out too, but airline tickets to Vegas are pretty cheap and if you just pay for the two of you to go out, everything else would be pretty cheap too. And I still had a pretty dress (it was kind of plain though because I had to get it on the airplane lol)

And if you go to Vegas you get a wedding and vacation all in one.

The only reason why my husband and I had a ceremony is because of family - his family is big into celebrations, and I'm the only one of my mom's kids that was going to get married, so I wasn't going to deny her that.  Save that, my hubby and I would have just gone to Vegas.

Our wedding cost around $3,000 without the catering, which my father picked up.  $500 for the dress - $250 for fabric and lace, $250 for a family friend to make it.  Had a very inexpensive "honeymoon" - we didn't have vacation time, so we did a 3 day weekend at the local Radisson.  Didn't have our real honeymoon until a year later, which cost as much as the wedding.

lilbory, first, don't buy into the wedding industry's figures; they want you to spend as much as you can, and then some more. Second, you will be better off financially if you buy a house, condo, etc. -- assuming you don't already own property -- than you will be blowing wads of dough on a wedding.

For me, treating our guests well was the most important consideration for the reception; they were our guests, after all! So the food had to be really excellent and plentiful. Truthfully, we could have had just as elegant a reception without *quite* so much food and it could have cost us less, but then, the caterer might not have packed up quite so much for us to take home! (We ate beef tenderloin for dinner for a week!) The catering, with open premium bar, came to under $6K and that included the rental on the historic house the reception was in. That was our biggest expense.

Having the wedding at 1 PM, and having mature guests (:-) ), cuts down on the booze expense. I had an open bar for my first wedding, too, and the bartender told a guest, "You people don't drink enough to have an open bar!" For my second wedding, we paid for alcohol used, and that was less expensive even for the premium labels.

The caterer supplied the centerpieces at no cost, but I didn't need them because I used our favors for the centerpieces. I ordered the favors online (from a different place) and decorated them with clay craft roses (available from Michael's), ribbon, and a personalized card.

I ordered loose flowers (spray roses and tulips) for my bouquet; the day of the wedding, a flower-arranging friend met me at the florist, picked out some other flowers to add to what I'd already paid for, and made the bouquet (arranging and tying the flowers together) in the back of her SUV after we got to the church. It was gorgeous. Except for flowers for the wedding party/musicians/kids passing out programs, there were no other flowers. (The ceremony from start to finish took 20 minutes; no one missed flowers, believe me!) Total cost: under $200.

If you really really feel the need for pew bows and other things, see if you can find someone else getting married shortly before you who will lend you or at a greatly reduced cost, sell you, her pew bows and other things.

My groom's brother played piano for the wedding and we hired a friend to sing (in part because we suspected he wouldn't be able to come to the wedding otherwise; we covered the singer's travel expenses in addition to paying him. We wanted him there!). Another composer/pianist friend played the prelude. Music at the reception, what little there was, was supplied by the groom and his brother. People were yakking so much, no one missed music, either. (For my first wedding, I hired a quartet to play for dancing; we had the reception in a ballroom with a big dance floor.)

I handwrote the invitations. Both of my weddings were informal, so I used an informal style (but still wrote them in calligrapy); had one or both weddings been formal, I'd have still handwritten the invitations, but used a formal style instead. (Engraving is simply mass-produced handwriting, so handwriting invitations are perfectly proper.)

Something a friend of mine did to cut down on the reception expenses was have a "themed" reception; her reception was decided informal, had a Hawaiian theme, and the only booze available was beer, wine, Blue Hurricanes and Mai Tais. (It was a blast!) Of course, you need not serve alcohol at all if you don't want to; breakfast weddings can be very elegant and not expensive, and no one expects whiskey at 10 AM!

There are many, many ways to cut down the expense of a wedding, and still have it be perfectly elegant, beautiful, and memorable. A quick search on the web will give you lots of ideas, but perhaps the best one is "Simplify, simplify!"

Mine will be a good 16K-17K. Which is why we are planning for next summer. LoL. I seriously need to start saving.

Plus the ring, and the dress... Oh man it's going to be awesome tho.

You only get married once. It can be done really inexpensively if you just take your time and plan it right.

There's this really neat tool I found online called Best Party Ever and it lets you make guests lists, find vendors, and stuff for your wedding.  You should check it out to get a start.

Just two suggestions

1- out of season (sept-march)

2-wedding planning book (at all the book stores)

Ah, I love talking about weddings.  Mine cost $3000.  My husband and I paid for everything (except my dress my mom bought it $300 at a David's Bridal sale---and it was perfect!!!)

Anyway we planned our wedding and got married in 13 weeks.  We wanted to do it as fast as possible because we saw what my husband's brother went through just 9 months ealier...everyone has an opinion on what you should do---but none of them help pay for it!  WE had 250 people and it was still very special. 

One thing that really helped...we had ours on a Friday evening!  The cost of everything is almost half.  And if you can, do all yourself.  I think i read that your aunt is making your dress and mom is making the cake--perfect...keep doing those things.  I kept telling myself in the end the only thing that matters is that I am married to the man of my dreams, if the cake didn't show up (which it didn't) and if my unity candle doesn't light (which it didn't) all that matters is that at the end of the day I get to call the love of my life my husband--and God smiles down ;-)

Good luck to you!