We are actively planning our wedding now, and while we couldn’t be more excited to get married, the thought of how much money goes into the average wedding feels like a huge punch to the stomach. It’s supposed to be “the best day of our lives”, but every time we get a quote from a vendor, City Hall sounds more and more enticing. So how to stay within our wedding budget?
With COVID-19 rudely interrupting our wedding planning…we’ve had to make many changes to our 2020 wedding which we will write about in a separate article. Many of the lessons in this article are more relevant to a world where we are still allowed to gather in larger groups with those we care most about.
We’ve been doing a ton of research over the last year, and these are some of the most helpful lessons we’ve learned along the way.
Cheat Sheet: How to Stay Within Your Wedding Budget
- Lesson 1: Your wedding date impacts costs
- Lesson 2: Friday over Saturday could save you $1,000s
- Lesson 3: List size dictates variable costs
- Lesson 4: Venues require approved vendors…at a markup
- Lesson 5: Catering and bar packages can get out of hand quickly
- Lesson 6: Don’t forget to budget for your rehearsal dinner
Lesson 1: Not all dates are created equally
April-October weddings come at a premium because everyone wants to get married during those months. Wedding venues only have so many weekends they can rent out during the year, so to cover their costs, they will get as high of a price during the peak season.
If you can find a venue that is open during the non-peak times (because some venues close down during winter depending on location), you can typically get a bit of a discount on the venue rental.
Lesson 2: Friday and Saturday weddings are more expensive than other days
Now, this is the big money saver! Wedding venues have a really hard time renting out on all days other than Friday or Saturday, so if you have any flexibility in the day of the week, you will find steep discounts on the venue rental, ceremony fee (which is sometimes entirely waived), and per person pricing. Saturday is always the most expensive day, with slight discounts often offered for Friday ceremonies. Just moving the wedding one day could have a big impact on helping stay within your wedding budget.
If you know you are having a small, mostly local wedding, it’s really good to ask your venue about these discounts and what flexibility they have.
This was a bit of a hard pill for us to swallow when planning our wedding because we had so many people coming in from out of town, and that would ask a lot of people to take time off of work that they might not have for the year. Don’t forget to be considerate of your guests when planning.
Lesson 3: Headcount makes a huge impact on price
How many people you invite makes a huge impact on the price because food, bar tab, and the size of the venue are greatly impacted by each additional person. This is also one of the more emotionally charged topics that can cause the most drama. Just know, it’s okay if someone you know does not get invited, and I’ve included some helpful tips on how to navigate creating your list.
One tip is to book a 100-person venue and create your list after the total occupancy has been defined. Once the list hits 100, there is no way to add more people. Family made the first round of the list, then the bridal party, then next closest friends, and that helped reduce the justification.
Also – plus 1s add up really quickly and is a good place to look to trim. Close friends of ours set a rule that if a couple hadn’t been dating for 6 months before the Save the Dates went out, then those guests did not get a plus 1. This made it easy to explain why someone did not get a plus 1 without emotions creeping in.
Another common area where headcount sneaks up is the friends your parents want to invite. Your parents are extremely proud of you and all that you’ve accomplished in life, so they often want to invite their friends as well to be part of the celebration. You can approach this in a way that’s a win-win for everyone – let your parents know they can invite a maximum number of friends in order to not blow over budget. Parents are extremely understanding that you can’t go into debt over having everyone at the event. Communication, and early communication, is key.
Lesson 4: Be prepared for markups from venue-required vendors
Something I was not expecting was just how expensive food and beverage were through venues. Most venues require you to use vendors that they already have a relationship with and are on their approved list. To be fair, when there are a bunch of vendors running around your event space, venues want the peace of mind that the vendors know how to navigate the kitchen, they can trust the staff, and they know how to clean up and break down on time.
Sometimes, you can negotiate an exception (that must be approved in writing by the venue) to use a different caterer. At the end of the day, the venue must feel that they can trust the vendor and that the company can come in and work efficiently during the big day.
Another alternative is to find an event space that does not have an approved vendor list. This allows you to use any vendor you’d like and avoid all mark-ups, however, the trade-off is that you are now managing ALL your vendors and have to perfectly coordinate where they go at what time in your venue. I would highly recommend a good day-of-coordinator to alleviate a lot of stress.
Lesson 5: Catering and bar packages are wildly expensive
There are a lot of sticker shock moments during this process, but the biggest one for me was how dang expensive catering and bar packages are for your wedding. Guests are coming from far and wide for your wedding, and you can’t let them go hungry during the big day, especially if there’s a lot of drinking and dancing.
As mentioned above, venues require you to use vendors from their approved list because they can trust that these are reliable vendors, however, that unfortunately means you are facing a mark-up from the vendor and then you also get hit with a mark-up from the venue (plus often a 22% service fee).
We saw prices ranging anywhere from $75/person up to $180/person, depending on how fancy the venue and the menu was. An obvious way to keep these prices manageable is to keep your wedding list manageable. The fewer the people, the fewer variable costs.
Also, be warned of the add-ons that you can get hit with here. We saw per person add-ons for champagne toasts, s’mores bars, separate bar packages, fancier plating, fancier appetizers during cocktail hour, etc.
The way we approached this is to optimize full tummies with fewer options, and if we saw per-person cost outside our budget for the meal and bar combined, then that venue was immediately ruled out (no matter how nice it looked).
Lesson 6: Don’t forget to budget for your rehearsal dinner
I completely forgot about the rehearsal dinner before the wedding when we first built out our wedding budget, so don’t be like me. This can really sneak up on you because you are planning a second event, but don’t feel pressure to make this a second wedding.
We are taking full creative liberty with planning the rehearsal dinner to not splurge on this event. Our plan is to keep the actual event very small (family, bridal party, and extremely close friends – maybe), bring food into the Airbnb where we are staying, and have a low key dinner. Afterward, we’re telling anyone who wants to go out to meet us downtown at bars to enjoy time with them.
Keep tabs on all of our wedding challenges and learnings as we near our October 2020 wedding at our Getting Married course page.
