Wedding Blog
When I talk about budgets I like to be specific, so I’m going to share with you our wedding budget.
Mr. Spaniel and I have a budget of around $30,000, most of which is generally being paid for by our parents. I would have loved for us to be able to pay for our own wedding, but—alas!—I am a starving student and he is a starving recent graduate. The only wedding we could afford would have been in city hall, followed by ramen for two. Rather than let us elope, our parents have stepped up and are helping us out substantially.
| Ceremony (location fee, officiant) | $400 |
| Reception (venue rental, food and service, beverages and bartenders, cake and cutting fee) | $17,000 |
| Bride’s attire and accessories | $2,000 |
| Groom’s tux and accessories | $250 |
| Flowers and decor (bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, ceremony decorations, reception decorations and centerpieces) | $2,000 |
| Music (ceremony and reception musicians) | $2,000 |
| Photography | $3,000 |
| Stationery | $750 |
| Wedding rings | $2,000 |
| Gifts (bridesmaids, groomsmen, parents) | $600 |
| Total | $30,000 |
I can’t wait to see if we actually stay within the budget! 
I will be doing my darndest!
Did you set specific budgets for specific categories before you started planning your wedding? Did you find you were able to stick to your budget?
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Share this post: An Actual, Real-Life Wedding Budget
wow that was awfully nice of both of your parents to help with the costs! and thanks for being so open with your budget from the start. i can’t wait to see how it all ends up
Just curious, how did you come up with these numbers? And do you have a category for “miscellaneous expenses”? Those things always come up!
holy smokes your budget completely mirrors mine! I’m glad to see 17k for a reception on a 30k budget is not unreasonable! I was worried that it was. Anywho, we are indeed over budget already, not to scare you, but there are so many little things that pop up.
Some tips: I have a talented friend designing our invites as a gift and I’m just paying for the paper.
If you purchase wedding rings, wedding party and parents gifts all from the same jeweler you got your engagement ring from, they will probably cut you a deal on all of it.
Mens Wearhouse rents the groom’s tux for free if the groomsmen get their tuxes from there.
If you have a certain # of children, you can negotiate with your reception vendor to get a lower cost for them OR get a separate cheaper menu (chicken fingers!)
You might be missing limo/car service from your budget?
Cheers for 30k budget, poor student brides 
i was about to say what mrs mouse said… there will be a lot of miscellaneous ^_^ well that’s been the case for us.
We had similar estimates as yours. We did manage to stay in budget, which I’m glad we did. Our budget breakdown was pretty detailed. We used Mrs. Flamingo’s budget template as our base and then added and subtracted line items from there.
Are you planning to do hair & makeup yourself?
I know you’ll do a great job keeping within budget.
I’m actually afraid to make a budget because I know I’ll blow it, LoL. My initial thought was $10k but once we started looking for a caterer, I realized that was impossible. So now I’m targeting $20k. It’s going to be tight…
Looks pretty good, and thank you so much for sharing!!! Mrs. Mouse had a great comment about putting in a buffer of Misc. expenses since just random expenses come up that you wouldn’t think of. Maybe you don’t care and plan on taking care of them as they come up but to give you an idea of some of mine:
- dinner and drinks for my personal attendant and myself when we went to pickup my dress and she learned how to do my bustle
- expenses I incurred during my bachelorette part, yes, my girls took on most of the expense but I wanted to thank them with a round of drinks, and I drove out there so I spent gas money
- thank you presents for my shower hosts
- handful of dinners while out looking at things and doing other wedding related tasks
- 10s of other things I’m forgetting, trust me everywhere you turn around there is something that you can spend $ on for the wedding that
I also notice that you don’t have any transportation expenses accounted for, the cost of the marriage license and other legal filings, or the ceremony extras (like the flower girl basket, unity candle, etc.)
Sorry, I know you didn’t ask for input, you just wanted to share, but I’d hate to have you (or your parents) be surprised
You know, $30,000 sounds like alot but when you break it down… it doesn’t really *look* like it. Hmmm…
Yikes, budgets are so scary even when broken down! Thanks for sharing yours
Extras = silly “little DIY projects” that add up…fast!
Oh and Etsy should have it’s own category (on my budget at least) because I spent wayyyyy too much there!
Make sure you have postage built into your stationary budget as well…that one will break your heart at how much you spend at the post office
Thanks for all the input, ladies! I definitely plan to share the actual breakdown (as well as who paid for what) after the fact, but I can answer a few of the questions you’ve posed right now. We’re planning to use a shuttle service provided by the hotel for transportation, so that’s not part of our budget (nor is the hotel, because we are booking enough rooms to get a free one). We’re going to try to make misc items fit within other categories, but if they can’t, we basically are taking it out of regular spending money. We’re still paying for a decent chunk of the wedding ourselves, so we try to limit ourselves by remembering that *anywhere* we go over is money out of our pockets, and those pockets are pretty empty as it is ;).
@Mrs. Mouse: I forgot to respond: we got these numbers from a budget calculator that I got online, and tweaked it based on the cost of our venue and our estimated guest list.
Wow you are (1) lucky that your parents are paying and (2) lucky that they’re not really of the “budget” mindset! What a nice luxury. But you’ll be surprised how fast it goes….
Thanks for sharing this post & to all you other bees who commented…I’m making adjustments to our budget as we speak.
We did set an original budget of 24K (which we are paying ALL ourselves; but it excludes the rehearsal dinner, which FI’s parents have kindly offered to pay), but we’re JUST over budget right now (26K), due to some of the “extras” that other ‘bees have mentioned. I also noticed that your budget seems to include only events the “day of” the wedding…if you don’t mind sharing, will you please tell us if you will include any of the following WR events: rehearsal dinner/welcome dinner, brides’ lunch (to thank attendants), OOT welcome bags, day-after/send-off brunch?
Thanks again for sharing!
@chicagowife: They’re paying the majority… but not all. I may have exaggerated with the ramen comment, but it would have been a very, *very* small event. But we are very, very lucky.
@ms.pascua: This budget does not include our rehearsal dinner, which his parents are hosting. We won’t have an official bridesmaid luncheon (I may take my bridesmaids out ‘unofficially’, but that will come out of my regular dining out budget over the next few months), and we’re not hosting a send-off brunch (we are leaving for our honeymoon the next morning). Also, our guests are nearly all in the Los Angeles area (the hotel is for convenience, since as you know being in LA can still mean a several-hour drive!), so we don’t feel we need to provide OOT bags.
We sat down and made a similar budget using numbers based on price quotes we’d already had and some logic. I watched my 10k vision bloom to almost 25k so I’m really trying to stay in the now established budget. One thing we did was include the honeymoon into our budget. We also included everything, including things that may be gifted (ex. my aunt offered to pay for the wedding cake and my parents paid for my dress). Even if it is not all our money we still want to be able to track it. I think you are off to a god start and I like to think it is a challenge to come in UNDER budget so that’s my goal.
Can’t wait to see how it actually goes! We’re hoping to stay around $10k-see how that goes. I haven’t actually done a budget yet. My parents (& his some) will be helping out a lot!
how many guests are you inviting?
ya…i have a similar question to @Amber…wanting to know the # of guests you expect.
that’s my budget too, although it seems like a lot, I’ve been amazed at how quick it goes, especially in Cali. How many guests are you going to have? Good luck with sticking to it! I’m hoping we can too!
i’m also getting married in socal with a similar budget. 30k sounds like a lot, but things add up!
would have loved to get married at Calamigos if they didn’t charge so much to use an outside caterer.
We set an overall budget and then a limit for each category. I’m happy to report that we actually came in under our budget.
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Miss Spaniel, Los Angeles
Age and Occupation: 28, Law Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Psychologist
Wedding Date: March 2010
Venue: Calamigos Ranch
About Me: I'm a third-year law student trying to balance graduating with starting my career, keeping up a relationship, and, oh yeah, planning an Old World, multi-cultural, "mountain lodge" wedding for 180 guests! A South Asian Jewish girl getting ready to marry my handsome Catholic Dane, I'm hoping to blend our cultures in our wedding just a bit more gently than by providing samosas as appetizers and offering æbleskiver for dessert. (Although that would also be awesome.)
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