Weddingbee Blog

The Budget. The elephant in the room. The thing that no one wants to talk about.

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After reading many, many posts on lots of different blogs about budgeting, staying on a budget, how not to break your budget, why not having a budget is wedding suicide - I was planning to establish said budget early on…

Imagine my surprise when my parents said that they weren’t really comfortable putting an end-all-be-all price tag on things. No, no. I’m not saying “we don’t have a budget” like that. It’s just that, being that our wedding is the first in my (immediate) family, and my mom doesn’t read wedding blogs as her second job (pfff) ;), they really just weren’t sure how much things in the wedding industry cost.

After hearing it that way, it seemed a more reasonable. I knew, however, that that meant my parents were trusting me to either know the best deals out there or know how & where to find them. And so, I was a girl on a mission.

They did give us some rough guidelines, like a dollar amount per person for dinner that they wanted to stay below, but really, most things we have tackled individually as we’ve gone along.

Here is how I went about finding the best deals I reasonably could (full posts on each of these important aspects of planning to come, of course)!

The Big Picture - according to costofwedding.com, the average wedding in State College, Pennsylvania runs between $14,534 and $24,223. Now I know that some of you big-city-brides are wishing you were looking at numbers so low, and trust me - I was thankful when I saw them, too. But we have a rather large wedding in the works, so I wasn’t necessarily sure we would be able to apply our budget to those numbers. Regardless, they were a good starting point.

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The Reception Venue - This pretty much was decided for us as one of our venue options was inflexibly out of budget, and one was in budget but unable to accommodate us size-wise. Luckily, our venue is wonderful, big enough, and reasonably-priced (*breathes sigh of relief*).

The Cake - I used The Knot’s local vendors, Wedding Wire’s vendors, and my go-to site for all things PSU Weddings: Nittany Weddings. I ended up with a list of about 5 cake bakers in the area. From reading Weddingbee, I knew that cakes could be costly. Mainly, I knew that I was looking at a per person charge - fondant>butter cream, that special decorations would be extra, and to watch out for delivery charges. After seeing some portfolios and making a few phone calls, we narrowed it down to our top two and set up some meetings. We loved both vendors, but in the end, one proved to be a little less expensive, a lot more flexible, and just generally awesome all around.

The Flowers - Number one: I. Did. My. Research. And I would recommend it to any other bride! If you want flowers (I know I do), but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg, you need to know if what you plan to ask for is expensive or not! I started here to get an idea of what flowers are in season when. Then, I looked at wholesale sites like this and this (mainly because in the beginning I thought I would DIY our bouquets) to get a feel for what flowers are more expensive vs. less expensive - or as I like to think in wedding planning - what will give us the most bang for our buck. Armed with this information and some (tons) of inspiration photos, we headed to vendor meetings. We were supposed to meet with all 3 of the downtown florists (within blocks our of venues), but one canceled at the last minute, so then there were two. I told both florists the same story: I painted them the picture of what I wanted, showed them the photos, and even tried to wow them with my new-found floral knowledge. One of them told me he didn’t like the idea of tall centerpieces. At. All. He also said that my flower choices were “some of the most expensive,” and offered carnations as a reasonable alternative (they aren’t). Luckily, our chosen flower vendor owns her own greenhouse which cuts costs SIGNIFICANTLY, and she applauded my efforts for finding very price-friendly flower options, while also loving my decor ideas instead of shooting them down.

The Dress - The Knot was my lifeline on this one. Their handy “Search by $” feature? Yeah. Pretty much my best friend. I started at “one $”. I noted all of the dresses that I liked and their designers. Same for the “two $” dresses (wasn’t going higher than $$ for the dress). Once I had my list of designers, I visited each of their sites and found the boutiques in my area that carried their lines. Then I cross-referenced each designer’s list of boutiques to find the stores where I would have the most designers to choose from. During my shopping experiences, it was great to be able to walk in and say things like, “I really like Jasmine and Mikaella gowns” right off the bat. This also kept me from getting into any gowns that were way out of budget! It ended up working out wonderfully, and I got my dream dress at a fantastic price!

The Photog - This was time consuming and difficult, but very, very worth it in the end. Again, I used Nittany Weddings, as well as the Wedding Photojournalist Association for starters. I ended up with a list of about 30 photographers - some local and some out of the surrounding major cities - Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore/DC. One afternoon, I painstakingly (who am I kidding, I love wedding photography :), visited each photographer’s site and looked through the majority of their galleries. I made an Excel spreadsheet that included things such as: First Impression, Likes, Dislikes, Bonuses (for things like E-Session included and Boudoir Available), Location, and Cost, and I filled it in as I went. A lot of sites did not explicitly list costs, so once I had reviewed all the portfolios, I emailed the top ten to get pricing information if I didn’t already have it. Once I had all of the information, I was able to narrow it down to the top 5. This is when I brought Mr. Burger, Cheeseburger Mom, and Cheeseburger Mom in Law into the mix (come on, like anyone is crazy enough to look at 30 photographers’ work besides me?). They let me know their preferences, and I sent out some feeler emails on behalf of our wedding bunch. After quite a bit of communication with one photographer in particular, I just knew she was “the one”. I can’t wait to share her amazing work with all of you!

Aside from these tips, I am DIYing as much as possible within reason. Burger and I pay for little things here and there, but most of the big ticket items are graciously being handled by our parents - the most amazing people. Burger and I try to keep things in monetary perspective, and I think our collective parents appreciate that… although Cheeseburger Mom knows that my occasional wedding spending sprees can get ridiculous, but she has been wonderful about letting me get them out of my system without strangling me. Thanks, Mom!

How did you deal with creating a budget? Is anyone else flying blindly without a set-in-stone budget?