Weddingbee Blog

The average cost of a wedding is nearing $25,000. My mind was blown when I first heard this figure—especially since my average yearly income for the first six years after I graduated from college was considerably lower than this number. (Womp womp, graduate-school stipends.) I had no idea that weddings could cost that much. And, given that cost, I certainly had no idea how I was going to be able to afford one! As I talk to more people and read more posts on the Boards, I realize how common these feelings are.

Yesterday, I read an article online entitled “Three Ways to Fund a Wedding.” The author, Cathie Gandel, describes the three ways in which different people funded their weddings: selling old clothes and possessions, tapping into retirement savings***, and working extra shifts. That last way really resonated with me. In order to help fund our wedding, I have been keeping myself busy by taking additional hours at work.

Teacher stare-down (a joke photo, but I bet I have made this face in class)

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I have explained how important it was to me to get pricing information from photographers. But pricing wasn’t the only thing I needed to know before signing a contract. In order to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything critical, I looked up some sample questions online. My mind has a tendency to go blank when I am excited, and I didn’t want to book someone just because they were friendly. Don’t get me wrong, I want our  photographer to be friendly, but there are some other things I am hoping for as well.

I found many lists of recommended questions, including these from Real Simple, iVillage, and About.com. From these, I did some cutting and pasting, eliminating questions not necessarily because they weren’t important but because I knew they were not relevant for me (let’s be honest, I will read your weddingwire.com reviews, but I am not going to be calling former brides—have I mentioned my phobia of talking to strangers on the phone?). I also eliminated questions that I could determine the answers to by exploring their website.

After this editing, these questions remained top priority for me:
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Then tell me your prices!

In case my other posts have not already adamantly expressed this, I am a big fan of excessive online research, particularly when it comes to things for our wedding. As I did my searching for a photographer, I found one thing to be quite frustrating: secret prices.

Some photographers’ websites listed their prices right there under an “investment” tab (such a pleasant title for something so nitty-gritty). I loved when this was the case. Other websites had an email or contact form to inquire about the cost. Most of these led to a quick email response that included the necessary information. I ended up with a very crowded inbox during my photography search, but I was OK with this as well.

Then there were some who responded to my inquiry by inviting me to set up an appointment to discuss packages and see their work. Not that I don’t love meeting new people, but making an appointment with a photographer whose prices may not be even close to within our budget was not super appealing to me. I understand that not all photographers have clear-cut packages, so I was not expecting a price quote down to the cent, but I was looking for a general price range so I could know if we were on the same page, or even reading the same book, for that matter.

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Guess what? You’re all a bunch of ESP bees. Seriously!

See, earlier today I got an email from a friend’s MOH reminding me that I still owed my share of the bridal shower fund, which is ultimately being paid for by her and us five other bridesmaids. I made a mental note, then did what any good employbee does during their last few minutes of downtime and checked the Weddingbee blog and boards. Obviously.

Lo and behold, a post titled Average Cost of Being a Bridesmaid?? was up towards the top and I clicked my way right over. Seeing as my friend’s upcoming wedding will be the first one I’ll be a bridesmaid in (unless you count my mom’s or that time I was a flower girl in 2nd grade), I was incredibly intrigued by everyone’s response to the question. I already knew that, from my current experience, costs can add up pretty fast.

Running Elly kicked off the thread by mentioning an article that stated that the average cost of a being a bridesmaid is somewhere around the $1700 mark. My first reaction was “aw heck no” but then…I started thinking about my current and upcoming costs for this wedding I am going to be in. I’m already up to $525, and that just covers dress and bridal shower. Oh dear.

Jeannine @ Small Chic soon posted a fantabulous chart that backed up the $1700 price point that I must share with you:
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Well, obviously.

But they cost, like, A LOT of money. I had this notion when Mr. Foxy and I first got engaged that we could do a wedding for 10k or under, plain and simple. Since it will be entirely self-funded (aside from Foxy Mama buying my dress), it’s actually pretty crucial that we keep costs to a minimum. Then I started researching and reading articles. Many venues charge up to $5,000 just for a booking fee, without anything included. Catering is another $5,000+, with many places asking for a $7-10,000 minimum of food and beverage. Then there’s DJ, cake, photographer, videographer, dresses, favors, stationery, etc. Learning about all of this was really overwhelming for me, especially when a close friend of mine revealed that her catering/beverage budget alone is $20,000 - twice our entire budget. Gulp. Then I checked out costofwedding.com, where they reported that the average cost of a wedding in the United States is $19,581. For the area of Maryland that we live in, it’s more like between $20,625 and $34,375.

So…more than $10,000.

halp.

Well then. It looks like I just got schooled.
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I thank Bob Marley for my title, for one of the best songs ever, and for our budget mantra. The budget is a very sticky situation for the Honeys, as it is for most couples planning/buying/saving for their wedding. We have set a rough budget that we don’t want to go over, which is about a quarter less than the average wedding cost in our area. While we are I am comfortable with that number, I typically say we don’t have a budget. Is our budget limitless? The exact opposite, actually. We don’t have a budget because we simply don’t have the money. It’s like we are constantly adding to the account, breaking it, and then fixing it and starting all over. 

Image Source

We have three parties contributing to our big day; my parents, Mr. Honey’s dad, and us. We all contribute when we can, but it’s that ’when we can’ part that gets tough. My parents work their butts off to pay their bills each month and unfortunately sometimes there isn’t excess.
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The wedding is less than a week away, and I don’t want to freak out or stress or worry or complain. Instead, I want to focus on some of the things that make me happy, namely those wedding-related items Mr. Parasol and I deemed “must-haves.” We may have had to cut quite a few things we wanted for our wedding, but by scaling back in other areas, Mr. Parasol and I were able to splurge on those few “gotta have” items we really, really wanted.

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At first I wasn’t sure I was even going to write this post. I would hate for anyone who stumbled across our budget to think that all destination weddings have similar costs. I am not going to lie, we splurged on a few things we really wanted. So please take our budget with a grain of salt.

Now for the breakdown. Originally our budget was $10k but as we went along, like most couples, we found a few things here and there that we decided to splurge a bit more on than originally planned (*cough* my dress *cough*). Eventually we settled on a $15k budget which to this day I am really happy with. Compared to the $28k it would have cost us back here in Michigan, Mr. Meerkat and I both felt we got a lot of bang for our buck.

Del Sol Photography

Mrs. Meerkat’s Attire - $1624
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Not that kind of role-playing, my fellow creepers. Budget role-playing.

Mr. Warbler and I are lazy by nature. So it’s no surprise that we’ve never really sat down and made an official budget. I found a sample budget in a wedding-planning book and adjusted it according to what I thought we should spend on vendors, and Mr. Warbler basically said, “That sounds good.”

The one thing we did agree on was that we didn’t want to start our marriage off in debt and that we would try to stick to the budget as closely as possible. For a while we were doing pretty well: I would fall in love with something we couldn’t afford, and Mr. Warbs would gently remind me of the budget. We had a nice good cop/bad cop situation working for us.

Then something began to change. Mr. Warbs started giving in. Out of nowhere we switched roles. “Remember the budget” turned into “Well, we’re only getting married once.” And instead of reminding him of the budget I said, “OK!” We had never really considered a videographer before, but after I fell in love with my boss’s wedding video, I felt like we had to have one, too. But, the videographer was too expensive so I was ready to let it go. Mr. Warbs’s “We’re only getting married once” mantra kicked in, and he decided there was no reason we couldn’t up the budget a bit to include the videographer, a photo booth, and a string quartet.

Jessica + Non :: Orange County, CA - 6.5.10 from Lighthouse Studios on Vimeo

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Let’s talk numbers, shall we? As a financial operations analyst, numbers are actually my friend. Give me some spreadsheets and I’m a happy camper.

You may remember that we extended our engagement into a 25 month period in order to save up enough money for the wedding that we wanted to have. We were fortunate to receive some financial help from my parents, and Mr. E and I paid the other 65%. I’m going to be very honest with you all—we ended up spending a pretty penny on the wedding. There were splurges that were not needed, but totally wanted. We ended up going over budget, (but I’m throwing in everything I can possibly think of) so here’s how it breaks down. It’s a little long, but I added pictures to help

Guests: 120

Original Budget: $35,000

Venue: The Tribute Golf Club, The Colony TX

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Every bride should know that it’s very important to have your priorities in mind when figuring out where the money for your budget will go. I knew this. I just didn’t know our priorities weren’t so set in stone.

At first, our priorities were:

1. Food
2. Flowers
3. Clothes
4. Everything else in no particular order.

But then… I realized every venue we were even remotely interested in made their own food. So, finding the perfect caterer to fill all our wedding culinary dreams wasn’t going to happen. I also realized that I really love roses and wasn’t very interested in much else. Variety was overrated (at least for now).

Also, choosing the clothes for the wedding party was a relatively simple process that didn’t involve more than one store visit to two stores for each group of people getting clothed. And since each clothing item came in under budget, we had to reconfigure our budget priorities.
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You know the word I’m referring to.

B-U-D-G-E-T

Oh, how I loathe that word. It knows just how to rain on my happy little wedding planning parade every time. It’s also a word that certain people don’t seem to understand. And by certain people, I mean just about everyone (including myself sometimes).

For Mama Ticket, it’s wanting to do as little set up for the wedding as humanly possible and not always comprehending that paying someone to do set up isn’t in our budget.

For Daddy Ticket it’s constantly reminding Mama Ticket and me that we have a budget to stick to.

For Mr. Ticket it’s telling me, “Who cares if it’s in the budget or not. If you want it that badly, get it.” (I love this man but that attitude does not help rein me in at all!)

For WC it’s constantly wanting more money for linens and flowers and decor even when there is NO MORE MONEY, and then making me feel guilty for it not being there (remember, she’s more friend than WC sometimes, and she knows the guilt card works best).

For me it’s…
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I know budgeting can be a touchy subject, but I always found posts crunching the numbers to be useful. It can be difficult to figure out what percentage of your budget should be put toward each thing, and to that, I say choose your priorities. Then, put the major money toward those priorities. Nothing wrong with pretty things, but if you’ve never cared about flowers before, chances are you’re not going to feel good dropping eleventy hundred dollars on them now.

We were very thankful that the bulk of our wedding costs were covered by our parents. There were a few expenses here and there that we ate, but our families were very generous and for that we are extremely grateful.

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As with all things in life, a wedding requires sacrifice. You have this vision of what you want, but nine times out of ten it’s just not possible to make that exact vision come to life. And more often than not, it comes to down money.

Every little aspect of a wedding costs money, from the photography to each stamp on the invitations, and pretty soon it all starts to add up. Few brides and grooms can splurge on everything, so they have to make sacrifices. Sometimes these are easy because it’s something you don’t really care about, but sometimes these sacrifices are really, really hard.

Mr. Parasol and I are no exception, and we have made quite a few wedding sacrifices along the way.

No florist

Image via Chris van Stone

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Man, was I excited to finally get these stupid things in the mail. Honestly, what started as a labor of love grew into a labor of annoyance. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad, but I was behind schedule with them and that always frustrates me. Plus, we kept adding more people, and overall, it was driving me crazy. But I’m happy with them. They’re cute and simple. I think Rainbow Brite would be proud of my use of color, but they don’t look completely childish. I think I achieved a nice balance.

So, here’s the outside. I did a completely simple wrap-around since the invitation is designed to be pretty simple. I didn’t put a stamp on this because I’m obviously not really mailing this to Awesome, YA, but we used the dolphin stamp:
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