What do you think you "splurged" the most on?

rachel10488

Just wondering what other brides prioritize, money-wise, when it comes to their wedding. Was it the venue, food, photography/video, DJ, dress?

I've been very cost conscious for nearly every aspect of our wedding. Obviously, the most money is going towards the venue/caterer but I still feel like I got a "deal" there because I hunted for a venue that was budget friendly and still made money saving choices like having the wedding on a Sunday and a tad of haggling on a few items.

I would say my splurge item is my dress and veil. Like I said I've been cost conscious when it comes to everything and this was one the the last things to checked off my list so I went over there. I'm happy with my decision

ElisabethJoanne

We're strange. 1 planned splurge was the invitations. We're over-budget on the venue by 50%. We had to double the estimate for the cake once we started talking to local bakers.

But my dress is 1/2 the budgeted price. Catering is also about 1/2 what we budgeted. Photography is 1/3 what we budgeted.

Like I said, we have strange priorities.

snowdaisy822

My biggest splurge of course, was the venue. It's been my dream to get married there since I was a kid. It does include a lot of stuff including our catering, so it was a good deal. My other big splurge was our photographer. With our engagment photo add ons (book, awesome prints, etc), it ended up costing $5700, but worth every penny!

I'm making our invites, so they're ending up only being about $0.80 each for beautiful invitations, so that's saving me a lot of money.

Oh, honeymoon was a huge splurge, but we only get one honeymoon, so it better be amazing! St. Lucia!!!

Ayntastic

Our food is costing way more than I would have imagined, but it will be totally worth it.  Our wedding is being catered by an awesome local restaurant and having a delicious and memorable meal was important to FI and I.  

One big "splurge" that came out of nowhere was chairs!  My chair budget was exactly $0 but when I visited the venue I realized that their chairs were terrible - like not even a cover would perk them up (think rickety, rusty, hard, paint chipping where-the-heck did these come from).  No way can we have our elderly grandparents sitting in death trap chairs.  So, after going back and forth a half a dozen times we decided that we would find $450 for rental chairs.  What a wild splurge.  

amymaysa

I would have to say photographer and honeymoon

stephie25

Besides the venue (which we still got a great deal on because it was November) the only thing we've really "splurged" on was spending an extra $70 on centerpieces by buying a slightly more expensive lantern. Oh, and my wedding band . Since we've come under budget on almost everything my fiance is actually encouraging me to go ahead and buy the Tory Burch flats I've been pining over to change into for dancing. 

Kath1083

Definately the venue........we are also  doing chair rental.  Another splurge was actually our church.  They are charging a lot of money, but my parents got married there and it was my childhood church.   

Also we got a groupon for a photobooth so that was a spur of the moment splurge!

ktsann

Food! We ended up getting ordering a lot more appetizers than what we originally planned, but the food is so good I just couldn't pick a couple!

Also, our honeymoon. We ended up going over by almost $1,000. But, we got a better flight deal this way and we upped our room category!

rachel10488

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-club-boards_november-2012-weddings_what-do-you-think-you-splurged-the-most-on?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20Club%20BoardsForum:46c2f53c-680c-4532-aa96-4cca92890b59Discussion:9e471ad1-8116-407d-8533-3c30f8fe921ePost:bfd65c84-c330-41b5-ac29-c40ffaa864b3">Re: What do you think you "splurged" the most on?</a>:
[QUOTE]My biggest splurge of course, was the venue. It's been my dream to get married there since I was a kid. It does include a lot of stuff including our catering, so it was a good deal. My other big splurge was our photographer. With our engagment photo add ons (book, awesome prints, etc), it ended up costing $5700, but worth every penny! :) I'm making our invites, so they're ending up only being about $0.80 each for beautiful invitations, so that's saving me a lot of money. :) Oh, honeymoon was a huge splurge, but we only get one honeymoon, so it better be amazing! St. Lucia!!! :)
Posted by snowdaisy822[/QUOTE]

I totally forgot about the honeymoon haha we DEFINITELY splurged there too AND we're going to St. Lucia as well!!! It ended up costing us a ton more than I thought bc for some reason I thought it would be cheaper rather than traveling 15-20 hours, but the trip total comes in at about $6000! Holy cow, I freaked out about that for about a day, but adjusted the budget and we'll be fine. Where are you staying, <strong>snowdaisy</strong>? We got a sweet Livingsocial deal for 4 nights at Montego Bay so we made the splurge on Ladera resort because you only honeymoon once so why not stay on the side of a mountain with a 3 wall room looking over awesome views with a private pool in your room?? haha

petitmonstree

Ours would have to be the reception. There is a $5,000 minimum for the room or you get charged another fee and this was actually the cheapest option closest to our ceremony venue (getting married in Vegas).

Then it would have to be the ceremony at $2,800, but that includes the WP, officiant, floral credit of $200, 2 nights stay in one of their hotel rooms (we're staying at Caesars Palace and that's where our wedding is), a photographer for the ceremony and 20 4x6 prints, DVD of the ceremony, food/bevarage credit of $100, champage and champagne flutes, & 1 hour of limousine time. So it's pretty all inclusive.

After the ceremony it would have to be the photographer who is about $900 for 8 hours and rights to print and a DVD of ALL the images.

After those I think the most expensive things left would have to be the DJ, Cake, flowers (we're using artificial flowers for the wedding party) and invites.

tiffanydaniels

i would say pictures, we got photo, video and a photobooth all for around 2200 which is obviously a good chunk but it is ok because we will have those forever! 

Miss_2010

Venue is venue here...so that is a fixed and expected price.

I would say my dress and veil, but I did get about $500 off with the veil for free, go figure.  That came to $2300 but otherwise would have been $2800 without the veil cost.  So I was glad for that!  My parents bought that for me though!  I didn't have a budget for my dress, I put it on, liked it, looked and the price, shrugged my shoulders and said I'll take it. 

snowdaisy822

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-club-boards_november-2012-weddings_what-do-you-think-you-splurged-the-most-on?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20Club%20BoardsForum:46c2f53c-680c-4532-aa96-4cca92890b59Discussion:9e471ad1-8116-407d-8533-3c30f8fe921ePost:baa7cdba-6978-4e64-9b98-f4c6b1707e5a">Re: What do you think you "splurged" the most on?</a>:
[QUOTE]In Response to Re: What do you think you "splurged" the most on? : I totally forgot about the honeymoon haha we DEFINITELY splurged there too AND we're going to St. Lucia as well!!! It ended up costing us a ton more than I thought bc for some reason I thought it would be cheaper rather than traveling 15-20 hours, but the trip total comes in at about $6000! Holy cow, I freaked out about that for about a day, but adjusted the budget and we'll be fine. Where are you staying, snowdaisy ? We got a sweet Livingsocial deal for 4 nights at Montego Bay so we made the splurge on Ladera resort because you only honeymoon once so why not stay on the side of a mountain with a 3 wall room looking over awesome views with a private pool in your room?? haha
Posted by avondale16[/QUOTE]

<div>St. Lucia was totally over the budget, but sooo worth it! We were hoping to use airline miles to travel, but the only miles tickets available were in First class and we didn't have enough miles. :) We'll be staying at a Sandals resort at La Toc. Soooo excited! Although, I just got a notification from them yesterday saying our flights have changed and according to this American Airlines has CANCELED our flight from Miami to St Lucia!!!!!!!! The booking desk isn't open until tomorrow, so I can't find out what happened! Aaah!!!! We better make it down there! :) </div>

librababy

I am a small budget bride so everything has been budget friendly.  My splurge is the food.  Food is important and we want to make sure it's done right so we're having it catered professionally (instead of having a family caterer... which would be ok but we want everything included like plates, glasses, flatware, etc.)

I might end up 'splurging' on a DJ and transportation.  When I say splurge, I mean I might actually book a Dj since we were originally going with a playlist and Fi's cousin.  I didn't budget it so it'll be an extra but I think it'll be worth it.  Also since I changed the ceremony site from my backyard to a church I am thinking of getting transportaion for me and my bm's.  Not a limo though.  We'll see.

kantonik

We've been pretty much on (or under) budget with everything so far. I think our biggest splurges were photographer and honeymoon.
FI used to be a pro-sports photographer, so this element was a big deal to him. We went with a company a few of his photography friends work for. Ended up costing us a bit more than we originally planned, but they gave us such an awesome deal/package, we couldn't resist!
With the honeymoon...we didn't really count this in our budget becuase we knew we would be splurging with this one. We booked a privat island off the coast of Belize, and can not wait!!

lls31

I am very, very cheap when it comes to our wedding.  I have no problem spending money on  clothes or electronics - or even a good meal at a nice restaurant.  However, it absolutely kills me to spend so much on ONE day.  We're cutting corners anywhere we possibly can and I feel like we're still spending a fortune.

Some things I guess you can say we splurged on are:

- My makeup.  I was originally planning on doing my own makeup until I discovered airbrush makeup.  It cost me $50 for my trial and $150 for wedding day makeup.

- My dress.  I told my mom I wanted to spend no more than $200 on a dress.  She ended up buying my dress for me, and it was $650.

- Invitations.  I originally refused to spend a lot of money on something our guests would just throw out.  I hated almost every invitation we found in our colors (brown and green).  I ended up finding invitations on Wedding Paper Divas in the exact shade of brown and the exact shade of green and they were perfect.  We did get them on sale, though.  We paid $175 for 120 invitations and we still need to order 120 response cards which will be about $125.

- Honeymoon.  Although we're just doing an inexpensive cruise, it's still a splurge for us since we were originally planning on not doing one at all.

FI and I both want a house and family ASAP after our wedding, so having money available for those things is a priority over any major splurges for our wedding.

kfras

I would say honeymoon. We are definitely spending more on it than we imagined it would be, but we figure we only get one real honeymoon, and we want all the bells and whistles! We can always take cheap vacations in the future.

Venue is reasonably priced for us (per head) but we ended up having a much larger guest list than I thought. So it will depend on the rsvps we get...

One thing I am dying to splurge on is having a green screen portrait station at the wedding.. as opposed to just a regular photo booth, I want them to print 4x6s for the guests to take home as a favor where they would get to pick their background and all. I really want this, but can't find it for the price I need. Since my parents are paying, I am trying to convince my father it will be worth it since it is entertainment AND favors rolled into one. Hopefully we can get the company to come down on the price a little or find it somewhere else..

Things I will not splurge on are invitations (majority of people are going to throw them away), my dress (I found mine under budget that I absolutely LOVE.. could not imagine spending what some brides do), and ring bearer pillow/flower girl baskets. Looking for cheaper alternatives to what I have already found.

staten2012

My splurges are

1. Photography- I refuse to skimp on my pictures. In my opinion, those are my memories and I want them to be done right, so I upgraded my package on the photos and,
2. Invitations - I have a thing for "paper" )

The dress, flowers, etc....meh, lol. They will not be going over budget

kgrawedding

The biggest splurge is a 1947 rolls royce!  The photography came in a little more than I expected, but FI was being really picky and he is happy with the person we chose.  The flowers are also a little more than I had hoped.  It's killing me to spend that much on something that will die in 12 hours, but the flowers are important to both the mothers and they both offered to pay for them.  The other thing I consider a splurge is the honeymoon, we upgraded to a balcony room, but FI's parents bought the cruise tickets, so it didn't really come out of my budget.

Mademoiselle D

Food will be our biggest splurge and I'm fine with it as long it's good food and avoid ordering take-out  because the food sucks.

AlmostMrsStrong

We managed to snag pretty good deals on all of our vendors. I'd have to say our biggest splurges are our rings and our honeymoon.

We went back to jeweler who made my custom engagement ring. My wedding band will match the engraving on the band of my e-ring and sit flush against it, and FI's wedding band will also match the engraving on top, but at a wider width. They're costing us around 2k, but they are a local jeweler with high quality materials, excellent craftsmanship, and the most wonderful customer service you can ask for. I'm still getting compliments on my e-ring two years later.

I made a seperate post about the honeymoon, so I'l summarize by saying that I had to convince FI that the honeymoon should be a once-in-a-lifetime trip, not just any ordinary vacation. He's finally figured it out.