Please Help!!!

lfanning08

Okay. I am having a really hard time making up my mind and I am hoping that maybe someone on here can help me. My husband and I were married on March 20th of this year. We had a very small (20 people) wedding. Most of our family and friends were not invited. This wedding was planned in 3 weeks. We have been talking about having a vow renewal ceremony and reception for our 1 year anniversary. At this moment I can not even think about having another ceremony. I am thinking that maybe we should just have a reception and no ceremony. I think it would save us money and we might enjoy it a little more. We would invite all our family and do the whole reception thing (dj, cake, photographer, semi-formal). I have a budget of about $5000. We would end up spending less that this if we only do the reception. I don’t know what to do….PLEASE HELP

bluebook

How much do you really want to spend and how many people are you planning to invite?  Also, do you have a place in mind (like a private home or something) where you are thinking of having it?  And what would you like this money to cover (you mention DJ, food, drink, anything else?)?

That would help us help you.  My first thought is that the "ceremony" part won't really cost you much, especially if you can do it at the same time, it's really the food, drink and DJ that will eat up your whole budget. And if you want a professional photographer you're already talking a big chunk of your 5k.  Before deciding it might help to run some numbers.

Jeni10csc

Dalie gave great advice above!!! In addition, I don't think you would really need to have a ceremony (although this will be a small small amount of money) unless you want your guests to see you walk down the aisle and saying vows.  You can just have a reception party but that's the expensive part. 

But I agree that more details will help us help you!

starandstephen

I think a reception rather another ceremony is better. Good Luck.

lfanning08

We are keeping the amount of people at about 100 with a budget of $5000. I would really like to spend less than that if possible. The place that I wanted to use is very expensive and out of my budget. I am thinking baout maybe a hotel banquet room. There is a really nice hotel on the beach with a beautiful banquet room. I don't know the price right now.
In the reception we will go all out and have everything that a normal reception would have. I just don;t know if I want to have the ceremony again,

bluebook

Honestly $5k for a 100 person reception is going to be really hard to do even if the place and your chairs/tables/etc. was free.  You're talking $50 per person and that needs to include food, drink, TAXES and other fees (around 25%) as well as any decorations, and somewhere in there the DJ cost.

If you really want to spend $5k or less for a party for 100 people (which is essentially what the reception is, a party), I'd have it at a bar / club /restaurant on an "off day" and pay for the drinks as well as passed hors d'ouvres and hors d'ouvres display.

I know it must suck to hear this, but I would go and just investigate the cost of things for this kind of stuff and see if you can find something to your liking for that budget. I originally wanted to spend less than $15k for a reception for 150 people (so $100 per person) and I couldn't find anything for that that was a traditional "sit down" type thing in the evening.

Lunch-time might also be a good thing to try at places too, like I think the Rusty Pelican has a 5k lunch time minimum on some days, but again that doesn't include decorations or a DJ and of course, with 100 people and their food budget you might go over 5k in a second.

Good luck and please continue to post cuz the ladies here are super helpful and helped me save a ton on my own wedding (even though in the end it was double what I wanted to pay, it was all worth it