Budgets and Venues for Seattle weddings???

ParkerCampbell · February 2011

Hey Seattle Brides,

out of sheer curiousity (and because it always helps)...

What is your budget? Venue? Breakdown so far?

Thanks!!

Amanda

kinmir30 · February 2011

Apparently none of us really feel like disclosing dollar amounts here.......LOL.

How about this.....

Venue: 28% of my budget
Catering: 23% of my budget
Photography: 19% of my budget
Video: 7% of my budget
DJ: 6% of my budget

Those are all the big ticket items in my wedding. All of that added together comes to 83% of my budget. The rest of my budget is lent to flowers, decor, dress, officiant, night-of accomodations, cake, hair and makeup, paper goods and rings. Wow....that's pretty impressive! I only had 17% left and managed to fit alllll that into 17% haha!

Oh......and my venue was only suppoed to be 10% of my budget.....but right before I booked, they hiked the prices.....which really sucked.....but it was THE venue and THE ONLY venue for us.......so we did some rearranging of the budget.

mgoss228 · February 2011

I'm not totally comfortable giving out all the dollar amounts right now, but here is where my "priorities" as far as cost vs. savings lie:

$$$$:
Venue- needed it to be available all day, so more $$$ went to here
Photog- I put as much $$$ as I was able towards this
Invites- I wanted super pretty invites, and I DIY'd them, so it saved some, but not a whole lot.
RD- FILs are paying, but it was a bigger priority item (for FMIL)
Guestlist: 115 people (big-ish for us)
Honeymoon- we are spending a week in Maui, it's our "wedding present" to ourselves.
Officiant- it would be cheaper to have a friend get officiated, but we wanted to hire a professional
DOC- an extra, but necessary, I think
Hair/MUA- another extra.

Save:
Catering- we're serving BBQ, so that helped with costs, and I get to have salmon served (which was a must for me)
Cake- serving cupcakes, saved $$$$ and I've never liked tiered cake, I prefer the frosting/cake ratio in cupcakes too

Music- IPod "DJ"
Flowers- ordering them from a greenhouse in Mount Vernon, DIYing the bouquets, and having non-floral centerpieces.

That's all I can think of right now. Our total budget is between $15,000 and $20,000.... it started out as $10,000, but our parents have helped with some vendors.

dreamwinds · February 2011

I think part of people's reticence in sharing is 1) money is always sticky and 2) the person asking only has 7 posts so it's sort of like telling a stranger all about your financial joys or problems.

Our current budget is broken down in the following way (not including tax and gratuity for food/bev):

Venue: 5% (for ceremony/reception/send off brunch)
Food: 52% (tied to venue though, since we have a minimum food and bev requirement)
Flora/Event Design: 15%
Photography: 18%
Music: 4%
Cake: 2%
Hair & Makeup: 2%
Ceremony/Cocktail hour music: 2%

jennlin · February 2011

my wedding was over a year ago now..so here are my guesses:

ceremony venue 6%
reception venue (incl food and alcohol) 47%
photog 7%
florist 7%
videog 4.5%
cake 1.5%

although i didn't include my dresses in my budget...to me that wasn't "wedding" related...but just something i wore...but if i wanted to include that, i spent $750 on my chinese dress and $800 something on my white dress..about $70 on shoes.

Budgets and Venues for Seattle weddings???

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