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May 2012 Weddings
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Did you go over budget?

tdmaustdmaus
100 Comments
in May 2012 Weddings
Now that the first May brides are getting married this weekend... did your wedding planning go as planned? Did you go over budget? Under budget? I'm just curious...

In my case, we paid everything ourself, but we didnt had an exact number for our budget, but we knew the range we wanted everything to be... e.g.
1. we wanted 80-100 guests (looks like we will have around 85 guests now)
2. we wanted 10K as our max for our reception (looks like we will be around 9-10K for ours)
3. honeymoon we went over by around $400 from our original budget of 5K
4. wedding dress + alteration was under the budget (paid $650 for both for my dress)
5. i paid for the mother-of-the-bride dress and that was over the budget (wanted to pay $200 max, but ended up paying more than $400, but I couldnt say "No" to my mom... hahaa)

Those are the biggest payments we had...besides photographer and DJ (both on the cheaper side than what the norm is, too)

What about you?
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Re: Did you go over budget?

  • S0095042S0095042 member
    500 Comments
    edited April 2012
    Our wedding is not this weekend but next weekend (the 11th). My parents paid for the wedding, out of their budget we only went a little over (like $200) HOWEVER that does not include what the FI and I put into the wedding (including replacing a photographer and loosing over 2k -- but atleast we didn't have to pay the full contract). So over all the FI and I spent more then we originally intended HOWEVER we're still in a good position.

    But I'm sure we'll spend more on the honeymoon then we intend to do. lol. Everything is booked and paid for (including the excursions) but who knows with souvenirs and drinks. lol.
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  • FutureMrsW9FutureMrsW9
    100 Comments
    edited April 2012
    We didn't really have a budget, but we DEF spent a lot more money on miscellaneous little things that I thought we would.  We ended up with about 50 less people that we were originally anticipating, so that helped a lot.  I think the biggest thing we went "over" on is our honeymoon - I was anticipating about $5k, but we're going to end up spending over $10k lol.  Oh well, it'll be the time of our lives!!!!!  I also spent WAY too much money on my shoes - but it's my own fault for being so indecisive.  I should have just bought Jimmy Choos from the beginning because after the 6 other pairs I bought I ended up spending more than one pair of JCs is worth lol.  But I do have two pairs of Kate Spades that I'm going to end up wearing the day-of so I'm super excited - I LOVE Kate!
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  • geojam224geojam224
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    I went so far over budget it makes me sick.  My parents just kept adding to the guest list and insisted because "they were paying for it".  Not really, they just gave me money and didn't ask how much things cost.  I'm so jealous of brides like you that say "we went over by about $400".  Good gravy! That's not over budget! Kudos!
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  • LDW0225LDW0225
    100 Comments
    We didn't have a set budget either... Just a general number. We wanted to keep it at 150 people & 20K including the HM. We were (barely) able to do both- but we did it! We're not until the 19th, but everything is set as far as money we still owe. We spent a little bit more that we wanted to on the HM, but oh well we only honeymoon once, and we still came in under budget overall =)
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  • AurorasEnvyAurorasEnvy
    2500 Comments
    We had a very loose budget, more of a ballpark figure I would say.  We spent a little more than ideal, but nothing crazy over.  However, I've been engaged for over a year and a half so I haven't been the best at keeping track of all the money I've spent either!
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  • Melissa51212Melissa51212 member
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    We didn't really set a budget..just try to keep everything as low as a possible and keep saving and figured out from the beginning what we needed. Our guest list ended up at 140 where we budgeted for 175 so we doing really well...which will be nice to use to pay some debt down after the wedding. Also fi has no clothes for the hm so it's nice we have some money for him to get some new things!
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  • Becky&ChrisBecky&Chris
    100 Comments
    We definitely went over budget, but our original budget was about $13k, not including honeymoon.. we are about $1000 over budget with the caterer, which is the big one as far as the reception goes. We're also going over budget for decorations, liquor, and bridesmaids and groomsmen gifts, but not as badly. 

    We also consciously decided to almost double our honeymoon budget. We originally had budgeted about $2000 and figured we'd pick a resort in Mexico because you can get great deals there, but after 4 different couples told us that we should check out the Couples resorts in Jamaica, and after reading (literally) every review on Cheap Caribbean of the resorts in Mexico (and pretty much everywhere else), I could not get Couples Swept Away out of my head. It took awhile, but I finally convinced FI that it would be worth it and he has been gung ho ever since. So we ended up spending about $3600 on our honeymoon.. whoops. 

    Overall, including the honeymoon, we are close to $20k. But I'm not going to beat myself up about it because I know that I have worked really hard to try to keep costs down (our flowers are only costing $450!), and we made certain choices (like choosing a really awesome caterer) to be able to have the event that we want to have. 
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  • firemedicrrfiremedicrr
    500 Comments
    edited April 2012
    We are coming in right at budget, perhaps a bit under. The bit under will be the decrease in rentals and our cake cost due to having less than we anticipated attending. Our catering was a set fee for up to a certain number of people (which is cool because our caterer is also decorating the whole reception and doing all my flowers) so we aren't saving there by having less people. We had a budget of 6k for the entire wedding with an invite list of 150 people (it looks like we're going to end up with about 110). This was difficult- the hardest aspect of the budget really for us was rentals (we are having an outdoor wedding and chose to rent tents in case of crap weather).

    We budgeted 2k for the HM, but it looks like we will be closer to $2700 for that-- but that's fine, because our airfare we paid for with CC points... so our "actual" expense will be at or around what we planned on spending. 
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  • toothpastechicatoothpastechica member
    1000 Comments
    yes and no, technically we are under budget according to what we set out, but theres a lot of the little things that we just paid for out of pocket and havnt counted, so I think we are probably over if we had been keeping track (little things do add up!)

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  • RivieraBoundRivieraBound member
    100 Comments
    I didn't have a real budget either.  I priced out the venue I liked, and multiplied by how many people we were expecting and thought that was a reasonable amount to pay.  When all is said and done though, it is more than I had expected to pay for the entire thing.
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  • LOMLBOATLOMLBOAT
    100 Comments
    We wanted to spend about $25k total on the wedding, but the total costs with HM and all the little incidents will probably add up to around $40k, but we got $18k total from 3 sets of parents, so we are 'under' budget for what we wanted to spend, but wayyyyy over what we originally thought it would cost.

    We used outdated numbers and booked a venue that we fell in love with, but knew would blow our budget.  Luckily we were suprised when our parents stated they were planning on helping us (that was a fun gift!).  So overall we were able to have what we wanted.
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  • bpphoto785bpphoto785 member
    1000 Comments

    We are under in what my parents are contributing but over in what FI & I wanted to spend. Mostly because I really wanted us to pay for our wedding bands and we both ended up with custom designs. How could I say no?! They're our wedding bands!
    My parents, on the other hand, I ended up saving them over $3k.

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  • mookow86mookow86
    1000 Comments
    We are pretty much right on target. We spent a little more than we budgeted on some things, but we are having about 30 fewer people than we anticipated, so it all evens out.
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  • gpapale1gpapale1
    1000 Comments
    We originally budgeted $10k for EVERYTHING, and although we did go over by about $600, I'm happy.  The $600 is what we are paying our DJ (which wasn't supposed to be an expense in the first place), so not bad IMO.
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  • MsAmeera25MsAmeera25 member
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    Our budget doubled....but at this point I don;t even care lol

     

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  • HikerGalHikerGal
    First Comment
    slightly over...
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