How overbudget were you?

arendiva · September 2012

When I first got engaged my plan was to have a $9000 budget (we can afford more but I really didn't want to have to spend more). 2 months into our engagement I'm realizing how unrealistic that was. I've been filling in my knot budget tool as I get price quotes and at present we are just over $14,000 and that isn't including gratuities. Sigh. How overbudget were you by the time you got to your big day?

samantha24p · September 2012

Our budget had gotten a little out of control, nothing to break the bank though.

lovelybride614 · September 2012

We're still planning and we're in the same boat. We are trying to save money in every way. Check out some of the tips on the boards and on the Knot's planning site. Some of them are ok but they do have good tips. It depends on what you want and what you're willing to compromise on. One thing I recommend to ALL brides is check out Michaels, Hobby Lobby & Oriental Trading. We are getting GREAT deals. Coupons at the craft stores are your friends.

MyUserName1 · September 2012

we were 6 dollars over budget. BAM!

That being said, we didn't set our budget until we had done some research as to what was realistic for what we wanted in our area.

StephBeanWed61502 · September 2012

We set our budget, then I looked up wedding budgets online and came up with what percentage of the budget each item should take up. We then adjusted a few categories (example: we didn't need to budget for wedding attire because parents were paying, so we re-allocated that portion of the budget to photography, which was important to us), and then told every vendor we met with what our cap was for their services before we even met with them, so we didn't waste time on or fall in love with anything over-budget. We ended up coming in within a few hundred dollars of our original budget.

lauralaur · September 2012

It really depends on what you want for your wedding. Non-traditional venues (i.e. someone's backyard, a local museum, etc.) are less expensive than a wedding venue, and if you're willing to put the work in, you can find deals or do things yourself to save money. We went over budget on our wedding, but had the money to do so and by about half-way through I didn't have the energy to put into "shopping around" anymore.

arendiva · September 2012

It's funny I don't have expensive tastes. It truly flabbergasts me that it's going to cost 15,000+ (most likely) for me to meet the following criteria

1)Outdoor ceremony (every guest gets a seat)
2)Reception that can carry on to 10-11pm
3)Can bring my own alcohol (my FI is a homebrewer and we want his beer to be present)
4)Affordable hotels close by (we are having open bar all night and don't want guests driving far)

I'm already DIYing my flowers and decorations. The wedding dress i want is less than $500 dollars. I plan on having the simplest cake possible. I do want decent food (so that's $2500 right there) but seriously. my wants don't seem that extravagant.

azdancer8 · September 2012

If you compare what we spent to what my dad offered, we would have been much further under budget. But I did some research ahead of time and gave my dad a lower estimate. I planned for $15,000, but we only spent about $12,500, thanks to DIY and generous ILs.

JoanE2012 · September 2012

We really don't have a budget. That said, we save part of every paycheck and put it into our wedding/honeymoon account. We have enough in there to more than cover our wedding and honeymoon, so I don't feel stressed. We also did lots of research to find a venue and vendors that we thought were reasonable while still providing quality.

Loopyseven · September 2012

We also did some research before setting a budget. Once we'd decided on the venue and style of event, we set a budget for "everything else". We were pretty close. Within $1000 or less I think.

coopsbaby · September 2012

I think we'll go under, but we also did venue research before setting the budget. Then after we decided what to spend, my parents chipped in on stuff and we found deals on dresses for myself and my daughters, so that saved us about $1000. I'm using some of that to splurge on other wedding related things, but not all, so we should come in about $500 under.

ootmother2 · September 2012

We didn't set a budget per se but investigated the pricing one thing at a time. The venue, church and band were set first, over a year in advance.

My daughter would investigate florists, photographers, etc. and I would check what she liked.
It was her wedding so my input was limited to the invitations (formal) and the band. The mob that decided on the reception site included me, MOG, bride to be, groom and FOB. oh, and me

The only hitch came with after my approval of each vendor, my daughter neglected to figure in the state tax (5%) gratuities and delivery charges.

Yeah, we went a bit over but she does have excellent taste

libby2483 · September 2012

When we first got engaged, we planned on spending about $15,000. After doing a bit of research and selecting a venue, we realized that $17,000-$18,000 would be more reasonable and set that as our budget. We ultimately ended up spending $19,000. However, my parents helped us a lot with the wedding and the reason that we went a bit over budget is because there were a few extras that they wanted to add and were comfortable paying for. The budget board has lots of good ideas for cutting costs.

kipnus · September 2012

Our original budget was 10K, but we quickly realized that was unrealistic, so we upped it to 12K. We ended up coming in just under that.

arendiva · September 2012

When I originally set the budget at $9000 it was an arbitrary number that I pulled out of thin air because I naively thought "That's a lot of money I should be able to afford everything I want for that much." Now that we've begun the planning process and are doing research and getting actual price quotes my budget need to adjust to fit reality. For my to be able to stay at $9000 I'd have to do an Ipod instead of a dj, a sheet cake instead of a teired, a reception that would end at 6:30, and no flowers. I'm not sure I'm willing to make those sacrifices when for $15,000 I can rent a bed and breakfast for a whole weekend and have all of those things. It's more than I wanted to spend but a whole weekend vs 4.5 hours makes a compelling arguement for me.

TheSlowskys · September 2012

My parents offered to pay a certain amount of money and I wanted to stick to what they offered and pick up some smaller things. Well that wasn't very realistic for what we were looking for. We are probably double the original budget with us paying about a third overall. They've been involved in the decisions and things like renting a trolley and chiavari chairs were all my mom. I don't think anything about my wedding is that outrageous or a splurge... I thought our money would go a lot further.

TheSlowskys · September 2012

In Response to Re:How overbudget were you?:[QUOTE]It really depends on what you want for your wedding. Nontraditional venues i.e. someone's backyard, a local museum, etc. are less expensive than a wedding venue, and if you're willing to put the work in, you can find deals or do things yourself to save money. We went over budget on our wedding, but had the money to do so and by about halfway through I didn't have the energy to put into quot;shopping aroundquot; anymore. Posted by lauralaur[/QUOTE]

Oh lordy... Disagree with the statement about non traditional locations. I'm sure some people can make it work but this is truly what got me. You pay to rent the space then very often have to rent everything from linens to tables to every last fork. It would have been way cheaper for me to get married at one of the hotels that I originally thought was to pricey.

QueerFemme · September 2012

We wanted to spend about $8K, but then I decided that I wanted some additional things added, and I wanted to pay for the wedding party attire, so, that added another $1k or so to the budget. We ended up around $12K, give or take.

[Deleted User] · September 2012

I was fortunate that my parents offered to pay a great deal of the wedding. They sat us down and told us they would pay "x" amount and then anything over that or anything they deemed too extravagant or extra....like I wanted a photobooth...we would cover. My mom is the one that has gone over the budget but she also keeps saying that they are fine. She figured that they would have to put huge deposits down for the reception but ended up with a payment plan over our longer engagement. I've helped out on some things and we are covering the rehearsal dinner. The way we've worked it out, the wedding will be paid off by the time it actually happens.

I agree with PP though. We are doing our reception at a hotel (besides it having a back story) it was easier because they provided everything and I didn't have to hunt for rentals.

hoffse · September 2012

Our budget started out a good bit bigger than most of the posters here as well, but right now we're running around $10,000 under. We have 6 more months to burn that up if our guest list explodes or something but I just couldn't bring myself to blow my entire budget for one day. We found invitations I love that are thermographed with all the various inserts, etc. for $450 instead of the $3000 I was estimating... we decided to go with tulips only (they are my favorite flower and we're getting married in April), which brought our flower budget down to around $800 for everything, not the $4,000 a florist quoted us. I just couldn't stomach spending more than $1000 on flowers, which are just going to die. We found a band for $2,000 under market that gets great reviews. Our photog was brand new but has a great portfolio so he was also about $2,000 under market. We booked him more than a year out, and his prices have increased by $1,000 since booking. We estimated $50/plate for food, but we're using a country club where my parents are members and they are giving us a great deal on a buffet, closing the dining room for free, and throwing in all the bartenders and staff we could need without charging us for it. So unless we get a bad surprise in the next 6 months, I don't really know how we would burn our slush. I want to throw a good party, but ultiamtely it's really just one day. It's going to fly.

rsanna · September 2012

If we do absolutely everything I have planned, we will be about $700 over budget, however I'm still trimming in places as I get more set in stone prices and we haven't decided whether or not we are actually going to do a rehearsal and dinner. Otherwise, we very likely could end up under budget. Originally my estimate was much higher, but after considering what we could and couldn't afford and we found the venue we wanted, everything else was adjusted with the lower budget and I have fit it around there.

poison+kisses · September 2012

We originally budgeted $15,000 after looking into prices in the city (I originally wanted to spend $10,000 but it wasn't realistic). Surprisingly my parents offered to pay for the reception food, which I did not expect at all, so that was about $5000. Instead of continuing to pay $15,000 like we planned and bumping the total to $20,000, we stuck with our original overall budget of $15,000 and we would be paying $10,000. We're a couple weeks away with a few things left to buy, but nothing major, and we're sitting at around $1,500 under budget. So I'm pleased with that.

AlexaNP · September 2012

Our budget was $10,000, but a lot of our costs we couldn't bring down much because we knew we would have a 400-450 guest list and wanted to cut out other things before we would limit the number of guests. We will be around $500 over budget, because some of my DIY projects ended up costing a little more than I expected, but still way less than if I would not have done DIY!

lcatterton · September 2012

We originally had a $5,000 goal, but that was before I started shopping prices in our area. I realized that was a little low of an estimate for what I wanted. My parents offered to help out with $2,000, so I decided to bump my budget up to $7,000 total. Right now I think we're getting close to that number. I need to find out for sure. Haha. I'm not really stressing about it too much. We're still saving money along the way and we'll have plenty to cover all costs. I don't ever stress about money though. It's not worth it!

manjermj · September 2012

As of right now, it looks like we'll be about $3000 over budget - that's with everyone RSVP-ing "yes". So I'm sure we'll have quite a few "no's" from out of towners and hopefully we'll come out right on budget.

heroeswearbrown · September 2012

My parents allotted us $4k from the get go, and I knew that I wanted to put that towards big purchases. Flowers, venue, food. Mom didn't approve of how much we're spending on the photographer, so FI and I are covering that on our own, but aside from that I didn't much set a budget for how much FI and I would spend. I think when all is said and done we'll wind up a little under $6k total. Our main budget goal is just to not have to ask my folks for more help. I've been DIYing a lot for the wedding, coupons, groupons, and sales have been my best friends. I mean, realistically, we're getting a wedding that should cost closer to $10k for under $6k because of the good deals we've been able to get and money we'll save from having a stellar family who is pitching in a ton.

entropicbeauty · September 2012

My HOPE was to keep it under 10k, in reality we spent 14k....I attempted to work as if our budget was only 10k the whole time though so I was constantly bargain hunting, couldn't avoid the extra costs in the end though.

ChristineNB · September 2012

Originally we set our budget at 10k. However, we ended up spending closer to 12k. It was really little things that we forgot to budget for in the beginning, tips for vendors, vendors fees, etc it really all added up.

tmeyer621 · September 2012

We went into planning hoping we could stay around 15k, but we worked really hard for a year and a half and saved every penny to have our dream wedding. Without rings and the honeymoon, we ended up around 27k. Everything at my wedding was DIY, which you'd think would be less, but some of it was a lot more. For example, I made my centerpeices which ended up being 55 a peice and I could have rented centerpeices for 25. The more expensive DIY list goes on and on, but everything at my wedding was super personalized. I wish we would have stayed closer to our original budget, but all those sacrifices for a year and a half were totally worth it.

ninamyspace · September 2012

We were 5 K over budget. Wanted a 10K wedding, ended up spending 15K

Miss_2010 · September 2012

Initially we said "it'd be great to keep it at $15,000" full well knowing the norm here is about $20,000. So we were jsut wishful thinking.

Ours will be about $20,000. Now depends on what your inclduing. If you throw in honeymoon and wedding bands, then its over that obviously. If you include bands in there, I'd say we're up to around 22 or 23 k

So over our realistic expectation of 20,000, maybe 2-3 k. Over our wishful budget, obviously more, lol. But that was expected anyway.

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