hello!
We're planning a September, 2018 wedding on a skinny budget, and I'm looking for some guidance on how to allocate what we have to spend over the cost components to cover. We have a blank-canvas venue and all rentals situated, but everything else to go with $10-12K to spend.
So.... what percentage of that should we plan to spend on catering vs a dj, photog, flowers, etc?
How can we accurately / reasonably budget for catering? For some reason, this is the component I'm struggling to wrap my head around. We are planning an informal cocktail hour and food station or buffet dinner for about 100-120 people, and I know that we'll need to account for serving staff, etc. Our venue allows us to bring in alcohol without buying it through the caterer, and we'll likely do beer, wine and a simple signature cocktail separately, and outside of our $12K total, but we'll need to account for a bartender. What % of a catering quote typically accounts for staff and fixed / incidental / non-food costs? What should catering generally ballpark to? What have you paid, if you don't mind sharing, for something comparable? How much, if at all, were you able to negotiate?
A photographer is my next head-scratcher, and something that I want to really do right. I'd rather have fewer flowers on the day of and gorgeous pictures forever. What should we expect to spend here? How have you saved budget and still ended up with beautiful pictures?
help!
