Yesterday I wrote about my first financial mistake, not contributing to retirement. Today I’m going to talk about probably my second financial mistake. Having an expensive wedding. We spent around $17k on a wedding/honeymoon. I don’t know if I’ve ever done a breakdown for readers, but here it is finally.
- Reception $5335 – included food, minister, cake, cutting cake fee, setup, taxes, service fee, etc
- Photographer $4000
- Wedding Dress/Tuxes/Bridesmaids/alterations – $2000
- Tickets to Hawaii $1500
- Invites $400
- Hair, Makeup and Nails for (bride, moms, bridesmaid) $600
- Wedding Planner $500
- Flowers $400
- Honeymoon $2018 for a week in Europe skiing
- Grand total $16, 752
Ouch. That was an expensive wedding. Cheap honeymoon though. My wedding favors were made by my grandmother. She also did my invites.
The only real budget buster was the photographer. That and of course flying to our wedding. It cost more than our honeymoon tickets which was $500 to Europe.
So how’d we afford it when we weren’t making real money until just before the wedding? Well we had started planning it 2 years out, so we were paying the vendors in stages. We signed contracts and had put deposits down. So we were able to start saving and paying for small things along the way.
Could we have done it cheaper? Definitely. Actually we privately got married the year before at the courthouse. This was for legal reasons. It would have made our families unhappy if we had eloped.
So why didn’t our parents pay? Because it would have given them too much input on our wedding.
But in our cultures, we are given money for the wedding. So I’ll say this much, around $12k of our wedding was paid for from cash gifts. We were not expecting it but it just happened. So most of our wedding was paid for after the fact.
I got $5k from my parents, but apparently they gave that to all their children. My brother had gotten that 8 months previously when he got married, so it was an equal gift. I did not ask for it, it was just given.
But would we do it again? Looking back? My DH says yes. He says it made our families happy. Our wedding was small only 60 people, but 50 of the 60 guests were family. The only friends were in our wedding party and there was about 10 of them.
I don’t know. It was a bad financial decision, but a nice emotional one. I love my pictures and since then since my grandfather has passed I like looking at our pictures together. Actually 4 aunts and uncles have passed since then as well.
So a bad financial decision, but a pretty nice day. In case it wasn’t obvious, I got married in Hawaii because I was born and raised there. I did not pick it for an exotic wedding. Most of my family lives in Hawaii and DH’s family wanted to come.
What did you pay for your wedding? These prices were in 2005 in Hawaii for a reference point of Cost of Living and period in time. Very expensive COLA.
21 responses so far ↓
1 JoeP // Feb 25, 2009 at 9:16 am
That is an expensive wedding. For the price the photographer charged, I hope he included the negatives, or at least full ownership rights to the images.
I think ours ran $6k for 110 people, which had everything you had except the travel costs and wedding planner. Our honeymoon was around $4k IIRC, and that included lots of travel and expensive places.
2 tom // Feb 25, 2009 at 9:31 am
Ours was about $25K total for 150 people including honeymoon. My parents gave us $15K and her parents paid the rest. It was extremely expensive, but both sets of parents are well-off, didn’t have much of a wedding themselves, and wanted to splurge on us. It was an awesome time. We still have people telling us how fun it was.
As long as your photographer was top knotch, who cares about the cost. The one thing we wish we didn’t skimp on was the photographer. We had issues with him and the pictures weren’t very good, but he sort of made up for it in quantity of photos. My sister-in-law had an expensive photographer that took beautiful pictures, well worth the price.
3 LAL // Feb 25, 2009 at 9:57 am
JoeP where did you have your wedding? Mine was mostly done in HCOLA which I think affected the pricing. Hawaii, Southern California, and New England.
So everything was overpriced. If we had gotten married anywhere other than well where we did I think it would have been tons cheaper! But COLA.
And yep I got the negatives for the photos and a huge book and it included engagement photos, etc. It was expensive but awesome. We have blown up photo of our engagement, and our wedding which we get complimented all the time since we hung it in our house.
Honestly it looks like a fantasy. I might post a photo of just the site alone because the day, the weather look so fake from the perfection of the blue sky.
4 Kristy // Feb 25, 2009 at 10:04 am
Our wedding cost roughly $1000. We got married on the beach, there were roughly 75 people there and we did it on the cheap. My wedding dress cost $30. Sandwiches, cake, apps and beer were served at my IL’s beach house, then we all went to the local bar for more drinks. Everyone that was there still says that it was the best wedding they have ever been to.
We skipped the photographer and my husbands girl friends made us a photo album of our day as their gift to us, it is beautiful!
5 JoeP // Feb 25, 2009 at 10:08 am
Upstate NY. Hey, if you’re only getting married once, this kind of spend is worth it!
6 JoeP // Feb 25, 2009 at 10:13 am
I forgot to mention: we put a disposable camera on each table with instructions for the guests to go ahead and take pics of their table mates and other stuff during the reception. I think we had something on the order of 18 cameras with 24 exposures each. I put the ones that turned out into an album and we and our friends have more fun with that album than our wedding album!
7 Angie // Feb 25, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Our wedding was in 1998 in southern CA. My parents spent just shy of 10k for the wedding and we spent 3k for the honeymoon. We had a little over 200 guests (no, we did not know them all, but since my parents paid, they got to make as big of a guest list as they wanted!) and served buffet style. A friend of my dad’s was just starting a catering business, so his gift to us was catering the wedding for only the cost of the food. And it was good food! Our biggest expense was the photographer. We wanted to have lots of pictures to remember the day and the people who were there. We also did disposable cameras on the tables and have pictures of all sorts of family members who have since passed away, as well as great pictures of friends doing goofy things and just enjoying a great party. I can’t say that I would change anything!
8 Amber // Feb 25, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I paid around $1000 for my wedding in 2005 in AR. There were very few guests at the actual ceremony and then we had a slightly larger reception that was just finger food and cake. I was very happy with that decision because it fit my personality and my husband’s.
But I don’t think it’s a bad decision to have a more expensive wedding if that’s what you want. Sure, we should save for retirement and emergencies, but if you have the money then there’s nothing wrong with spending it on something that you’ll enjoy. That’s what it’s there for!
9 Jen // Feb 25, 2009 at 4:33 pm
My wedding cost about 35k in NYC/Long Island. Sometimes the cost makes my head explode, but at the same time, that is low/average for a wedding on Long Island. The reception alone cost 18k and the photographer was about 5k.
At that point, I wasn’t paying attention to money at all. I don’t think I would necessarily call it a mistake though. Everything was paid for before the day and we got about 20k in gifts.
10 cloudy // Feb 25, 2009 at 6:06 pm
LAL, if you don’t mind, where did you get married? And please post a photo of the site!. I’m in the beginning stages of planning a wedding in Hawaii (I live on Oahu). Thanks!
11 Maclover // Feb 25, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Our wedding cost about 20-something K. But like LAL, in our culture, we get cash instead of wedding gifts. We actually made a profit after all was said and done!!!!
Our photographer was one of the more expensive parts, at 6.8K, I believe we felt the money well spent. We got all rights to the photos. The pictures were fabulous.
12 Stacey // Feb 26, 2009 at 11:27 am
Less than $2,000 in NE PA, 2007. We didn’t want a big, fancy wedding, so we just had a casual catered lunch with my (very large) family and a few close friends. About 120 guests. No limo, no open bar, no DJ – just friends and family sharing our special day.
We’ve got friends going through this right now – how much to spend, and what’s important? You do only get married once, so by all means go for what you want – just don’t put it on the credit card, please.
If you can’t afford to save for the wedding, you can’t afford it.
Thanks for the breakdown! Interesting conversation.
13 fengshui // Feb 26, 2009 at 12:51 pm
$4k for a photographer?!? I got mine for $900 and she took GORGEOUS photos, had a MFA degree. Wow…. That is a lot….
14 fengshui // Feb 26, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I also didn’t pay for my bridesmaids dresses, nor did I pay for their hair and make-up. I couldn’t pay for it because the money didn’t exist. No honeymoom either….. Still never went anywhere for the 2.5 years we have been married…..
15 fengshui // Feb 26, 2009 at 12:56 pm
For the $900 I paid for the photographer, I got all of the photos on a CD and the copies in a photobook. I made copies and can post them on FB, etc. They were beautiful pictures. I got lucky. She was just starting out, just finished her masters and was desperate to get started w/ jobs and was a friend of a friend.
17 LivingAlmostLarge // Mar 2, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Thanks and I will try to post it this week maybe. Surreal.
19 SP // Mar 18, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Interesting. I’ve been toying with the destination wedding idea, but I’m concerned about making my guests travel to Hawaii and pay for lodging, etc.
But then again, half of them would be traveling either way, since we are from different areas. But we aren’t a wealthy crowd.
20 LivingAlmostLarge // Mar 18, 2009 at 9:42 pm
My DH’s whole family had to travel internationally, so either way why not make a nice destination? My family mostly is in hawaii but there was a few internationals.
So someone traveling internationally was not going to happen. I decided I wanted it at home. My DH wasn’t going to even try to argue. Even if we had it where we lived, people would be traveling far.
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