Money talk: how much are you planning to spend on your wedding?

Our whole Wedding will Cost us 2500.00 $ That includes everything as well. My dress will cost 75$ so I saved a lot there. We didn't see a reason to go over board on extra stuff. We Wanted to use the Kiss Rule. We have only 20 people as guest. Less people , less costs.

Our budget is $10k for everything, including my dress, his suit, venue, photographer, flowers, hair/makeup, etc. We're only having about 40 guests so we will be saving some money on food and drinks, but not as much as you would expect. Our experience is that you tend to have to pay more per person when you have less people - so, yes, it is still less overall, but the per person price is a bit higher.

We are aiming for a top budget of $7000 for a wedding with 150 guests. We will be doing dinner and open bar which will be where majority of our budget goes to. We will likely be paying for it ourselves.

To be determined if we will be successful or not, but my FH's brother had a very similar wedding to what we are planning and they managed to keep it under $5000 so I am hopeful!

$15,000 (not inc. honeymoon) for 100 guests, cocktail ceremony and reception w/ open bar. We planned to pay for it all, but my mom and dad have already started to put money into my account which I'm transfering to my TFSA. It's kinda nice to have the money in case I see anything I really love and just want to buy it - rather than waiting to save.

Hi Juliana! Welcome to the community! It's so amazing that your parents will be able to help you out! What type of venue are you looking at? You should check out Melissa's idea: My reception venue

A few other brides in the area are also looking for suggestions, maybe you could help each other out? Unique wedding reception venues in the gta

We also have a great list in our directory that you can filter by type: Wedding Venues Toronto

Have you already started looking at wedding dresses?

Hi Ely! This is such a great idea! I can't wait to see your DIYs! Where will your wedding take place?

Hello Corina,

Thank you so much for your help. I'll definitely look into it.

I've just started looking for venues and this Saturday I will have my first appointment in a venue located in Toronto (yay! so excited).

Cheers

Hey Juliana! My budget and guest count is similar to yours. I dont know what type of venue you are looking for but we just booked ours with the cambridge butterfly conservatory, it fits into that budget and it is an incredible venue! let me know if you have any questions, Id be happy to talk

Ah this is my goal but is quickly becoming unattainable

That's impressive!

We have about 60 guests and I managed to keep it at 5000$ .

Our budget is around $2500! We'll have 40 guests not including the plus ones that always show up!

We are also having a small wedding. we have 68 guests invited so far but are probably gonna have around 50 once they confirm. our budget is pretty limited. we got an inheritance from my grandmother who passed away and used that towards our rings. we are paying for the wedding ourselves and hoping to stay within a budget or 3000 $. I looked into hiring a wedding planner but we could not afford it. so I hope we don't have to be in debt for the rest of our lives. just can't seem to justify spending more than that on one day event.

We are also having a small wedding. we have 68 guests invited so far but are probably gonna have around 50 once they confirm. our budget is pretty limited. we got an inheritance from my grandmother who passed away and used that towards our rings. we are paying for the wedding ourselves and hoping to stay within a budget or 3000 $.

We negotiated a minimum of 150. So we've got good buffing room. I think when I cut out international guests we are at about 190 and So I think we will be ok. .....I hope

Wow that's very thoughtful of you guys to help pay for your fiance's family's travel! Do you think you'll get most of the 225? We had originally invited about 140 and were hoping for about 100 but ended up with 72 guests which was way less than we were expecting. Are you paying per person for food or do you have a minimum? We had a minimum we had to meet which we thought would work well but losing people didn't really reduce costs. The one plus was that we thought we were going to have to have a cash bar but since we had less people, we were able to provide drinks for everyone. We still didn't end up meeting our minimum by the end of the night!

We're currently in the early stages of planning our wedding and I'm making sure to give us lots of time to shop around. I am aiming for a budget of $5k with a lot of it being DIY and only about 60 guests. We'll be paying for it all ourselves and don't want to put too much money into one day lol. We're aiming for a cute & intimate wedding

Intimate wedding with 60-70 guests and since we aren't doing a honeymoon yet we are happy with the 10k we are about to spend. If we receive any monies it will go back into what we've planned to spend. We have full control of everything and that's the beauty of waiting for so long

We have about 225 guests.. was trying to keep it at around 32k. And it's proving impossible. I don't think we can skim back any more than we have with that amount of people. Food is a very big part of both our cultures so majority of our budget is going towards the meal. Honeymoon and family travelling internationally we didn't include in our budget. We have to wait a year before we go away. My FH family is Romanian and all his family is there. So with his parents here, we need to be around to translate etc... My FH has a special amount put aside for their travel.

Our budget is $9000, we are paying for the wedding ourselves with money from our savings, and includes wedding, travel back home and honeymoon.

Our budget is around 15k-20k for 80-100 people. My parents will help us with some extra cash, but most of it will be paid by us. We live in Toronto and everything is pretty expensive. I am still searching for venues and reasonable prices.

Me and my Fianca are having 150 people at are wedding and we're spending around $15,000

My budget for a wedding with 220 people is set around $38.5K. I'm hoping it will be less So far 90% of what I've completed on my list of to-do is below budget yay!

The wedding will be covered by us, but we are requesting monetary gifts only to help offset some of the cost.

We have received some financial help from my dad and one of my uncles but we didn't have to lose control over anything wedding related for it. We have paid all the deposits and paid off my dress and my rings (engagement and wedding band) ourselves. Now we are just saving up as much money as we can and we got about 1k for Christmas just from family and so that was helpful! For our wedding it will be roughly 22g. Then we have to pay for the honeymoon but we are having a jack and jill to help raise money for that.

I totally feel the stress , my FH and I are paying for everything our selves and it is alot of stress considering we only just bought our first home together in July 2015 and I also have a 9 year old son I finacially take care of on my own ... it is alot to shell out for just one day and alot of people unless they have planned and paid for a wedding dont understand that! it can be quiet frustrating ... our wedding for 130 people is around 25k my fiancee and I have just been paying what we can when we can after paying all our deposits early on... this is why we have had a long engagment ... we have been engaged since December 2015 .. which I have enjoyed having that extra time to get money together to pay for things. now all we have left is our 3 big ticket items which in the next 5 months will be paid for and our wedding will be completely paid for and whatever money we get for wedding gifts my FH and I can use for the honeymoon we so rightly deserve ! I feel a sense of pride almost for doing this all on our own ... it is nice altho this is how I have always been as I became a mom at a young age ... I always have tried to survive and do everything to support myself and my family without help so its a nice feeling .. but the sress has been there the entire time

I would say the wedding cost has been 95% of my FH and I paying for it with little support from my immediate side of the family. We are hoping with the social that we are having in May that we will have a good turn out to cover most of the cost. So far we have been good at paying for all deposits but it's the factor of paying it down that can be rough. We are making sure based on contractual obligations to pay the vendors that require payment in full before the wedding as top priority and pay them off fast and pay most them by the wedding. Whatever we owe after the social take out a line of credit to cover the rest as we will not embrass ourselves. We also made sure to go with what keeps us under budget and chose vendors on price and their service experience. We gave little control to our parents but we make sure we have final say. As for travel aspect it's something that's on hold until after the wedding. We live in house already which is great but we have been sacrificing by not eating out as much to get everything paid off, plus I am looking for extra hours to put money away to pay off everything as much as possible. I know in the end it will be worth.

I hear you, Valerie. Im sorry to hear that this happened to you. I'm not holding out on anyone that has said they will give money to support until I see it as, this stuff happens when it comes to weddings. This happened to me when I was going to school as a person whom I am close to say they will help pay for my education, which never happened and from that point on, I never believe anything that was said until I saw it for myself that they kept their word.

Ah that's so frustrating Valerie. If my parents had money in the first place I feel like they would do something like that also... :/ I feel like weddings can sometimes evoke strange reactions from people, including family.

Things can get very expensive but it depends on what is important to you. Our aim is to keep it around $20K for everything. Just the venue/ceremony + catering/alcohol for us is close to $15k for 80 people.
You can save a lot of money by doing things DIY but again it depends on how 'hands on' you want to be. Things will come together.
If my family wants to help out they can but we are not asking for help specifically. We plan to do this as a couple.

We were very lucky that when we announced our engagement both FH's dad and my parents wanted to give a very sizeable amount of money. It means we gave over some control, but I've kept all sides very much in the loop on all decisions and have taken any of their resquests (like for additional guests we wouldn't have otherwise invited). Thankfully they have both mostly left me to plan as I like since I am keeping costs as low as possible and making A LOT of things myself. I think seeing that I'm not going crazy with their money has helped them to see I am making responsible decisions and just do as I like.

One fall back is that you think your family would never back out on giving you something they promised and after I made decisions on the venue and put down deposits, my parents said they never agreed to give me that money (even after I recapped our entire conversation around it where I confirmed it 3 times). So that has but me in a VERY uncomfortable position as they keep going back and forth on how much they are giving us. It just adds a level of stress I really didn't need hanging over my head, and we have been saving every last penny to try and ensure we have enough to cover the money they may not end up giving us.

So as much as you think it will never happen to you... NEVER count on money you don't have in hand! I know that doesn't really apply to you directly Lindsey, since you are paying for it yourself, but just putting it out there for others as a cautionary tale

Just to get the ball roling:
Right now budget is sitting at 12k. A lot of that is dependent on how much of a discount I can get on the reception venue and food thanks to my MOH. If that doesn't pan out I can see it easily going up to 17k.
Our honeymoon will likely end up costing us about 8-10k.
We are paying for this ourselves and have no desire to rack up debt. The only thing that makes any of the feasible beyond a lot of penny pinching for the next year is a very generous gift I revived last year that I stuck in a TFSA.... for law school. #fail