More or Less?

So far I went a tad over budget! My photography costed double what I had planned. I was able to save with decorations with people I knew and got a lot of it for free. The catering was as planned and venue was as expected. Few things that I saw are changing is when you have a bar at the wedding the liability insurance is going up shortly. This is something I had to add to my budget. I am saving as I am wearing my mom's dress and my FH's grandma is doing all alterations on it as well.

So far I haven't went over budget.
My dj I found at kijiji with promo of no tax, includes live music (@ ceremony and venue), dj, 2 hr photobooth so i got entertainment set. My videographer and photographer is the same company. They have great package of $1250 with unlimited shootings from beginning to the end. Also they don't charge tax. My centerpieces are from kijiji. My favors I got off Facebook wedding group which is a love bird salt and pepper set for $1 each!

But I'm dreading on buying my wedding gown because I know I will go over budget.

We are making our own centerpieces because we are crafty and it's easy to make! This saves tons of cash for us.

The actual venue and food is the biggest expense and just kills the wallet!

View quoted message Thanks Renee!! That's really helpful

View quoted message Check our just 4 you they are 695 for 5 hours! That's for a bus though so depending on the size you need could be cheaper. Found them here on wedding wire the cheapest by far!

We saved a lot on our venue by having it in the winter and choosing buffet style. It's still insanely expensive though so shop around for a good deal. I also got my dress second hand, and bought my veil for $40 off Kijiji!

We also saved on Stationery by only getting invitations from Vistaprint, and letting a free website to do the rest

Also I just checked transportation cost recently, and it's like $800+ to rent a limo in the GTA so watch out for that!

Our biggest save was music, venue, decor and rentals. We shopped around for rentals and found cheaper prices at another company for some items which was nice. We did our own music with an iPod and a sound system so no cost there except our time and we made our centerpieces and some lanterns which we the only real decor. Venue was family property and cost nothing!

We really saved with our venue, it includes so many additional services that we otherwise would have paid for. It was also cheaper then we thought it would be even before we knew everything that was included in the cost.

Since we over budgeted for the venue we had extra money that we put towards the videographer, without this over estimation we wouldn't be having a videographer lol.

As weird as it is, our centerpieces broke our budget the most because I fell in love with vintage (and expensive) lanterns for our centerpieces.

Everything else we had estimated properly for the wedding.

We have heard from a lot of friends and family that splurging on the photographer is most worth it! They either regret not having the photographer there for the whole night, having the photographer start too late, or not having a professional photographer at all. After hearing this we definitely splurged for the photos

Congratulations! Such an exciting time! I am a avid planner and researcher so we have managed to save in many areas!

We have saved in our venue, photographer, save the dates, invites, and decor.

Our venue was only $400!! My MIL has offered to pay for the venue as well as booze. Our photographer is a family friend (still reasonable regardless). For our invites and save the dates we used vistaprint. Before we ordered anything though I requested some samples from vistaprint which also includes coupons to use towards your first purchase. All of my decor has come from these wedding buy and sell pages on Facebook. I can’t even begin to tell you how much we have saved from there!!

The one thing that we have splurged on is transportation and rentals. Each costing around $700. For the rentals I did shop around and found the best deal for the chair covers and sashes I really wanted. For the transportation we decided that the girls and I will be taking the limo to the location for the first look then the groomsmen will join us there.

My FH and I are also paying for everything in cash as well. We are also purchasing things like decor and gifts ahead of time to not have to stress about it closer to the wedding. Etsy is your friend!

Good luck! And enjoy the process! 😊😊

Biggest save for me was the photography. We were looking at a bunch of people, and everything was way over our budget. Last minute, one of my fiance's friends offered to do it, and we fell in love with his photography. Saved us a few thousand dollars.

Our biggest cost was the venue. We went with the more expensive of the two that we were looking at because of the convenience (it is in a hotel for our out-of-town guests). We made sure we could still afford it before splurging on it though, it was just more than what we were originally planning.

Hello Alexandra,

Congratulations on your wedding I bet you're very excited! My fiencè and I are paying for our wedding in cash we promised not to use our master or visa cards which may seem hard at first. Our biggest things we saved on was making our own centerpieces from the end of the season deals at Michaels and friends donating unique baskets. Our Grandfather is making the cake, we have bought all our lights and decore mostly on Amazon as they have great prices and we made our own cedar wishing well for cards. I think the only thing we went over on so far is the dress...dresses I didn't want anything to fancy and set a 500.00 budget on the dress and I ended up getting a 3,000 dollar on clearance for 1,000 and then to make the night more special I got myself a reception dress for 300 dollars. Maybe a waste of money but your the bride you want to feel like a million dollars so if you only restrict yourself to go over on the one thing make sure it's what you want!

The biggest save for me was that we are doing our own centrepieces as well as I’m making my own cake. I diy boutonnière for the grandparents as well.

I guess what is sort of breaking our budget, but we still made it work is that I have large family’s and so we have a lot of guests. We have decided that we are going to upgrade our catering package with our venue to get hors d’eauvres and 2 bottles of wine for every table. So instead of inviting all our friends for dinner it will mainly just be family and friends from out of town. While other friends will just get an invitation for the ceremony and dance.

Where we saved was our photograpjwe and our DJ. For our DJ we booked a year in advance and got a discount. For the photographer we found one that gives full printing rights to all photos and who doesn’t have to mark up his prices for making photo books. So we saved at least 1000 on photography which my fiancé and I can now put towards creating our own book.

Also another thing that may break our our budget is our rings. I am part First Nations and my brother is designing the rings and then they will be custom made and I am assuming it will be expensive.

My biggest save was my wedding dress i had budgeted alot more then what i paid. The most expensive i felt was the video augrapher.

Photography is costing more than I had initially anticipated should things like decor are surprisingly cheaper.

Food and alcohol was the biggest expense. We had to increase our budget slightly to cover that cost; mostly because our venue doesn't offer a cash bar so we have to provide our own alcohol.

Biggest save was flowers. My sister-in-law offered to do flowers for me and she is just charging the cost of flowers. I did not think flowers were going to cost as much as they would have if I went through a florist.

We saved a ton on photography by booking well over a year in advance. So we got her 2017/18 prices! So far our only biggest splurge was the venue, we both fell in love when we saw it online and when we went to see it in person we knew it was the place we were going to get married. It was just a bit over budget but we made it work. No regrets at all!

Food and Beverage is defiantly our biggest cost. I did get a coupon on The Knot that i ended up getting to use that saved me 15% on food and beverage at the Old Mill so that was a huge savings for us.

The limo is also a splurge. Way more expensive than i thought it would be.

I saved on centre pieces by making them myself. I'm using flowers from Michaels, utilizing a number of coupons to bring the cost way down. The vases were 0.99 at Ikea. My tea light holders are free from a family friends left overs from her wedding.

We kept flowers to a minimum. Just the flowers for the wedding party and parents etc. Still expensive though.

At this point for me now, everything just seems expensive.

Photography = my biggest save, as it's a gift from a friend of my FH who runs a photography business.

biggest splurges: catering, my DJ & custom made things from Etsy

View quoted message Yeah I bet! Flowers was definitely one of the things that caught me off guard with how expensive they are! Thankfully I’m not a huge flower person so I’m going quite basic

I bought my bouquet and bridesmaids bouquet on a Facebook buy and sell page. That saved me a lot of money!