Top 3 Splurges? 💰

1. Photographer/Videographer: We picked the 12 hour coverage package which included a same day edit. 2 photographers, 2 video people, and 1 editor on site.

2. Reception: The food was probably the priciest as it included a cocktail hour with hor d'oeurves, a full on buffet with alcohol all night and dessert buffet.

3. Cake: Was not expecting to get a cake, but ended up getting one to serve for all 300 guests.

Food, booze, and photographer!

We also sat down and picked what we thought was our priority vendor. I said photographer and he said DJ so we decided that these would get a higher budget than the other vendors.

We both agreed what we thought was a reasonable price for the a venue and tried to find a venue that had a very inclusive package within the price range we decided on (and found for cheaper!).

We both picked what our top priorities were in terms of our wedding and made sure to prioritize them in the budget. Our splurges are:

1. Venues - This was FHs highest pick, specifically the ceremony venue. He wanted something with a view which made it very pricey. We're in love with our picks though, so no regrets!

2. Photographer - My highest pick. I love nice photographs and wanted to have something beautiful to look back on for our special day.

3. Food - We went with an extra meat option and will probably do tacos from our favourite taco place as our midnight snack. Both of us really wanted the wedding to be a great time for our guests so having good food was important to both of us!

Food! We had amazing food. Venue. We wanted one that needed minimal decor. And photographry. Those pictures will last a lifetime!

We went a bit high on the consumables - added on the prime rib option to our buffet, and paid a ridiculous mark up for the golf course to bring in a sushi platter and a really good bottle of scotch (mark ups were in the neighbourhood of 300%!)

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Absolutely! The more the merrier

We have a friend that we rent a boat from every year, so we got a smoking deal on it. People will remember it as an experience, which I think is totally worth the extra money.

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Can I come to your wedding?! Haha.

That sounds amazing, I am sure your guests will love that.

What a thoughtful thing to do.

Dinner Catering: We wanted our guests to really enjoy their meals. FH and I are pretty picky. I wouldn't say total foodies... as we still will enjoy chicken tenders and fries and etc.. But our standards when it comes to a what we classify as a nice restaurant etc... are a little higher than most of our friends and family.

Entertainment: Once again we wanted our guests to have a great time. We spent a little more on our DJ package, have a photo booth for 8 hours, and have a bunch of lawn games and oversized board games. (Giant connect 4, Giant Jenga etc...)

Hotel: We splurged and got really nice suites for the night before, morning of, and the night of obviously. We have a two floor suite for the bridal party to prep in, and stay in the night before. We also have the jacuzzi suite for us the night of, and the groom and groomsmen will be getting ready in it the morning of as well. The only space we had available (FH's Parents) that would have accommodated a group to get ready is 40 minutes out of town. So we wanted something close, and that had enough room, and would look nice for getting ready photos.

Other areas were important like photography, cake, dress.... but I actually found wonderful options in our price range and below what the average cost is, so I didn't have to splurge at all!

View quoted message The photobooth bus was so cool at the bridal
show!

I absolutely loved it but we didn't have have room at the venue so we just got the indoor booth!

We’ve been pretty good within budget
but the most expensive for us are our
venue and food
i would add my dress here but it’s being gifted by my employer so thankfully I don’t have to worry about it. One of the best gifts for my wedding

Photography

Entertainment (photo booth bus)

venue

1. Venue - we absolutely fell I love with our venue, it was only $500 more than what we wanted to spend so we figured why not.
2. Photographer - photography is one of the most important parts to me so I didn't mind spending a bit more for this.
3. Florist - I never thought I'd spend as much as we are on flowers, but I personally don't like the look of fake flowers for bouquets so that was not going to happen. At the end of the day we were okay spending the money.

1. Photography

2. Food

3. Bar

We've been pretty savvy about almost everything except...

1. Photography/videography - I went with the highest package, because the memories are really important to me, and I want

2. My dress - oh god, I went so over budget with this one. It's absolutely hideous and I'm not even sure I like it that much, but I know my FH will like it, so what the heck.

3. My veil - originally I wasn't even supposed to have to factor this is, because my MOH was supposed to lend me hers... then things happened and I ended up buying my own. For WAY too much money. But I love it, so it's worth it

1. Venue/catering - We wanted top notch food and the reviews for our venue all say it's outstanding so we were willing to go a little extra for it. It's not an outrageous price but still the biggest of anything else by a long shot.

2. Photography - I'm friends with our photographer's assistant and their work is excellent so we were willing to pay what we needed (within reason) to get them.

3. Videography - Having a videographer period.

1. Our venue
2. Catering
3. Photographer

1. Guest Count: We couldn't decide where it was appropriate to cut family and knew in the end we wanted them all there. Having a smaller guest count could have changed our entire wedding plans so to us it was a must but also a splurge.

2. Videographer: Originally decided against hiring one for financial reasons and we were completely okay with that. However I have a friend who is in the business and I love the videos he has shared and so I convinced my FH we needed to hire him too.

3. Shoes: Sort of lol. I was planning on wearing a pair of cowboy boots I own that are in mint condition (as I have been saving them for the wedding day) however, decided against them as it is going to be hot in June. Instead I bought a new pair of white Birkenstock sandals that will feel amazing all day - yes, I have been breaking them in. To me this was a splurge because it wasn't necessary and we hadn't budgeted for it... (:

1. Photography

2. Catering

3. Venue

1. Honeymoon for sure, it’s our first out of Canada trip

2. Venue is very important, but since there is no charge if we have a set amount of people, food is the more expensive one

3. Unsure about the third one since we haven’t made many down payments yet

Our welcome packages, surprisingly.

90% of the people attending our wedding have never been to Cozumel, so we are including a catamaran/ snorkeling/ diving excursion in our welcome package for everyone.

Aside from that, we've been under budget on everything!

-Venue

- Bar staff and Alcohol

-Dress

1 - food and beverage
2 - photography
3 - dress and alterations

1) Photography; I feel like this is something that needs to be splurged on. My FH an I being photographers know what it's like. It takes a lot of practice, time, patience. And we want to have good quality photos to last us a lifetime. I knew it was going to be a big expense, but so worth it.

2) Venue; The venue itself was not too expensive, but we get it from Sunday to Tuesday. It is a beautiful location for all of our guests to enjoy. They are all out of town and wanted to make it a special trip for everyone.

3) Dress; I underestimated the price of dresses. I found my absolute dream dress and was stressing about how much it cost. Luckily, my dad said he would pay for it

Venue was the most expensive and biggest splurge! We knew it would be expensive but it was shocking still! It’ll be worth it, absolutely gorgeous golf course.

photography was second biggest splurge! It’s the venues preferred photographer, they do great work and I’m looking forward to working with them.

Third will be my FHs and GMs suits. Both will be more expensive than my wedding dress if you can believe it 😂😂. They’re custom but they’ll be awesome as well.

DJ : Just having one. My FH wanted to DIY the music and I veto'd it right away. It was still cheaper than the average DJ service, but still a splurge in my FH's eyes.

My Dress : I didn't want a typical bridal gown and didn't want to spend more than $500 on it. My FH veto'd THAT right away hahaha telling me I needed to get something special for our day. So yeah, I spent 3x my initial budget for it and am super happy with it!

TBD : We're looking into add'l bar options (1-2 hour toonie bar or something similar) for the cocktail hour.

For us, we managed to keep everything except the booze under budget, so I can't really say I 'splurged' on any thing, but the most important items for us were:

1. The DJ - we wanted someone who would continue to play after midnight or 1 am, without a ridiculous hourly charge. If the party was still going, we didn't want to cut it short.

2. Photography - we went right up to our maximum budget on this but it was important to us to find someone we clicked with and who could capture our personalities. We hit the jackpot!

3. Candy table - Our favour is our candy table, and it will come in somewhere around 700$, haha. For 180 people, we have 1200 mini chocolate bars and about 150 pounds of gummy candy! We literally want kids, and adults, to lose their minds over it.

1. Videography - just having it in general

2. Venue - it's a bit more than what we wanted to spend (like 1/4 of our budget), but we have it for the whole weekend and it's EXACTLY what we want

3. TBD - we haven't really splurged much, my parents paid for my dress, the food is about the same price as our venue which is reasonable, booze is reasonable too... I mean... we planned pretty good so right now there are only 2 things.

1. Photography

This one was surprisingly expensive but I didn't want to risk it so I went with a photographer that did my cousins wedding.

2. Flowers

When we began planning our wedding, one of the things I absolutely had to have was flowers, and we're definitely going to have them from a florists that does incredible work!

3. Honeymoon

FH wants to go away for 2 weeks and I want all-inclusive. We both want to go to Aruba (no hurricane risk), so our honeymoon is costing us more than we anticipated.

1. My shoes: I wasn't looking to spend as much as I did, but after seeing my shoes on Pinterest, I decided it was worth it!

2. Photography: I didn't realize how pricey it was going to be, but I definitely wanted good photography so this was more of a budget re-work lol

3. My dress: same lines of shoes, it was slightly over budget but I fell in love lol.