What has been your biggest wedding splurge so far?

Food/Venue/Drinks then Video/Photo.
After a lot of research I decided to save big on the small stuff that will end on the bottom of the drawer or the trash... like decor (decided to go simple with balloons and lots of DIY), flowers (apart from my bouquet, everything else will be the fake/real touch flowers, thank you Etsy), invitations (went from $700 to $200 with vistaprint) and Dress (almost paid $1200 in a beautiful gown but did my research and ended up going half the price). Can't wait for August to get here! \o/<o>\o/

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Hi Jillian,

We're getting married at Aquatopia in Ottawa.

It's absolutely beautiful if you're planning to get married in the Ottawa area.

All inclusive menu for the reception, including alcohol. Simply ouch but totally worth it and frees lots of space in my head!

Ceremony venue and photographer. We really wanted a good photographer and the one we loved was over budget, so we bit the bullet and went for it. And I fell in love with our ceremony location as soon as we visited.

View quoted message We are looking also at all inclusive venues! Where is yours going to be? We have yet to decide which one is the best bang for our buck

View quoted message Hahah me too. I feel like im addicted to it now. My fiance thinks im crazy for crying over people i dont even no ha!

View quoted message I cry watching other people’s videos so I’m sure I’ll be a mess watching mine! Lol just seems like such a special keep sake 💕

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It's SO worth it! Videography was a big splurge for me as well 💸

I think our caterer and rentals were the biggest splurge.

Photographer and all of my decor!! So worth it though!

View quoted message Omg SAME! I have 2 dresses and my 1st dress cost double what I had budgeted to spend on both. It's a pnina tornai and once I tried it I looked around more but couldn't live without it. My mom loved it so much for me that she's paying for half, but it still breaks the bank. So worth it though

Venue and photographer! Décor is still a possible large purchase.. but I’m trying to find the best price for the quality I’m looking for.

Ruched chair covers

Venue for sure (food/booze) then photographers.

The venue takes 1/3 of the budget as planned. But my wedding gown was the one I didn't take into consideration. It was almost 3 times above what I budgeted. It took me 1.5 months to decide if I should break my budget and get the gown. In the end, I did. It's a once in a life time thing anyway.

Definitely the venue!

Our venue followed by who we’re thinking of choosing for photography!

View quoted message That’s the same as our venue! All about that no stress life! Haha

We ended up spending $1000 more on photography than we had originally planned! Part of that was not realizing how much it actually costs, and part of it was falling in love with a photographer early on!

Our venue. Omg so much money.

BUT the food is amazing and the place is gorgeous. They also do all the set up/tear down and worrying about the day. It's going to be great.

So far I’d say videography, it’s not something we initially budgeted for, we were just going to have photography and then I decided we HAD to have it lol but I’ve heard it’s worth it so im hoping I won’t have any regrets

Lol oh gosh. Definitely the venue and photography. If venue is to obvious then I’d say wedding bands in its place.

My wedding dress(es). Yep, I've purchased 2 and now I'm not even sure if i'll wear my second one lol

It will be the DJ and Photobooth if we go ahead with that! We were originally going to get family to control the music, but have thought about maybe hiring someone.

I have already decided to scale back the cake otherwise it just might have been that.

I would say the venue. We had to squeeze our budget a little further to make it work, but we have no regrets so far!

So far our venue and ceremony space are both over budget. I’m pretty confident some items are going to be crossed off the list due to this lol.

This one is hard to pick out individually because our venue is all inclusive - so I'm just going to go with the venue overall.

I couldn't be happier with our choice to have our amazing venue and their ability to take care of everything but the first look at the bill was a bit of a heart-stopper. They really do take care of almost all the details - personal coordinator (my fave part), venue, ceremony space, tables & chivari chairs, catering for 120 people, servers & bartenders, flowers & greenery, all stem & dinnerware, set up, takedown & clean up, all alcoholic & non-alcoholic drinks, dj services, hotel suite for the night etc - literally almost everything. We just show up with a minister & photographer.

I don't think it was ever in our plans to have an expensive wedding but as this place breaks everything down into a payment plan we can not only afford it but it will all be paid off by the wedding and going into debt is not needed.

Probably the food... fiance saw prime rib carvery as an add on so we're splurging a bit on that!