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Our Wedding Budget Breakdown: How we did our wedding for under $10,000

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It’s been a few months since B and I got married, and I’m finally finished writing thank you notes and going through all the photos our awesome photographer shot. Now it’s time for the fun part, the wedding budget breakdown!

 

Want more tips on saving money on your wedding? Check out the latest:

budget breakdown wedding

 

It’s been a great couple of months transitioning from an engaged couple to newlyweds – although that transition is definitely more stressful since we’re also moving into our first house together as a married couple (use this new house checklist, it has all the essentials)!

Related: How to Budget for a New House

When we first started talking about marriage, B and I initially wanted a long engagement (about 2 years) so we could save up and pay for the wedding entirely in cash. Unfortunately, life had other plans and my father became very ill less than 9 months later.

We kind of rushed into becoming engaged and sped up our “getting married” timeline, just in case anything happened to my Dad.

Related: 4 Things I’ve Learned Since Becoming Engaged

Our 2-year engagement turned into a 1 year engagement, which was enough time to sock away about 50% of our budget for the wedding. A 1 year engagement is also long enough to lock in some discounts, which we did immediately.

Now that all the invoices have come in and I’ve paid off the last of our wedding debt, I wanted to share with you what our biggest expenses were for our $8,700 wedding – I’d love to hear what your biggest expenses were, or what you expect to spend the most on for your wedding!

Our Wedding Budget Breakdown: The Biggest Expenses

Our biggest wedding expenses were all the “typical” expenses… without some of the typical price tag. We spent:
  • $3,000 on food and drink
  • $1,000 on photography
  • $1,100 for our ceremony location
  • $800 on my dress
  • $800 on our flowers
The best things we bought out of “the big things” list? Food, drinks, and our flowers. We had a 4 course meal which included appetizers and dessert, and everyone was allowed to pick from the menu at the event. This meant we didn’t have to hound anyone to send us their “chicken, beef, fish, vegetarian” request ahead of time, and everyone got to pick what they felt most in the mood for.

 

[Tip: You can display your wedding menu in pretty gold frames to add a bit of interest to your table. Click here to see an example.]

 

We also had an open bar, but we discovered something interesting when we asked for an “open bar.” It turns out even an open bar has to have restrictions, otherwise, people can order the $42 a shot tequila and quickly blow your food/drink budget! For our open bar, we let people order as many drinks as they wanted from an approved list of well and premium drinks.

 

 

Finally, flowers! Oh my gosh, I still get choked up about how beautiful the flowers were. Here’s a peek:
Wedding flowers

I just loved them. They were everything I could have hoped for in flowers: beautiful color, big bouquet, smelled lovely. Just perfect!

But, I had a friend use artificial flowers from Amazon for her centerpieces, and I was amazed at how good they looked too! Here’s what they looked like:

 

 

[Click here to check out these faux centerpieces on Amazon. They are *super* affordable!]

 

 

While photography was (clearly) amazing, the location was beautiful and my dress pretty near perfect, the things I will always remember will be the food, drinks, and flowers. They were well worth every penny.

 

The Little Things Added Up In Our Wedding Budget

For the smaller yet almost as important things, we spent:

 

Cake pops
Look at how cute these were! Since we live in the southwest, we wanted our cake, cupcakes and cake pops (yes we had all three) to reflect where we live, and southwestern cactus was the perfect choice. They were so good, we didn’t have any leftover cake pops and only 5 cupcakes left!

[If you want to make your own cake pops for your wedding, save a ton of time by buying this cake pop maker!]

As for everything else… B’s ring looks amazing, of course, but the officiant and invitations? Hmm. The invitations were lovely and beautiful, but I ordered way too many. When planning your wedding, keep in mind couples: not every person invited needs an invite! Couples get one invite, not one invite per person. Duh!

 

[There are some good wedding invitations on Amazon, you can see them here.]

 

Our officiant was just not good. It turns out, asking around for officiants a year before our wedding was not enough time, because some of the best ones in Phoenix were already taken. Lesson sadly learned! The 20 minute ceremony was one of the most awkward, weirdest ceremonies I have ever seen… and it got to be my ceremony. Oh well, something for the guests to remember! 🙂

 

Getting Married is Spendy, But I Liked It

If you’ve been adding up our expenses, you’ll notice this doesn’t quite add up to $8,700. Truthfully, there were a few more expenses I can’t quite remember, like Uber rides for friends and my husband and me to and from venues, but everything ended up being under $9,000. I remember being pretty stoked it was under $9,000, as my initial budget was (total) $8,000.

 

[I recommend buying a planner to keep you organized. Check out this wedding planner on Amazon that has 200+ positive reviews. It has stickers, a budget tracker, checklist, and more!]

 

Before I got married, people told me getting married was going to be “the best day of my life”, but I didn’t believe them. Surely buying your first house, or having a child, would be a better “best day”, right?

 

However, after getting married and going through all of that, there are a couple of things I learned: I would never get married again (in terms of spending all that money), but it was a huge occasion. It was one of the best days of my life because of the people there.

 

Where else are you going to get his parents, your parents, family members, and close friends all together for a party? When else is everyone going to look at you, wishing you nothing but the best, celebrating your union to your best friend? I am so glad my friends were there to witness our union, no matter how weird the ceremony. I’m so glad everyone enjoyed themselves, had fun, laughed, met new people.

 

I’m so glad I married my best friend in front of people we love, and for $8,700? It was perfect.
What do you think of our wedding budget breakdown? Do you think you can do it?

 

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Comments

  3. Finance Solver says

    Oh man, $8,700 for a wedding.. That sounds fantastic. I haven’t gone through a wedding because I’m just 21 but I’ve been hearing how expensive weddings can be.. But also that it can be one of the best days of your life as you’ve mentioned 🙂 Congratulations and wishing for a life time of happiness! Will be following your blog more too!

  4. Funny about Money says

    Glad you had a spectacular wedding. It certainly sounds memorable!

    One of the things I’ve always wondered is whether spending a large amount of money on a wedding predisposes the couple to stay together. Divorcing after that would feel like pouring even more dough down the drain than divorce does as a matter of course.

    Do you ever have that feeling in the back of your mind? That you’d make an even larger than normal effort to make the marriage succeed, no matter what, just because you spent SO much to kick it off?

    • Melissa says

      The reception was a restaurant, so we had to spend a minimum of $1,500 on food and drinks. We spent around $3,000 total for everything at the reception.

      • Amanda says

        Can I ask how many guests you had? To me that greatly reflects a persons ability to compare a budget

  10. Wendy says

    Everything looks so beautiful! As a Phoenix native who is newly engaged are trying to figure this whole “wedding planning” thing out, I am amazed you were able to do it for such a reasonable price!

    • Melissa says

      Thank you, Wendy! It’s not easy getting married in central Phoenix on a budget – a lot of my friends are going out to Chandler and Mesa to find more affordable venues. It’s something to keep in mind!

  12. Shireen says

    Hi, this looks lovely, and while we have a similar budget, our guest list is much longer! I am not sure if you can post a link for your dress, but any info you can give to help me find it would be toot appreciated. It looks perfect on you, and I hope I could do it justice in a few (short!) months.

    • Melissa says

      Hi Shireen! I looked for my dress all over BHLDN.com (Anthropologie’s wedding site) and they don’t make it anymore! 🙁 That dress I linked to though is similarly priced and BHLDN has lots of wedding dresses that are easily under $1000! 🙂

  13. Lara says

    I think for many, before the wedding, the question arises of which wedding photographer to choose. I looked at the options for a very long time and could not choose the right one. For me it was important that the photographer was a professional in their field. Looking through the forums, I came across this photographer https://taraweddings.ca/ and I decided to use his services. The work of this photographer was very pleased, everything was done efficiently and on time

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