The Cost of Weddings

A major subject of conversation for me since mid February is the cost of throwing a wedding. Having been to a couple of dozen weddings and having been involved in a couple of others I have seen a wide variety of ceremonies, receptions, and locations. Before proposing I actually did a fair amount of research on the web as well. It’s funny but there really is no consensus on how much weddings do, should, or average in respect to costs. One thing that is obvious with just a little bit of reading is that the cost is going up, the industry is booming, and people in general don’t seem to change their behaviors. I was concerned and needed to plan because I knew we would have an accelerated time table and limited resources before I even proposed. As it turns out I think this was a benefit rather than a hindrance on the process.

The average cost of a wedding is reported between $10,000 and $30,000. However you can pretty much throw out the $10,000 because all of the references I found in this price range were 10-15 years old. More contemporary reports put the number more in the $18,000 to $30,000 range. Why such a large range, well first off they don’t compare apples to apples. Some include all wedding related activities including the Rings while other just includes the ceremony, reception, and related services. They also differ a bit region to region. I would say the average is somewhere around $20,000 - $25,000. Easterners tend to pay the most while the Midwest is more conservative (at least from my reading).

Why is the cost so high? Several reasons, the main one being that everyone wants more but there aren’t many new venues coming up. Supply and demand really. If you want a good church and reception hall during peak season (and it is peak because it is when everyone wants to get hitched) you will have to book 6-12 months ahead and pay a premium. The next biggest reason is catering and liquor (the number 1 cost of a wedding BTW). Open bars and decent food costs money, and this leads to the third biggest reason I found size. The more people you want to invite the bigger the venue has to be and the more you will spend on food and spirits. Now contributing to all of this is the fact that each venue has pricing schemes designed to maximize there profits and how much you will need to pay. For instance the hall may be cheap but you may not be able to use outside caterers and they may have fees for every little task (IE: cutting the cake).

So when I was doing research I spent a lot of time reading how to through a nice and affordable wedding. The general rules are as follows:
1. Keep it Small – The fewer people the less you need to spend on food and sprits
2. Move Fast – The longer you take planning a wedding the more you talk yourself into extras that cost extra
3. Keep it Simple – Same location for Ceremony and Reception, maybe a public space or someone’s residence
4. Try not to Hire Professionals – DJs, Photographers, etc. Cost a lot of money.
The good news for us is that a couple of these were forced on us. Move fast, we have no time, keep it simple, RB would only want to us a church if it were Catholic and due to time and other constraints (me not being Catholic) this meant no church. The first one we made an attempt, our first list had only 60 people on it. Later though the site we found (my parents moved so we couldn’t use there back yard) had a minimum catering charge for 100 people. So we invited 140 in the hope that 100 will show. Also we tried to go as simple as possible on other things; we hired a college student as a photographer and a friend of RB’s for the DJ. We also found a family friend that could officiate.

Some of my other cost saving were shot down though. I had also looked into renting an old theater out and catering with Buca Di Beppo. RB didn’t like this idea much. I also looked into community centers and parks but most had rules against adult beverages, were to small, or were outside (we couldn’t guarantee the weather of course). So these went by the way side. All – in – all though I think we did a great job finding reasonable solutions. Our costs look to be turning out to be 1/3 of the average wedding and I think we will only run 10-12% above my target budget. I can see though how easily it for people to go into debt to pay for there wedding!