34 replies to this topic

[Waser Lave]

You should ask Ali, she got married not too long ago (just over a year ago I think).

Personally I think $40,000 is a shitload of money to spend on one day.

[Kat]

Personally I've help planned a few weddings (cousins, friends, etc.) but there wasn't much money involved, so the average budget with those weddings were around 8-10 thousand. They spent most of the money on their honeymoon and the rest went to buying their new house, which is a very good idea I think.
Weddings these days are so over the top and expensive, I just don't understand it.
With that budget I can't help you much, since my expertise mainly lies with scrimping and saving money
Good luck, however.

Also, your fiance was right in her judgement at the planner unfortunately. Most weddings these days run 50k plus, which is pretty ridiculous IMO

Edited by Katrinas, 29 July 2011 - 03:29 PM.

[fruityone]

When my parents got married, they just signed a piece of paper. There was no ceremony or anything. Then they took a wicked honeymoon using all the money they saved on the wedding which they say is the best decision they've made in their lives.

[Formaldehyde]

My friend just got married 2 weeks ago. She and her husband spent $4,000 and the Wedding didn't seem cheap to me. I honestly think $40,000 is a HUGE amount of cash for a wedding. I'd much rather buy a nice car

edit: oh and my friend is 22, her husband is 28.

Edited by Formaldehyde, 29 July 2011 - 04:11 PM.

[Tetiel]

The whole thing is, you haven't told us how many people are attending. This makes a huge difference since a large majority of my budget was spent on food and drink for the guests. My budget was around... $10k. I didn't use all of it, but I only had about 35 people attending since I don't like large gatherings of people. I also did not pay a wedding planner. I planned everything myself. It wasn't hard at all, but again, small wedding compared to most.

Ceremony (location to be booked etc) - I used a park. It was like $40 for a permit.
Reception Venue & meal for guests - I chose a restaurant which did not charge us for their downstairs since we had a bar open and they'd be getting our business. It was about $20 per person for food
Celebrant (we are not getting married by the church) - $300 plus we paid for his airfare since I wanted my pastor from the states to marry us.
Brides Dress - $500. It was on sale to clear for next year's dresses. Your fiancee may be able to get away with this as well if she doesn't object since both of our weddings will be/were in September.
Grooms tux - Uhhh...$100-200 I think? I never asked Scott. Actually, I think he wore a suit which... "suited" him more. Hahaha I'm so clever <3
Bridesmaids jewellery (they are buying their own dresses) - Oh uhh... I got them like... flowers so I'll include those here. Flowers are big time part of your budget, btw. I think I spent maybe $350-400 in total on my bouquet, their mini bouquets, centerpieces, and corsages for the mothers of the bride and groom.
Groomsmen jewellery (nice watch each etc) - Oh, he got a hat. An awesome fedora, actually. $50-100? Again, didn't ask!
Wedding cake - $250. We had ours custom made with 40 servings and my design. Basically a very light orange cake with a strawberry buttercream. Berries were scattered ontop with a white chocolate drizzle. It was soooooooo good.
Anything else I missed - A lot of large weddings have party favours. You may want a DJ for the reception?

[Strategist]

Well when me and the missus got married 4 years ago, we spent a grand total of $20-22K. We found this was more than enough and it wasnt by any means a 'cheap' wedding. We had 120 guests and like Tetiel said, thats where a majority of your cost goes. The reception cost us $9.5K alone. We were fortunate that my inlaws put up $3K on the bar for us too so that helped keep the cost of the reception down slightly.

As for the wedding dress and suits etc....

Wedding dress was $1.5K and my suit was about $800.

We used cars from our local car club here which kept the cost down (as im a member and they basically donated their time). I also used my car and my cousins car for the groomsmen to go in. The girls got the sweeter rides

Photographer cost us $1K (full day of photos, including a dvd compilation to music that we chose, a complete leather bound album, 2x copies of all the photos taken as well as a dvd full of digital copies, plus 8x resized/enlarged photos framed).

Celebrant cost us about $450 which included her doing the registration papers and all that jazz.

We got married at the Flagstaff Country Club/Golf Course and the reception was there too (kept costs down a bit with their package they offered).

Party Favours (gifts for the guests) we made ourselves and quite cheaply might i add. We ordered a heap of candles (thick ones) and some custom made ribbon with our names and wedding date on it (tied around the candles) for each guest. We also put together the centrepieces for each table too. We found some cool glass candle holders that sit in a chrome frame. Then we filled the holders with beads and water and the candles floated in the water whilst lit. (all up these items cost us no more than $100.)

DJ cost us nothing as my good mate DJ's for a few clubs around town

Flowers for the girls and the corsage's for the guys costs us a total of just under $600.

Cake was $400

For the reception we had to hire the chair and table covers and ribbons/sashes for the seats etc from a separate company (which cost about $350 from memory).

Gifts for the bridesmaids and groomsmen were $400 total (we thought it would be nice for them to have something in appreciation).

You also have to consider whether youre having a bucks/hens night etc etc and how much you wish to spend there. I personally had a smallish one with 10 of my closest mates (paintball and go-karting during the day, strippers/booze/clubs at night). We both set our budget for that to $1K each (this was however separate to the wedding budget but something worth thinking about).

For wedding gifts, we just had a Wishing Well. No actual gifts per-say but just asking for a donation in return. We ended up getting roughly $5K back that helped pay for extra things on our honeymoon.

Honeymoon cost us a total of $3K (this included flights, accomodation, car hire etc etc)

so in total including the bucks/hens nights, wedding/reception and honeymoon, we spent around $20-22K. So $40K i think is more than enough and personally i couldnt spend half my years wages on a day like that haha but each to their own. $20K was more than enough for us and we had the best wedding we could ask for with no expense spared.

Best of luck bro! Its a stressful time thats for sure but once its all happening on the day, its magical (as long as everything goes to plan )

Edited by Strategist, 29 July 2011 - 06:35 PM.

[Chalk]

We have more than the 40k at the moment put away for the wedding, and will probably be looking at having about 20k for the honeymoon plus spending money.... Provided the honeymoon is over seas that will be more than enough.

Hot damn! Where are you guys going/what are you guys going to do (if you guys even plan on leaving the hotel, which I've heard of many honeymooners not even doing)? ^^

[WharfRat]

As you know, I'm sort of in the wedding planning stage myself... However, you Aussies seem to pay ridiculous amounts more for things that we do in the states... I don't expect to spend more than 10k... period. In fact, I refuse to. I can't see spending more than half a years wage (at my current low wage job...) on a single day. As tetiel said, it's going to come down to how many guests you will be having.

IMO, I think 40k is overkill... (what I presume would be like 20k in the US) However, I think you two will have a fantastic day! And I definitely think the pause from the planner was that you are spending more than average by far. (Probably exceptionally so categorized by age.)

[Strategist]

What about the Maldives? XD

Spoiler

[Georgina]

Weddings are all down to personal preference, you can get marrried on a few hundred pounds here if you really want to, but i think the average wedding cost is arround £8000 - £12000 (bout double ish in AUD probs?)

My brother and sister in - law spent arround £25 - £30k on thier wedding but they had a very exclusive venue that cost around £8k - £10k and up to £4k on a dress alone.

Personaly all I will want is a nice frock, and a holiday, so meh. Aslong as your Mrs is happy soul, thats all that matters!!

[Strategist]

jeez Georgie, ima marry you for sure haha Youre easy to please by the sounds of it (wedding-wise, dunno how it'd go in the bedroom XD )

[Georgina]

jeez Georgie, ima marry you for sure haha Youre easy to please by the sounds of it (wedding-wise, dunno how it'd go in the bedroom XD )

Don't underestimate the price of my dress (no comment about the bedroom....)

[Strategist]

oh you wont have time to comment, you'll be too busy

[Drakonid]

Two things:
First, you're forgetting the cost of my plane ticket/hotel room. Second, screw the wedding and spend the 40k in neopoints.

[Narcissa]

My friend is having her wedding next month and I'm a bridesmaid so I've seen some of the planning go along.

Together their wedding is sitting at 10k, and that's with them hand making a lot of their items. They will not be having an open bar which I think is bollocks... People go to weddings to have a good time. It also seems like a lot of their frugality will show through in the actual ceremony itself so we shall see. Altogether they're doing ok but probably would've been less stressed if they'd had a bit more of a budget/waited a year to get married to save up.

I personally think 40k is a fucking exorbitant amount of money for a wedding. I think 25k-30k would be more then acceptable especially since you're getting a dj... for 400$?! I feel that with that budget you could get a live band and a dj. How much does she want to spend on her wedding gown? How many people will actually be attending? These realllyyy factor into things. But even so... 40k seems a lot to me.

[kittycat]

That's definitely a higher end budget. Are you planning to have any luxuries like open bar or something?

Edited by kittycat, 30 July 2011 - 02:20 PM.

[Kyouma]

40,000 huh?
Looking at what you have planned, it doesn't seem like you'll hit your ceiling. Of course, you never know what might happen that'll cause more money to disappear.
Plus, I don't think your planner'll make you spend all that money. Her comment probably was that it was a good limit on your wedding, in case you were one of those people who go on a splurge and buy a 10,000 wedding dress or something. Handwoven. By blind nuns.

Edited by Kyouma, 31 July 2011 - 01:26 AM.

[jcrdude]

Note for those who want to do comparisons:

40,000 AUD
43,983.98 USD
26,770.56 GBP
3,389,848.00 JPY

[Ali]

You should ask Ali, she got married not too long ago (just over a year ago I think).

Personally I think $40,000 is a shitload of money to spend on one day.

It was 2 years on the 11th, time flies...

Anyhoo, you can do weddings for tiny amounts, you can do them for huge amounts. Depends on what items you're willing to compromise on and who you know that you can beg/borrow/steal from. Average wedding here is about £18-20k.

I'm not really much use for budgets I'm afraid because the Boy went to art school for university and I went to music college which meant we were able to pull in more than a few favours on the creative front which saved us ridiculous amounts of money.

- We had a string quartet, choir and then a jazz band for the reception and that was all from people I know who refused to be paid despite my many protests. Knowing what we all usually charge for weddings though, that's ~£2k that we saved!

- My dress was made by a friend of the Boy's who studied textiles and so the only costs were fabric and then a token amount for her time. <3 Obviously that's an area where there's huge variation in costs so depends on what your bride wants! I did the bridesmaids' dresses myself because I only wanted something simple and I only had the 2 so that was cheap and easy.

- Photography is where a lot of people spend huge amounts,again, we utilised the talents of a friend from uni. We were the start of his portfolio and 2 years on he runs a business where his pricing starts at £1850...glad we got there earlier!

- We got married in church with my maid of honour's father as our vicar. Legal bits for all that were about £350.

- Made our own favours.

After that, it's all variable on how many people you have attending. Affects your venue costs, food costs, size of your cake, loads of things. Time of year will play a part as well, Saturday afternoons in June are more expensive than a Wednesday in February etc. Don't really know if September just escapes the "peak" summer wedding season or not.

All in all, I think we spent around £5k and a very happy day it was too. Thing is, you're too loved up to notice it all anyway, I don't think I even noticed the flowers despite agonising over them for weeks. I was too excited to really eat my dinner. I didn't care what I looked like any more.

[onlyme]

i'm not mature enough to answear here.

....

40k?!?!?!?! WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT!

[rizler]

i dont know the prices in America.
However my older sister just got married in early June. We spent about £12-£15k on the wedding.
I think thats about $25k USD. But ofcourse prices in america could be totally different

[jcrdude]

Also note that despite $AU40k being an extra 3k in the US;
A brand new PS3/Xbox360 Game (new release) - $AU120 here, $US60 there.
An iPhone application; $AU1.08, $US0.99 there
A music album here; $AU20 (standard album) or $AU32 for a 2cd compilation (Not sure what this is worth in the US, someone can fill that part in)
A lot of retailers over here are complaining about the influx of Australians buying online instead of coming into their stores to spend their money, however we will save up to 50% by buying from a store in the US instead.


So whilst it may be more money then the US, we pay a lot more for our gear than you, so at the end of the day, you're still better off

This sounds like a temporary problem, then, hopefully. For consumer goods, if local businesses continue to overcharge in an age where someone can go online and buy the same product at a lower price, then they face the possibility of going out of business.

^Proof that globalization is good for some

[Elle]

In all seriousness, you can have a lovely wedding for 15k. BUT, its your special day, and im sure your missus would love the extra money to spend on those "extra" things that may make the day a little more special. *cough* designer gown *cough*.

Also though, it really depends on locations/ venue hire, and the number of guests you intend on having .

[trixz1]

I would have to say 60kCAD and leave room for unexpected costs

[openu2]

Wedding will cost a lot of money man