Budget Breakdown

It's hard to find people who are willing to share exactly how much they spent on their wedding and where all that money went. My favourite wedding blog, 2000 Dollar Wedding, was the first place I saw a couple willing to share every small detail of their budget. But if you look hard enough and long enough, you will find more and more 'budget' brides willing to share the costly details. I think this is great inspiration for other brides so I'm sharing my wedding budget as it stands so far.

I should add that I use a wonderful web site to keep track of all the spending, payments, etc. It's called Wedding Wire. I also use it to track what I have left to do and to create mock seating plans. It's a pretty handy (and free!) site.

So, here is the budget breakdown:

Accommodation for us & the dog: $600 (this is a big added expense due to our decision to move before the wedding!)

Bar Service: $515

Catering: $1800

Cake: $0 (homemade by the groom's mom!)

Decorations: $370

DJ: Free (we have very talented friends!)

Dress and accessories: $510

Flowers: $90

Groom's suit and accessories: $300

Gifts and Favours: $265

Hair and makeup: Free (hair stylist is a gift from one of my MOH's and makeup will be done by a very talented cousin of mine!)

Invitations: $60

Officiant: $225

Photographers: $952

Rehearsal Dinner: Hmmm... this needs to be figured out. We're planning on pizza at Adam's parent's vacation rental condo... but we definitely haven't budgeted for the actual pizza part of that plan!

Rings: $530

Sound Equipment: $95

Venue Rental Fees: $800

For a grand total of approximately $7,112!

I'll admit, I originally wanted to keep it to $5000. But that would have involved doing away with a few traditional wedding practices that my fiancé wanted us to partake in. So, we compromised and I'm still pretty happy with how the budget turned out!