Budget allocation for wedding

I run a wedding shop in Ontario. I'm not a wedding planner but I can tell you what most couples do. You don't want to take risk on limousine and photographer, since the moment won't come back and you need to be wherever you need to be on time, so for these two, ask for recommendation from family or friends, good ones always cost more but you get what you pay. It's not that hard to make your own cake or create your own invitation, you can save up to $ 500. Favours, wedding accesories and gifts can be found in many online stores with affordable prices. The fastest way to save on food is limiting amount of guests, lesser guests means lesser food, lesser table, smaller hall that means lower hall rental fee. A good florist can work within budget, artificial flowers can also look and feel as real life ones. I can't say much about gowns and attires since very rare people can refuse taking expensive ones, doesn't mean there aren't cheaper ones, but it all depends on your taste. If the hall is already beautiful you can keep decoration to the minimum hence save more money. Good luck.

i can't remember the budget allocation but i'm sure a big chunk of budget for the wedding went to food, then photographer, wedding dress, followed by the rest of the suppliers. oh we also spent a lot on our honeymoon, i think it's almost the same amount as what we paid our photographer.

In my wedding, the bulk of the budget went to food. It's about 75%, I would think. Attire is only about approx between 5-8%, about the same for photo/video, about the same for the honeymoon. Flowers is less than 5%. These are all approximate so you won't get 100% when you add them up. lol

It's very hard to answer these questions as when I did mine I didn't think in terms of percentages but how much money we had and what was a reasonable price for each item. It all depends on your budget. we did ours quite cheaply for most things. I had my dress made for me and it cost me $200. We got a couple of friends to take pictures with digitial cameras and when we got back we went through them and selected our favourites and then just have the rest as computer files so it only cost us about $20 to get the prints done. We went to the flower market early and made our own bouquets and buttonhole flowers for the groom and groomsmen. My Mother in law is a champion cake decorator so I made my own three layer cake and she decorated it for us. The reception was one of the biggest costs. It cost us $50 per person for a 3 course meal, although it was very nice. We also went there for dinner beforehand to try out the menu and see that we actually liked the food, many reception places are willing to do this to get your business. For the bridesmaids we got them to wear dresses they already had, which were all similar but in different shades of blue, from a deep blue worn by the oldest to a baby blue worn by our flower girl.

Food: 35% Wedding dress/Attire:20% Flowers: 5% Photo & Video: 35% Honeymoon: 5% Most important thing in our wedding is that no one will left the venue hungry. Flowers can wilt, the wedding dress you can only wore once. Honeymoon you can do it anytime you want ... Photo and Video is the only memory keeper you have so you better splurge on it.

I did all mine quite cheaply. Food was our main expense, that was about $3000. $30 per head for 100 people. My dress only cost $400. The shop classed it as a 'bridesmaids' dress, but it was white and exactly what I was looking for, so that was alright. Bridesmaids dresses were $250 each, they paid half and we paid half. They supplied their own shoes. Flowers we got really cheap. We ask an apprentice florist to do them. It got us a HUGE discount, and the flowers were just gorgeous! All red roses, and I don't think we spent more than $150. That was for my boquet, one for each bridesmaid, centrepiece, and flowers for the groomsmen, parents, etc. Photos and video were cheap. I have a friend who runs a company so we got a big discount there. Honeymoon was our big splurge. We went to the Gold Coast and stayed in 5-star accomodation! Fun!