Weddings are expensive!! Many people start planning a wedding and they have never done anything like it before, so there is no way they have any idea about what kind of budget they should be planning for. There are some guides out there by large publications and in my experience for some reason they are not very realistic.

In this article, our plan is to give you different ranges of price per guest and show you what kind of wedding you can choose with in that range. All weddings estimated at 100 Guest

For example, here is a budget for a 15,000 dollar wedding

  • Wedding Planner—————$1500

  • Officiant————————$200

  • photography ———-—-—$2500

  • Catering————————$4500 ( $45 per person, 2 passed appetizers, and a chicken entree)

  • Cake———————-—-$550

  • Bar and Beverage——— -$2000(wine and Beer)

  • Entertainment—————-$1500 (DJ)

  • Rentals and Decor——---$1000(basic chairs and linens)

  • Flowers —————— --$1250 (ceremony flowers and small table arrangements)

  • 15,000 is a lot of money and it would provide for a lovely wedding. You will just need to be prudent in making your choices. Here are some suggestions to think about to help stay within your budget.

  • Try to keep your guest list as small as possilbe

  • Be creative in your decorations, use candles on some of your tables instead of flowers on every one.

  • For lounge furniture, maybe bring something from home

  • Time your wedding, so that it doesn’t line up for a typical meal time so that you can just serve desserts, or appetizers

  • Try to repurpose things, such as ceremony flowers reused at the reception.

  • Think about having your wedding off season, or another day besides Saturday

  • Pick a venue that supplies as many things as possible, such as chairs, tables, dinnerware, etc.

  • You might also look for venues that have pre-priced wedding packages

This is a medium budget for a 100 people $30,000

wedding Planner—————$3000

Officiant——————-—$300

  • photography ———-——$4500

  • Catering—————— —$7000 ($70 per person, several passed appetizers, choice of chicken, beef. or seafood. This would not include taxes and gratuity)

  • Cake—————— —-$900 (three tiered cake with embellishments)

  • Bar and Beverage—— -$3000 (open bar)

  • Entertainment————-$3000 ( a band with 4 or 5 people)

  • Rentals and Decor——--$2000

  • Flowers —————— --$2500 (ceremony flowers and some reception flowers)

  • Venue fee ————— —$3000

  • Transportation ————- $800

So obviously you can move money around, if you don’t need a 900 dollar cake, you can have a 500 dollar one and then move that 400 dollars somewhere else.

This is a higher budget for 100 people 60,000

  • wedding planner—————$6750.00

  • Beauty ————————-$700

  • stationery ———————-$1350

  • Venues—————————$7400

  • Officiant——————-——$300

  • Photography —————-—$6750

  • cake————————— --$1300

  • catering —————————$14750

  • Bar———————————$2650

  • Entertainment—————-—$6750

  • Transportation——————-$650

  • Rentals and Decor———-—-$5350

  • Florals————————— -$4650

So I hope we have helped somewhat in your understanding wedding budgets. At The French Bee, we work with budgets daily, we ask our couples to prioritize their categories and that helps us decide where to splurge and where to pull back a bit. We want your engagement time to be a fun experience, not a stressful one where there are tensions about budgets.

If you are trying to create your own spread sheet for your wedding budget. You should do the same things we ask our clients to do. Write down all the categories from above and number them with the most important aspect at the top. At least that will make it easier to start. For example, if a band is your highest importance and cake is one of the lower ones. You know that you can get a less expensive cake and perhaps spend the extra money towards the band.

Hopefully, we have helped you a little in learning about wedding budgets. If you ever need help or have any questions, please reach out to us at The French Bee and we will try to help you in anyway we can.