I agree about picking up local wedding planning information. Also discussing what is important and what is less important when you are working on the budget.
DD1 (age 21) just announced that she would not be using our church for her wedding - she doesn’t even have a BF, but many/most gals do have some ideas of what they want for their wedding day.
Cousin had a ‘family’ reception at aunt/uncle’s home in-between the early afternoon wedding and the evening dinner/dance - so that was to ‘open bar’ and light appetizers. Some locals were also invited. That helped take up the time while the wedding party had pictures taken.
Very good to ask about all additional charges (ice - who would have thought). Honestly, I think many of the up charging comes from bigger cities where they need to grab people with their nice venue and an introductory visit ‘basics’ pricing - and then you start adding it all up and YIKES!
Many young people do attend other weddings and see what they like and don’t like. If you have experience in your area from a wedding you liked and can base some of the costing and planning with a basic framework.
Good luck and best wishes to all with upcoming weddings.
CONGRATULATIONS Xiggi and Soozievt! I hope the weddings are a delight! (And DD and her partner just settled on a really great barbecue group to cater DD’s wedding at a very reasonable rate. Phew! Another decision made. Now on to ordering custom Koozies for the dinner event. If we are bringing in all drinks in bottles and cans, everrrrrrrrrrrrrryone is going to need a Koozie!)
Just for cost comparison sake: barbecue is $22 a plate, which includes paperplates, cutlery, staff to serve. Add in tax, gratuity, desserts, bottled and canned drinks - beer, fizzy waters, soda- lots of ice, coolers to place drinks in, candles, decorations, plastic wine glasses, wine, table linens - cheaper to buy than rent - Koozies, Sounds like $50 a plate to me!!!
Hey, congrats to @xiggi and @soozievt ! Wonderful news to hear from longtime CC posters! May all your wedding planning go more smoothly than ours did last summer. But, despite the fact that bride and groom’s families were seemingly from different planets, the “newlyweds” 1st anniversary is coming up in a couple of weeks.
Things I did at our recent wedding that cut down on costs:
Only invited 25 people —basically family and our two best friends and their families.
Used a city building ( an “arts center”) cost under $1000 and is an “oooh and awww” type venue without the need for décor).
I found their catering to be great. A way we saved was by having 6 heavy apps (like mashed potatoes and braised beef in a martini glass) and beer and wine in late afternoon 2-5 p.m. I was shocked that what was a cruddy $4 bottle of wine, though, when I bought through the mandatory catering co. cost about $18.
We had pie not cake.
We did our own music. And did a photo booth ourselves (which people loved but was a PITA to organize).
No floral at all.
PS one thing to be aware of with caterers is that often the quoted price uses plastic ware. The up charge for actual plates,utensils and cloth napkins wasn’t where we wanted to spend money.
Just to add to this, in much of the South, seated wedding dinners are quite rare. Instead guests are served from a buffet, and the food can be as fancy or unfancy as one desires. But there isn’t all of the cost of hiring a bunch of servers. I’ve been to weddings where plastic plates were used. It wasn’t the end of the world.
I also agree on trying to find a civic club that will rent you a reception site for a reasonable price. Unless a “church” wedding is a must, I suggest having the wedding at the reception site. Depending on your views on alcohol, you could allow your guests to have a glass of wine and socialize for a bit, then have a simple ceremony with everyone standing. There are just lots of things you can do. You can usually arrange for your own catering. I do agree there should be a groom’s cake, which usually is chocolate. This can also ensure that the cake doesn’t run out!
There are studies who show that the longevity of a marriage is inversely proportional to the amount of money spent on the wedding. You can have a gracious reception with the wedding on site without spending a fortune.
Oh, and it’s customary for couples to save and freeze the top layer of their wedding cake to eat on their first anniversary. My wife and I did this but decided to eat it one our first month’s anniversary. It turns out that our freezer didn’t keep the cake frozen hard enough to keep the butter cream frosting from spoiling, so we spent several hours throwing up. Fortunately the little antebellum cottage which had been my bachelor pad had two bathrooms, right across the dogtrot hall from one another. Isn’t it funny that some of the most terrible memories are the ones we remember with a certain amount of fondness? So if you have butter cream frosting, make darn sure your freezer is cold enough to prevent bacterial growth if you decide to freeze some of the cake.
Where we live, the civic buildings in the county have caught on that they are also great wedding venues and charge accordingly. Fees ranged from $3000 to $6500.
Wow … a double whammy! Time is flying so fast. It seems only yesterday that we were reading about getting into Brown, skiing, and being fully immersed in the musical scene in New York. Not to mention grad school in the Bay Area. Congratulations on guiding those two girls for so long and so well to culminate into double weddings in short order.
This community continues to be a warm and supportive one and one that allows to easily set aside difference of opinions on, at times, touchy subjects. Thanks to all for your nice words and thoughts.
Yes, congrats to all the “have been engaged” and newly ARE engaged!
So S and fiance have visited two venues so far. In regards to these two venues the venue costs was not expensive - however the food and alcohol costs were astonishing to them! Clearly, that is where venues make their $$$ - food/alcohol.
They are scheduling a few more to look at. Going to look at a couple that are more open in terms of you hiring your own caterer, bringing in your own alcohol (like just beer and wine) etc. They went to mass this weekend at her church and introduced themselves to the new priest there - and plan to set up a meeting with him soon. It remains important to S especially to marry in a church. S is a stickler about the actual ceremony. He has always been shocked at how many people don’t attend the actual wedding service but do attend the reception. If he could control it he would make it mandatory that you have to attend the wedding service in order to attend the reception!
I plan to sit down with them this week and give them an actual $$ figure that we can contribute as the groom’s family. I know we are under no obligation to provide $$ and/or that typically the groom’s family takes care of the rehearsal dinner (at least that is what I remember!) but knowing that that her family may be limited and they are somewhat limited themselves in funds we want to offer something to contribute.
So we will offer $$ and the promise of a casual but nice rehearsal dinner the night before (if they want that).
So, any low down on rehearsal dinners??? Where have you done it, how have you done it, etc.??? Where do you draw the line as to who attends? Used to be that it was the mostly the wedding party and maybe grandparents - but I know some will now include close out of town guests - I don’t expect we will have too many out of town (most will be probably from within an hour or so of the events).
There are no hard and fast rules about rehearsal dinners. I think it is pretty typical to include out-of-town guests but certainly not required.
If there are only a couple out-of-town guests, it would be odd to include them if they were not very close or somehow connected to members of the wedding party.
And at events where there are lots of out of town guests, the rehearsal dinner guest list often expands to include in-town extended family at the same “level” as out of town guests.
I personally have had my feelings hurt by not being included in a rehearsal dinner invitation when, say, a big group of my college friends were included just because they are from out of town. I hate hearing about the great party the night before when I was not invited, even though I fully understand the logic and convention.
Many rehearsal dinners include only wedding party, parents, grandparents, and siblings (with all respective spouses or s.o.'s), and parents of children in the wedding, and those who have been given honorary jobs at the wedding (readings, manning the guest book), and the officiant. If that results in someone equally close being left out (ie all aunts but one included), it is customary and very kind to include those additional folks, too.
My rehearsal dinner was held in a small art gallery in my home town of 8,000 that is maintained by a women’s club. They make it available at a reasonable cost and will set up tables and provide linens for an equally reasonable price. For the money I consider it to be one of the nicest venues available in the country. Here’s a link to the gallery: http://www.katefreemanclark.org/mission2.html
I think we had wine and beer, plus soft drinks, along with a simple catered meal that today would cost about $25 per person. We invited all close family members plus some out of town guests. There were about 65-70 people there.
My bride-to-be and I spent about 20 minutes or so walking to each table and “introducing” each guest or family member to everyone, often sharing a funny story or anecdote (for example, I introduced an aunt by saying that she had written more deeds than any lawyer in town, since she had typed almost every deed that was recorded from 1948 to 1956 as the deputy chancery clerk, back in the days before copying machines). I had not heard of anyone doing this, but several people in our town have done the same since, so it’s a good idea.
The rehearsal dinner is far more relaxed than the wedding and reception, and arguably far more enjoyable. So plan it so that everyone will just have a good time and enjoy themselves.
We had ours at the home of a very close friend of MIL, who made her famous casserole, and even my fussy mother was delighted. I’ve been to two big ones, at a restaurant and at a country club. Both pretty lavish,about 20 people. You’ll get all sorts of answers, but it’s evolved into a pre-wedding “together time” and you can do whatever works, even a bbq.
You mentioned they are looking a venues where they can bring their own caterers; I’m telling you, those places can be land mines with hidden costs. They may get a quote from the caterer that is half the price of the other place, but the rentals can easily add up to as much – or even more than – the food. And coordinating multiple vendors is a giant pain (which is why they invented wedding coordinators). But your future daughter-in-law will know all of this since she majored in event planning.
^^ All venues seem to have hidden costs. Catered out or catered in. They want to be able to compare the options.
Clearly, it is less work to go with one place and have them provide all the pieces of the wedding puzzle. But when your budget is limited, you sometimes have to be willing to put some time and energy into the process - even on the wedding day/day before.
Getting the date and time set for the church will determine a lot of choices. For some reason, Catholic churches generally try to set weddings at either 10 am or noon (if on a Saturday), but, with some persuasion, will often agree to a 3:00 pm or even 4:00 pm wedding. But some churches won’t budge off the noon time. Since time of day will affect a lot of their choices, that is really the first thing to nail down,
(I don’t recommend a 10 am wedding if guests’ attendance at the ceremony is important to your son!)
I’m in the process of getting some bids for rentals for a shower in my home. I’m finding that in the end it probably would be less expensive to have had the venue be somewhere that already has tables and chairs. They get you with the delivery charge.
Oh certainly it is a good idea to compare options! Was just trying to share observations I’ve gained thru extensive experience with event planning! Even though I’ve been involved with planning dozens and dozens of events, those hidden costs are still shocking sometimes!
We have had two weddings in the past few years. Both rehearsal dinners were catered events. The first one at a beautiful park with covered shelter and real bathrooms was catered by a BBQ food truck! It was very fun! Volleyball, bonfire, corn hole games and music were provided. We, as the bride’s family, organized this as the groom’s family didn’t contribute. We invited all family and out of town guests. The second was last summer and was held at the groom’s family home. The groom’s family ordered Famous Dave’s BBQ and it was lovely. They ordered tables and chairs, got flowers from the local farmer’s market and even had the actual rehearsal on their Sport Court in the yard. It was fun as we had lots of time to visit. Both had just beer and wine for alcohol.
D1’s wedding was at a country club. D2’s at a museum. The cost for each was almost identical.
Our social group has had a lot of discussion about splitting the cost of weddings. Friends with daughters question why they are responsible for paying all wedding costs. Friends with daughters and sons debate giving more to a daughter’s wedding and not to a son and then families with just sons are split on whether they should contribute anything. It has been very interesting to say the least! Recently a friend of ours gave the son the equal amount that was given to each of her daughters for weddings. She explained that why wouldn’t she be equal to each of her children?! Other family friends said they told the bride and groom they would pay for all of the bride’s expenses and her guest list and the groom’s family was responsible for their side. After going through this I really like this idea! Can you tell I feel we should modernize our way of thinking concerning paying for weddings?
But, despite the fact that bride and groom’s families were seemingly from different planets, the “newlyweds” 1st anniversary is coming up in a couple of weeks. 