Hitchfest 2010: THE BUDGET, or how to throw a big city wedding for under $12,500!

I cannot believe we were able to have the wedding we wanted to have -- and in the city we wanted to have it in -- for under $12,500.  There has been much talk over whether or not throwing a $10K-ish wedding in a majorly expensive city like Los Angeles is possible, so naturally I was fearful that we wouldn't come anywhere near that low of a number. But to our surprise, we actually came kinda close. But don't be fooled -- our wedding in LA may have "only" cost $12,500, but that 12.5K went a LONG way, and we had other ways of saving money that were very unique to our situation.  Let me explain... I want to preface this post with the following: I am a wedding blogger. A wedding blogger who got lucky on a few wedding-related purchases because of said blog and its semi-popularity in the industry. So there are a few things in our budget that we got kickbacks on because of this blog and the ad space I was willing to trade for it. I have noted such trades in the spreadsheet, but I wanted to make sure that point was made explicit.  I don't want any emails telling me, "well, you could only afford an LA wedding under 12.5K because you're a wedding blogger/free shit whore."  Perhaps that statement holds some truth (definitely the whore part, but replace "free shit" with "cheese"), but I know we could have made it work sans kickbacks... it just would have been a different wedding. Perhaps with less tables and chairs. Or only one night of hotel stay for Mike and I (as opposed to three nights). Or no snacks, or no dessert. Who knows!  We could have made it work... it would have been very difficult and very compromising, but we could have done it. So with that, I present to you our budget. Deep breath...

NOTE: These numbers are as close to the actual totals as possible. Either they are exact, or we rounded up.

Now for the "HOW" part. I think it helps to see the things that a couple did NOT include in their wedding in order to save money.  So here is what we DID NOT have that in part made it possible for us to throw what would have been an $18,000 (approx.) wedding for only $12,500.0.

We did not have or provide the following at our wedding:

1. Mass transportation for guests (like a shuttle, limo, etc)
2. Professional floral arrangements for centerpieces
3. Professional floral arrangements for Bouts/Bouquets
4. A wedding cake
5. Champagne
6. A plated/formal meal
7. Servers
8. Passed hors d'oeuvres
9. A professional DJ
10. A getaway car
11. Separate hotel rooms for the night before the wedding
12. Tableware rentals (glassware, plates, etc)
13. Linen rentals
14. Seating cards or seating chart
15. Formal reply cards w/our invitations
16. Flower Girl/Ring Bearer/Children in general
17. New shoes for the groom (he wore his favorite skate shoes)
18. A formal photobooth
19. Out of town bags
20. A ceremony arch
21. Lighting/Tent rentals
22. A Bridal Shower
23. Ceremony programs
24. A Newspaper wedding announcement

And just to iterate... here are the things we did have, but did not pay for:

1. Day of Coordinator
2. An engagement shoot
3. A Day-after shoot
4. Videographer 
5. Officiant
6. Photo Lounge Backdrop art piece from PlasticGod
7. Save the Date Cards
8. Dress alteration

So imagine what the budget would have been like had we paid for these services... I think the only things we could have afforded on that list are the officiant (out of necessity) and the dress alteration (also out of necessity). And we would have had to whore ourselves on streets to pay for a Coordinator, but we would have done it.  Our wedding would have fallen flat on its ass had we not had our DOC.  Sans freebie we would have had to pick the cheapest of the cheap DOC packages that included day-of services only. But hiring a DOC in our case is a necessity.  I would have been really sad had we not gotten to do an engagement shoot, or day after shoot, or have a video of our wedding... but these would not have been "necessity purchases" I don't think. There just wouldn't have been enough room in the budget. Simple as that. 

Also, I did not include my engagement ring in this budget. Remember how I told you all about our 2 proposals?  Mike first proposed to me 5 years ago with his great grandmother's diamond sans band. We spent $800.00 on a custom designed band and had the diamond placed in it. We paid this off five years ago so I did not include it in the budget.  But had we not already paid for this, we probably would have chosen a much more modest setting for the diamond to cut down on cost. We certainly wouldn't have spent over $400. 

There is one last part to this post -- an important part that I haven't seen discussed much around wedblogland, and that is the amount of money we spent on stuff that we didn't end up using.  I have an entire wedding dress I didn't end up wearing and 3 hair accessories I never ended up wearing.  I got way too picky towards the end and scrambled to find something. I just kept buying shit, and now I have to sell it all.  So right there is about $1000 in wedding goods that I did not include in the final budget sheet. So if I don't end up selling this stuff, I will be forced to include it back into the budget, making our wedding a $13,500 wedding instead (please, PLEASE buy this shit from me... I'll list it on this blog soon!)

And finally, there were places where we overspent when we didn't need to. For example, we had a lot of extra wine, extra cups, napkins... we even had extra seating because everyone was up and mingling most of the time.  But I guess that was slightly unavoidable. And it didn't end up costing too much extra for us in the end. So aces. And now I feel very exposed. Ha.  But hopefully this has helped at least a few couples with their budget concerns.

Did you throw a big city wedding? If you're willing to share... how much did you spend, and how did you do it? I'd love to hear from you.