This was an AMAZING day. We loved every bit of it and regret pretty much nothing (shouldn't have gotten the keg, it was mostly wasted….). We focused on what we cared about, found some FABULOUS vendors who were mostly under budget. We live in a LCOL area, small Midwest town. Most of the 100 guests were fairly local, only a few flying in.

I am NOT posting this to comment on the cost of weddings, or the wedding industry. Do not bother criticizing me in the comments for choosing to spend this money.

I am sharing this because I am very data driven and enjoyed tracking the cost of everything. We started with $15k budget, entirely planning on paying for it ourselves. Our parents contributions were unexpected and very much appreciated. I'm very proud of us for staying so close to the original budget. I thoroughly enjoyed planning our wedding, barring a bit of family drama.

I combined a few expenses for simplicity, please ask away any questions! I tracked things with high level, detailed, and itemized lists of transactions. Everything was manually tracked on my extensive wedding spreadsheet.

We also were fortunate to receive multiple physical gifts for our new home, as well as $2500 in monetary gifts at the wedding. I'm selling a handful of wedding items also. None of those items are included as they were after the fact.

Posted by IdkJustPickSomething

7 comments

  1. How many inmates came to your wedding? (Just kidding, but what is DOC?)

  2. This data is collected from tracking every cash, credit, online, etc. purchase towards the wedding. I manually collected each expense in my massive wedding spreadsheet.

    I categorized them (and combined a few small ones) and input into Sankey. Please ask any questions, but I won’t share the transactions list for privacy. I’ll tell you what any item is, or break it out.

  4. The inclusion of $80 from the bride’s mom is hilarious. What did she get you guys?

  6. How did you possibly cater a wedding dinner for only $20/person? That’s, like, Jimmy John’s prices. The venue is also quite cheap.

    Edit: $1.30 per person for wedding cake is also pretty incredible. That’s barely more than a Costco sheet cake price per person.

  7. Congratulations on the wedding! A few questions:

    * There was $30 of alcohol at the wedding? Or is the rest included in *Wedding Dinner*? If so how does that alcohol differ from the rest?
    * Are wedding photographers usually this expensive? I don’t know the first thing about weddings but I sure expected the venue to be the most expensive
    * Where was the honeymoon?
    * What is dog boarding?

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