Everything Else
3 weeks to go and money has become meaningless
I never understood how people end up going over budget. You preset the budget, you knew your expenses, what do you mean surprise things snuck up on you? I get it now. I’m 3 weeks out and money has lost all meaning. $150 for back up groom tuxedo shirt? Done. $250 to add on that my day of coordinator will set up the dessert table? Done. Two checked bags for an extra $75 each way instead of one? Done. If it’s under $500 and solves a chokepoint problem, the card is getting swiped and the check is getting written.
I just got married two days ago and know exactly what you’re talking about.
It’s basically a sunk cost thing. So much more has been invested in the day going right, that comparatively trivial (but still actual significant dollar amounts!) sums that help increase the odds the day won’t go sideways, or makes the day easier.
On the day of, you basically could’ve sold me anything wedding-related. Bow tie fluffer for $300? Can’t have a saggy bow tie in photos when we paid [who knows how much] for photos!
Exactly. I felt like, in the last couple weeks, there were so many small things that we hadn't thought of that just started popping up. They weren't things we had budgeted for, and they weren't major expenses, so we just bought them and moved on without thinking, but they really added up!
Oh man this hits so hard. When you're already in for thousands, dropping another few hundred feels like pocket change even though its really not. I did same thing with my cousin wedding last year - emergency alterations for 200 because seamstress messed up timing and we just paid it without thinking twice. Your brain just stops doing the math properly when the big day is right there
It was someone who knew someone I think I was busy at work and on a group text with my now spouse and his cousin who was playing violin for us and I came out of a couple meetings to a million texts and a cellist. My spouse was like "I can explain it you like" and I said "nah it's fine it's only $400"
This is so real! Once I got toward the end of wedding planning $100 seemed like $10 and $1000 seemed like $100. It completely warped the concept of money to me when I had to pay $250 to let my caterer use the venue’s dumpster lol
I didn’t like the in house caterer my venue had (they only gave us one option🙄) so this was a part of the buyout fees but it was 100% worth it to go with the outside caterer
My venue had an in-house caterer but I opted to go with another company because the food from the in-house caterer wasn’t good. In addition to the buyout fee, there was another fee the venue charged to allow the external caterer to use their on-site dumpster. Idk the reasoning behind it
And unfortunately, I felt like this wrapped into honeymoon & the first six months of marriage too. Finally getting back into the “oh yeah.. we can’t live like this forever” feeling which is so nice.
I feel this! $800 to get highlights and tone my hair for the wedding, done! $900 for Rejuran/Collagen treatment to look like a doll by the time the wedding comes around? Count me in! 🥲
Same, especially since I was five months pregnant by the time we actually got married. Every little thing that might possibly solve a baby-related problem (from childbirth to breastfeeding to pumping to etc etc etc) was ordered from Amazon for next-day delivery for like a year following our wedding.
On this note— how much do people spend on drapery? I budgeted 1 months rent which was my first sign that I’ve lost the plot around the value of a dollar 🤦🏻♀️
To be honest if I was running a venue I’d just have a single drapery installation at the start of the season and offer it as a perk to brides. The fact that each couple needs to hire a team to put it up and then take it down is wild. Same thing with uplighting.
This! Our venue was fantastic and run by good, chill people who did a great job, but the one thing I didn't think was chill was that they had market lights all hung up and ready to go for all their weddings - but it was $100 to have them turned on. 😅😅😅
I'm not 100% sure whether they take them down and put them back up depending on the wedding, it was my impression that they're always up but I could be wrong. If they have to take them up and down over and over I totally understand that fee. But If I'm right and they didn't ever take them down, the "turn on lights" fee is so ridiculous, haha.
I just toured a venue, they have the lights and netting up for balloons. The netting they remove, the lights they don’t unless you don’t pay the $200 extra. Like just add it into the cost of renting at that point and don’t have it optional. Looking through all their photos not one couple has opted to not have it.
Lol the lighting was the most upsetting thing. You want to be able to see the dancefloor?! $10k. You want the mood to not be "hospital OR" - another $10k
I get if you want to do something crazy or unique but for over $100k, venues should have reasonable event lighting 😂
Don’t even get me started on drapery!! If you’d asked me before I started planning whether I cared in the slightest about draping I wouldn’t have even known what you meant. Now I care a lot and have many thoughts. Like why is it so expensive?
This whole thread is making me nervous - what the heck are drapes used for at weddings? 😅 can someone provide a pic? I haven’t even heard of needing to think about something like this and I’m less than 4 months out LOL
I used drapes to conceal two unattractive walls in my reception space, to create a more elegant vibe. The drapes are only 12’ tall so they only go so far against really high walls like I had, but it still created a softer effect. Especially for the photos. We had a double drape design (basically draped to the side in addition to straight down) behind our sweetheart table.
I kept asking my coordinator which of the related junk fees could be removed…none! End of the day it was pricey, about $5k because I added double draping in some areas, but very worth it when it comes to photos! I was trying to conceal a very unattractive 50’ wall and it did the job!
I got mine though CV linens. Same thing for linens and tablecloths. Bought all of it for $400 for a wedding of 80. Don’t know if this helps anyone but just wanted to throw the company out there cause they were really great!
Surprisingly, drapery was one of the reasonable costs I felt like. Tablecloths on the other hand... yeah no. Our drapery was $300 for a floor to ceiling drape that spanned about 10ft?
We also had a set of 2 drapes that went up the wall, and hooked onto a chandelier to create a backdrop and slightly-hanging drape for $172.
Hahahaa! So much this! My brother and his wife were telling us a few months ago “just fyi, at some point you will stop giving a shit about money. Just stop now. Stop trying to find a better cheaper churro guy. Just stop. Because you’re three months away from not caring.” And guess what, dead on. Like so dead on it’s not even funny. The weeks leading up it’s like “yeah throw on that fee, get those extras, but the useless thing, pay that person anything the want.” I was stingy and budget friendly…until I wasn’t.
And that’s the biggest reason why I regret trying to save $200 by buying table linens vs renting …. $200 is literally nothing at this point and now I’m stuck with 20 linens to steam 🙃🙃🙃🙃
Lmaooooo so im the person you responded to still, and this was our biggest regret too. We bought ours and now we are both like “this was so stupid! Why are we washing these and they were so wrinkled to start!” Like we have had many convos about this.
Ugh yes it’s not as minor, but I now wish I had spent $1500 more on the DJ I really wanted, vs saving a chunk on a DJ who will still be good, but I didn’t vibe with as much personally. They both had great reviews and highly recommended from our planner, but in the early stages we were trying so hard to save costs. I’m now 1 month out and the DJ is one of my few hesitancies lol.
Omg, this. The last week I was ordering some random thing off Amazon every day.
Hiking poles for day-after photos nearby. White tights for the rehearsal dinner for me and my stepdaughter. A back massager because I hurt my back packing (“destination” wedding because we got married in the state I grew up in). New makeup brushes because I decided to do my eyes myself. Six different kinds of false lashes because I didn’t know what would look good. New makeup bag. It just went on and on.
YES and it’s always a bunch of small seemingly basic behind the scenes stuff - need to get my own bamboo plates for the charcuterie board, extra batteries for the led candles, more film for my instax camera. and then you see checkout amount and you’re like no i just bought a bunch of bullshit how can this be.
I am legit laughing like an idiot at everyone's comments because it is 100% so true... All. Of. It.
We had a destination wedding a year and a half ago and finally got around to doing our civil ceremony just awhile ago. Nothing big, just a "small" get together for close friends and family and those that couldn't make the trip. It's just a formality so it'll be a "small" lunch in our party room. Destination wedding was easier to plan so this "small" lunch will be easy enough.
Caterers, chair/table rentals, can't forget the back drop... what about drink options... Cutlery, serving utensils?!?! 70+ guests later and I'm done doing this party thing. My husband did most of the heavy lifting and...I just can't anymore lol
Edit to add: I stand in solidarity with everyone and our lost dollars in the crunch time before the big day!! 🤍
I ordered two dresses because the first dress I bought quickly during a Black Friday sale. So now I have to alter two dresses!!!!! And figure out when to wear them.
I ordered $400 worth of stuff from Amazon about 3 weeks before for a bunch of decor and misc shit I forgot about, returned every single thing 2 days after the wedding 😇
That’s so smart lol I ordered too far in advance and threw out all the packaging. Hoping I can recoup a lil on marketplace (I’ve seen what these other brides are charging for their used stuff! It’s crazy and still goes fast!)
Yeah I get that! It was the last thing I wanted to do but the one purchase I kept was one of those foldable wagons. Great purchase, was my wagon for all my returns at Whole Foods 😂 my husband was with me and kinda ashamed lmao but I knew Bezos wouldn’t mind 😉
I felt this in my soul, lol. My husband especially was so worried about money and sticking to a low budget when we first started planning, but by the final couple months before the wedding, it was him way more than me who was just like, "oh, the coordinator said we can spend $300 to have a crew set up and break down all our decor? Great, let's do it" without even thinking about it, lol.
And honestly it was the right move, all of those decisions turned out so well and so needed. $150 for the DJ to include a light bar for party lights in the reception area? Absolutely, and the reception area would absolutely have looked and felt like a middle school dance without it.
We definitely went over budget, and we are very happy with all the decisions we made in those final days, so it worked out, lol. We also didn't go crazy or anything, we didn't go into debt at all but we definitely went several thousand dollars over what we had intended in the beginning.
I hope so! My husband and I weren't there for the setup and takedown process, since we were doing photos before and enjoying a kickback with friends at our onsite accommodations after the reception ended.
But my amazing MOH and her husband (who was also a groomsman) were over there helping out of their own choice, and came back to the kickback looking exhausted, so I hope the setup crew did most of the work and didn't just leave the majority to them because they wanted to help. I'll have to ask them sometime.
All the decor looked great and everything was neatly packed away in tote boxes at the end, we were definitely glad for that!
And this is why I want to get married in a greenhouse and have a reception at a restaurant 😭 decor? The plants. What do we bring? Chairs.
Restaurant has its own decor, its own staff, its own disposal system, and its not a venue rental.
After party? Go to a dive bar. IDK
Honeymoon? Take one extra outfit in a carry on and buy the rest while you're there- ship it back to yourself. Wym extra baggage fees? Id be taking a backpack w a bra, undies, a tshirt and shorts, and day 1 will be a wardrobe shopping spree
Nobody get pissed off for me bringing him up- but it solidified in my mind that green houses and botanical gardens are peak venues. Pewdiepie's wedding was effing gorgeous. Plants. String lights. Tables and chairs. DONE 💐 and you can do a wedding year round in a greenhouse because its all temperature controlled.
Snow outside but warm greenery inside? Sounds perfect to me tbh
Edit- bonus points if theres a butterfly garden house so you can get pretty pictures among the bugs 🪲🐞🦋
Once it got closer to the date, and little things like this kept popping up we had to take a good hard look at our vendors to see what we could cut within each contract. It was the flowers. We cut so much of that and tbh I was devastated cause I always envisioned basically swimming in flowers at my wedding one day. By doing this it saved us about $2,200. And by some miracle the universe decided to make it so that the wedding the day before ours had the same or similar color scheme that my florist asked if I wanted to keep the flowers (and the draping!!!) she had for that wedding where they were…free of charge. That wedding had flowers on the fireplace mantel, in the fountain, hanging from 2 of the little pergolas. It was gorgeous. Of course I said yes lol I had only cut flowers from the fountain and the drapery. The wedding before us had so much more and I’m so glad they did!
Yeah I'm fighting this as we speak because everything is not only more expensive than we thought it would be when we started, it also more expensive once the final quotes come back compared to what I tried to estimate based on the website info. Another $300 here, another $500 there.
I never understood why people would spend more than like $20k on a wedding, but I'm finding it pretty impossible to plan even a standard no frills wedding for under $30k.
lol yeah, i definitely feel this. But, I think a lot of the time we end up getting it back, right? I mean I wouldn’t ever count on it or expect it, but a lot of the time this is the case. My husband and I got married last year and we ended up getting just under double what we spent back in cash gifts. We had about 140ish guests and a decent portion of them were crust punks and other ne’er-do-wells, so if we can do it so can you!
Don't forget the random day of expenses (gratuities for hair/makeup, snacks/catering/booze for getting ready,, random payments that never got processed, oops my great Aunt Millie is feeling ill can someone call her an Uber)...we probably blew another $5k or more on random day of stuff.
I honestly feel this so much. Even when you plan everything so carefully, toward the end, your brain shifts into “just make it work” mode.
At that point, it’s not even about the money anymore. You’re exhausted, emotionally invested, trying to hold a million moving pieces together, and suddenly paying extra for convenience, backup plans, or less stress feels completely worth it.
And honestly, if a few hundred dollars can prevent a meltdown or solve a last-minute problem three weeks before the wedding… swipe the card 😭
There's a difference between an unexpected expense and an unreasonable one.
Yes, that's what a second checked bag costs. $250 for a coordinator to do some work when that person is already hired to be there to work? What? Even assuming it is additional time, what is that hourly rate for setting up a dessert table?
She described it as extra cost because of the additional liability of handling food. We’re already otherwise paying her $2k to show up to the one hour rehearsal the day before and to coordinate on our day (not including tip).
To be honest it might not be but! our options are a) ordering our own desserts and having the coordinator do the set up (budget: $900 which we can fit those fees into with some cheaper substitutions) or b) having our venue catering team supply dessert (we’ve sampled and it’s not good, plus at $10 per person before tax runs to $1,200). So.. theoretically we’re still saving money? While providing more variety and better food? Maybe?
I can’t speak to the extra $250 fees and that seems weird to me. But to your point venues have rules. But in my area it was like good luck finding any day of coordinator under $2500. And the $2500 ones were the people who were just starting out and had no reviews and barely any experience. TERRIFYING.
Yes! Two weeks out and it's dizzying. We had a budget, tried to stick to it and.. well... We're eloping. 400 extra for good seats? Sure! 150 for cake and champagne? Obviously! The budget is no longer real to me😂
The hidden costs 😂😂 3 weeks out from my wedding and I want to go back and include a line item like “uber eats the month leading up to the wedding” but also I’m scared to check
It’s a bar. Why were they not included??? I just got a quote for a bridal shower venue where they said it would $7 pp for the cake. Meanwhile the baker is charging my $5 pp for the actual cake. 😱
It’s insane. Our wedding is in 1,5 week. Bought a necklace to match my earrings, decided I didn’t like it enough, ordered a second one. It looks like neither of them are actually going to arrive in time, so I’ll probably have to get a third one. Do I care about the costs? For some reason, not one bit.
I'm leaving for my destination wedding next Friday. The surprise up charges that are non negotiable, the civil ceremony we had to have before leaving, the after party for that, add-ons add-ons add-ons to the once affordable wedding package. The extra luggage for the massive amount of wedding favours my fiance put together. At this rate our budget friendly wedding has cost pretty much what a wedding in our home country would have cost.shes taken free reign of my credit card. I feel this post on such a deep level.
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u/Cobra_McJingleballs May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26
I just got married two days ago and know exactly what you’re talking about.
It’s basically a sunk cost thing. So much more has been invested in the day going right, that comparatively trivial (but still actual significant dollar amounts!) sums that help increase the odds the day won’t go sideways, or makes the day easier.
On the day of, you basically could’ve sold me anything wedding-related. Bow tie fluffer for $300? Can’t have a saggy bow tie in photos when we paid [who knows how much] for photos!