Wedding Budget Percentages and Why I Hate Them

Do you want the AVERAGE wedding?

You can read just about any bridal magazine and they are going to have an article on what percentage of your wedding budget should be spent on the ceremony, the food, dress, music, flowers, etc. These numbers are based on "averages". Bully for them. They filled another couple of pages in their magazine and made it look like an even better buy for your money because it is so big.

It's bull crap! Don't let some magazine tell you where to spend your money. Think about what is the very most important thing to you (other than finding the perfect spouse). Have you always dreamed of a wedding with tons of flowers? Well, then get married in a garden or spend a larger share of your budget on flowers and less on something else.


Don't skimp either.

Twenty years ago Scott and I thought we would save money so we didn't hire a professional photographer. We bought a bunch of disposables and trusted our friends to take plenty of pictures. Big mistake. We have no wedding photos with his mother in them and only one shot of his dad. No formal shots with the whole family together. Didn't seem like such a big deal at the time but looking back I really wish we had gone the formal route. Scott's mother died five years ago and my brother passed away last September.

So think about what is not only important to you now; but, what will be important in 10 or 20 years.

Percentages can be misleading

A bridal magazine suggests that your wedding dress, his tux, and misc. items be 17% of the budget. I was way out of whack on that one. We bought a brand new business suit for Scott including shoes. Together they cost more than my dress, undergarments, and shoes. Our clothing cost 26% of our budget. But today he can still wear both his suit and shoes so it was a wise decision. My dress was off the discontinued sales rack plus I got a 25% employee discount.

Okay let's look at the percentages for my wedding.

1. Clothing and miscellaneous 32% - magazine suggested percentage 17%
2. Reception (venue, food, decor) 13% - suggested 39%
3. Ceremony (venue, officiant, license) 4% - suggested 3%
4. Photographer 2% - suggested 12%
5. Invitations 5% - suggested 3%
6. Wedding rings 11% - suggested 4%
7. Flowers 3% and about ten hours in time - suggested 5%
8. Wedding planner 0% - suggested 8%
9. Honeymoon 30% - suggested 12%

So what caused my wedding to be so different from the averages? Scott and I married in a local public park at 2PM in the afternoon. Our reception in the same location consisted of finger foods, cake, punch, a volleyball set-up, Nerf footballs, incredible music and ended at 5PM. The flowers consisted of silk bouquets for myself and my matron of honor and boutonnieres for Scott and his best man. I wasn't really into the flowers all that much so my sister and I bought the silks and made them ourselves. As I mentioned we made a mistake not hiring a professional for the photographs. In retrospect we would have spent a little more money to get a professional photographer.

As a special event coordinator I was my own wedding coordinator and Scott is a professional disc jockey so he arranged for our music. Our honeymoon. We actually had two honeymoons. Three days immediately after the wedding at a mountain retreat just the two of us. A month later we joined 13 family members on a houseboat for a week on Lake Powell. We also took an additional week leisurely driving down to Lake Powell and back from our home in Colorado.

We spent the money on memories rather than locations, food, or flowers. The total cost of our wedding was about $1500.00. Remember, this was 20 years ago. :)

What part of your wedding is most important to you?