$21,814

That is the average cost of a wedding in 2008! It has gone down from around $28,000, which means brides are being more budget conscious.

Find out more about the average cost of weddings in your area by checking out Cost of Wedding. For example, in Arlington where I live this is what came up:

"On average, couples that live in Arlington, VA spend between $38,246 and $63,744 for their wedding. This does not include cost for a honeymoon or engagement ring.

Wedding cost or average spent based on spending of other brides and grooms not wedding vendor prices. Spending and prices can vary widely. You should investigate all options and choose products and services that best meet your needs."

They have a neat breakdown based on the different services one needs or wants like a wedding coordinator, photographer, and DJ.

I wanted a really unique and fantastic venue. All the ones in the DC area that I wanted were way over my budget. Mr. Charleston grew up in WV so we started looking there for more cost effective venues so that we could have the size wedding we wanted for 1/2 the cost. Here is what the website quoted:

"On average, couples that live in Charleston, WV spend between $15,451 and $25,752 for their wedding. This does not include cost for a honeymoon or engagement ring."

Now, I know people have to travel to get there, but even if we had the wedding in the DC area, we had friends and family coming from the Philippines, England, Seattle, California, Las Vegas and all over the East Coast. Only about 1/4 of our guests are coming from the Dc area. In the end this worked out for our budget and for the size and type of wedding we're having. After the cost of the honeymoon, rings, and the entire wedding including the price of all the vendors, supplies, and miscellaneous items we have managed to stay under budget!

This obviously doesn't mean that every bride in the great DC metro area should start running for the hills to get away from high prices. We sacrificed the convenience of getting married in DC in exchange for a bigger wedding with a lot of the small details that we really wanted. Some of my dearest friends got married in DC and sacrificed the size of the wedding in order to have it in a popular venue in the area.

In the end, its about having a fun celebration with your new hubby and your best friends and family. We found a venue and have been able to plan a wedding for half the cost and we are able to have even more friends and family there. To us, having the most important people in our lives at our wedding is worth the drive:-)

Have you had to make compromises in terms of where you had your wedding and what you had at your wedding? How strict was your budget?

Wedding Yard Sale?

Well, Hello there Ladies!

I totally promise to get back to my post about my vintage bohemian chic wedding, but this past week has been out of control. I sent out my save the dates (YAY! Post about those soon to come) and I am in the midst of working on my Family Law exam. I did, however, have a question to put out there to you wonderfully smart and thrifty Metro DC soon-to-be brides...

I have been conversing with a local bride to be that I met through The Knot about sharing the cost of paper lanterns. I also posted some Polaroid film I have been hoarding on Ebay in an effort to make some extra cash. As I mentioned in a previous post, I AM CHEAP. So, I have been working on trying to find ways to save money on EVERY aspect of this wedding, even if its just a few dollars here and there.

I was browsing The Knot this morning and saw several posts from local women selling their wedding goods and then a light bulb went off in my head *DING* Wouldn't it be neat to have a wedding yard sale? Local brides and recently married ladies could come to the same place, at the same time, on the same date and trade, buy or sell goods to one another. Win. Win. Right?

What do you all think? I was thinking about a place in DC that is free to use and already has tables/benches, like Rock Creek Park, on a Sunday afternoon (because we all have weddings to attend on Saturdays). I was thinking...hmmm...late August? Does anyone know if a permit is needed for something like this? Feedback is totally appreciated, Ladies (even if you think the idea is crazy)!

Hello from...Miss National Mall?

"Miss Rockville" here! Only, I was apparently supposed to me "Miss National Mall" but never got the memo. Oops! So, I changed my name, but don't worry, it's still me. :)

Planning for a wedding without actually having money is well...difficult. Due to the fact that I just graduated, I currently do not have a job. Looking, definitely looking, but nothing has come up yet. So until I get a job (or someone decides they want to give a generous contribution to our wedding fund), planning is pretty much at a halt. However, since I've been engaged for THREE FREAKIN YEARS now, I pretty much have all of the inspiration, ideas, and lists of vendors that I want to look at. So at least there shouldn't be much research involved.

First on the list (besides my long venue search) is catering. Mr. National Mall does not like fancy food. If I would allow him to serve McDonald's at our wedding he would. Seriously. Add to the fact that our budget for the venue/catering/rentals is $10,000, we can't afford to spend $100/person on filet mignon and lobster, even if Mr. Natioanl Mall did want it. So we've decided to opt for interactive stations. I think it will make for a fun and casual experience. Plus, who doesn't love fajitas and a macaroni and cheese bar? ;-) I've gotten a few proposals from companies that are a little shocking though. $80/pp for fajitas and a carving station? Really?? I might just have to deal with the fact that the DC area is just ridiculously expensive and buckle down and pay for it. But do I want to?? Noooooo way.

How did you deal with the sticker shock of the DC area prices?

Don't Forget!

Don't forget about the upcoming postage increase on May 11, 2009! The price for regular ol' stamps will rise to 44 cents. If you're sending out your invitations soon and your response date is after May 11, be sure you've got the right amount of postage on your response envelopes.

Forever Stamps can be purchased NOW for the current postage rate of 42 cents and will be good...forever! Maybe it's not the prettiest stamp on the block (sorry Liberty Bell) but I know for me it would be worth the piece of mind to know I had the right amount of postage no matter what!

Even though our invitations don't go out until August, and we'll be free and clear of the increase rate, I plan to purchase enough Forever stamps before the increase to use on our response envelopes. Hey, it might only save me 3cents per envelope, but with 58 response envelopes, that's $11 I can spend on something else!

Have you thought about your postage situation? What's your plan?

Prioritizing

I got an email from my aunt today telling me my cousin couldn't be my junior bridesmaid. Apparently with all of her dozens of sports camps blah blah blah, they can't afford to come down for it.

I'm a little, nay, a lot hurt. This is my favorite aunt, and my favorite cousin. The only cousin on my father's side that I bothered to invite simply because I have too many cousins.

I understand, I mean the economy is tough and money is tight. I just got laid off myself (on the six months till the big day day no less!) so you don't need to preach to me about not having dough, blah blah blah. I'm about to go file for unemployment today, and thinking about how we're going to pay for the wedding after all this makes my stomach hurt. I'm sure a few of you can relate.

In lieu of all this, I've made a mental note of what can be sacrificed. Flowers are getting nixed - I'll likely be doing everything myself sans the alter flowers, and the centerpieces. I'm not a big flowers person anyhow, I want to spend that money on other things like our honeymoon to either Ireland, Spain or Italy (still being debated). The Church, reception site are all pretty much set costs, I've been dragging my feet on finalizing the vendors, we've been fighting with the hotel room block for a couple weeks now. I'll probably do the invitations myself, especially with all this free time on my hands.

My mother suggested I just "plan my wedding full time." Riiiiiiight mom. 'Cause I can afford that....I understand that there are many brides who definitely feel that it could be a full time job and maybe in three months I'll feel the same but right now? M'eh.

Recently, I read in the Wall Street Journal that the average cost of a wedding is down from $28,000 to $21,000. We're looking to keep our budget at about $16,000. Shortly after getting engaged a friend of mine told she'd be surprised if we could have the wedding for under $20k. Of course hers was $50k at a high end hotel in Boston paid for by her parents...so the comparison is a little unfair. Still $16k is a decent chunk of change, but with our guest list and "must invite" people, it was hard to get much lower than that - especially in DC. There are tons of ways to cut back costs, but which ones are really worth it? At what point do you sacrifice quality for something budget friendly??

So freaders, what are you doing to cut back costs? If you or your Fiance have been recently laid off how are you accounting for that money if you're paying for the wedding yourself?

Say "I Do" to the Open Bar

This beer's all ready for the black-tie wedding!
from beeradvocate.com

I am fortunate in life to have wonderful friends with many and sundry unique talents such that I never want for advice or assistance when life presents me a problem. Helping me with all my alcohol problems (haha, beer humor) is my friend and bridesmaid, A. Not only is she a beer enthusiast, but also a beer professional as she works for a national distributor bringing delicious beverages to your favorite watering holes. She asked if she could share some of her knowledge with all of you via a guest post and I jumped on the opportunity...so without further ado:

Dearest DCNearlyweds,

I am a bridesmaid in Miss Fairfax’s wedding next October, and have really enjoyed reading all of your posts these past few months (every workday needs a distraction!) There was one post in particular, from Miss Gallery Place, about her concern over providing an open bar on a small budget. Let’s be honest, weddings are less fun without open bars. I myself have been to five weddings already this year (with another one this Sunday!) and belieeeeeve me, nothing says “I Don’t” like paying for drinks.

BUT FEAR NOT!

Not only am I a bridesmaid, but I also work for a beer distributor here in DC and do lots of event planning. And when I read Miss Gallery Place’s post – I begged Miss Fairfax to let me provide everyone with a little beer math in the hopes that at least some of your wedding planning pains might be eased. The main question you have to ask is – do I want liquor at this event, or just beer and wine? I personally think that liquor is a little trickier (and makes guests a little sloppier). But here’s a suggestion:

My boyfriend’s sister got married last year - and they just went to the ABC store in Maryland (go there, it’s cheaper because alcohol isn’t regulated by the state like it is in VA and NC) and bought x-dollars worth of liquor and told the bartenders at the reception to pour until it ran out. After that, you were out of luck. They also had light beer (Miller Lite cans).* And they didn’t run out. There was a small corkage fee at the reception hall, but nothing compared to the total cost of allowing a reception hall to run your open bar. Yikes.

Now, if you’re just into beer and wine, think of it like this:

The estimate I came up with is based on Miss Gallery Place’s 80 person count, this can be adjusted for your guest count, and a budget of $800.00.

If there are 80 wedding guests in attendance, and you are also serving wine, assume about 50 guests will drink beer. Be generous with your guests (especially the guys) and assume that everyone will have a maximum 6 drinks apiece. Therefore:

50 guests x 6 drinks = 300 drinks

300 drinks / 24 (beers in a case) = approx. 13 cases (I rounded up)

The five most common beers served at any reception are Miller Lite, Yuengling, Corona, Blue Moon, and Sam Adams Lager. Twelve-packs of these brands should be available for under $15.99 in the District (Corona has the lowest pricing here in DC than in any other market in the country) and in some cases will be even less (like $10.99 per twelve-pack).** For the sake of math let’s say you buy 26 12-packs (13 cases) in an assortment of flavors:

26 (12-packs) x $15.99 (per case) = $415.74

$415.74 + $37.42 (9% sales tax) = $453.16

This leaves you roughly $350.00 of your $800 budget for wine and non-alcoholic beverages (if that isn’t already included in your per-plate total). Harris Teeter carries an excellent white Mediterranean wine for about $6.99 and Trader Joe’s has a great red wine (a cab-sauv mix) for $5.99 a bottle.***

The conclusion to this novella of a post? Open bars are soooo do-able, and for relatively cheap. I hope this helps – good luck everyone!

*Don't dis the can! It's the perfect excuse to offer your guests the wedding favor of choice for all the young prepsters down south, the WEDDING KOOZIE! And as my dear friend who has quite a collection advised me, "don't forget to order enough to give out at all your showers, engagement parties, and reception and also send the whole bridal party home with 15 after the wedding."Koozie and matching programs from clared23 on flickr

**While Costco is not always cheaper, doing a price comparison with your local grocery store can be worthwhile. Costco is also a great place to get your N/A bevs like water and soda.

***If you have a neighborhood wine shop, check them out too. They may be able to assist you by finding a distributor that supplies a wine you like at a price point that fits your budget. We love Unwind in Alexandria, and have already been in to talk to Vanessa about wines. She's going to help us find wine and Champagne at our price point. More on this later...

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I've been working on budget estimates with a couple of local florists and discovered that I've had to think a little bit more specifically on exactly the look I want to achieve with flowers. Before, I was thinking, "lots of pretty flowers!" but now I need to think about the kind of arrangements I want.

Centerpieces are the big budget-buster. A big, high-end centerpiece will cost you a lot of money (in big cities, sometimes almost $300!), and if you have a lot of tables and want to put multiple centerpieces on a table, that's going to add up really quickly.

Fortunately for my budget, I am not a big fan of high floral centerpieces. I just find them overwhelming.

(photo credit: Flowers with Feeling)

Besides, a centerpiece like that would totally overwhelm the reception space.

I do really like low, clustered centerpieces like this:

(photo credit Loop)

The thing is, you'd probably need a number of arrangements like this on a long table for it to have much impact.

(photo credit: Style Me Pretty)

I think that look is gorgeous, and achievable, I think, through relatively inexpensive flowers.

Then, of course, Mr. C-Ville had to pipe up. "I don't like hydrangea," he opined (and of course, the florist we were considering gave me all kinds of cool ideas to do with hydrangea), "and I think we should have lots of little flowers in vases all along the table." I guess he means something like this:

(photo credit; Pat's Floral Designs)

But these are spring flowers and we are getting married in the fall, so we'll have to figure out how to achieve this look with fall flowers. I'm hoping that maybe we can combine the two looks.

Wedding Budget Theory

Sounds like advanced math course at MIT to me!

Before I got engaged, I was already a little (totally) tuned in to wedding-planning-land. I "let" myself look at wedding websites, and I let myself cruise the wedding mags at B&N (but I never bought!! I swear). In all my browsing and pre-engagement planning I started to pick up on was the different ways in which couples designed their budgets. After getting engaged and conducting further research, I've come to conclusion that there are two main theories of wedding budgeting.

1) The Guest List theory.

This theory, the so-called guest list theory, is known as such because it involves basing your budget on your guest list...oh wait, was that totally obvious because of the name? The idea is that if you know you MUST have certain people at your wedding, you figure out what those numbers add up to and decide what you can do based on that number. In other words, if there is not way you're getting away without inviting the 17 cousins on your mom's side AND all their kids, you might use this.

We tried this at first. I think I only made it two weeks after our engagement before I had Mr. Fairfax sitting in front of an Excel spreadsheet, with me saying, "ok if you could invite everyone you ever wanted at your wedding, who would it be?" We knew we had a pretty limited budget, so we thought if we figured out who we absolutely had to have, the guest count + the budget could dictate the wedding we'd have. I think this is how weddings like the picnic in the park or dessert buffet weddings happen (Mmm, dessert. BUFFET!). If you only have to have 15 people and you've got ten grand, awesome--ten course tasting menus and a live bands all around! If you must have a 150 and have ten grand, you might figure out the best way to throw a party that size with what you've got.

This theory worked for us for about 10 minutes. That's how long it to me to remember I don't actually like huge parties, I'm more the intimate cocktail party type. In the time it took Mr. Fairfax to fetch me a paper bag to breath into (yes the thought of a huge wedding was that scary!), we had moved onto budget theory two.

2) The "Pick the Elements Most Important to You and Spend Your Money on That" Theory.
Pretty sure the names says it all there. We talked about what we really enjoyed at other weddings, what our already married friends and family members had said, "yes, we are glad we did that" about their own weddings, and what we like in general. We came up with three items:

• Food: We are definitely foodies. Having delicious food that we like is important to us.
• Booze: We are definitely boozie...I mean, appreciative of fine wine and delicious drinks! We want to be able to serve a nice wine, preferably one of our fave varietals, and a nice beer at our reception. We're thinking we might even go here and make our own!
  
• Photography: We were so impressed with the photographs from the Big Sister's wedding we knew we wanted a great photographer. What sealed the deal further on this was having a married friend express her regret at letting "Uncle Bob," family photographer extraordinaire, photograph her wedding. She ended up without any pictures of the grooms family...whoops.
  

Since we knew we would have limited amount to spend on our wedding, we knew focusing our budget in this manner would require having a smaller party. But that's what we were most comfortable with anyway so this worked for us.

It's been helpful in making other decisions along the way because we felt we had some areas, like food, were we felt we could splurge a bit. It's helped us keep our spending in check and just say no with other elements of the wedding because we've already identified our priorities.

Did you have a budget theory? How did you design your budget?