we got our budget

[cs2sgrl]

We got our buget minus the floral because the florist and I have not had a chance to talk. Now my DF and I are looking for ways to cut costs.. We are having pictures done in the castle at 5am the day after our wedding and everyone tells us that we shouldnt cut this out.. I dont know what we should cut out..

 

[ahutton]

Can you give a brief overview of what your budget came in at and where you are trying to get it? Maybe we can help find places to cut that will be less visable?

 

[hmgolden]

We cut a few things to keep us under budget:

We did a sparking cider toast rather then a champagne toast. We had a fair amount of under 21 guests, and most of our guests aren't big into champagne anyway. And some of them didn't even notice!

We also scaled down our cocktail hour. Kept it to cheese and crackers, fruits and vegetables, stuff like that. I wanted to make sure people still had room for the dinner that we were serving! Again, no one noticed, and we did get a lot of compliments on the cocktail hour food too.

We didn't give out favors. We decided to put that money into doing an Illuminations Dessert Party. The dessert party was definitely more memorable then any favor we could have given.

HTH. Like Ahutton said, if you give us more details as to what you are doing, we can give you specific ideas on what to cut. We did the MK photo shoot 2 days after our wedding. I'm glad we did it, but I am a huge Princess nut and there was no way I was going to pass up that chance! If you aren't so attached to MK, you could do an EPCOT photo shoot, I believe that is a couple hundred dollars cheaper. Or do a honeymoon photo shoot in MK. You don't get to wear your bridal atire, but it is a great way to get some fun pictures of you in MK, for $295 rather then $700.

 

[Ever_After]

We also cut out one appetizer for the pre-recption, forgo the champagne cost (the guest will raise whatever drink they have), cut out one character, chose a cheaper dessert for the dessert party, I am also considering cutting out a limo for a town car, but our biggest cut was the reception centerpieces. We saved almost $140.00 per centerpiece for 11 tables.

I am also having the dessert party and MK portraits~ I couln't part with it.

hmgolden, I like your pic under your name~ that looks like a cool picture!! Congrats on your wedding.

 

[hmgolden]

Thanks Ever_After! That picture was taken during our dessert party on the Italy Isola. It poured rain like I have never seen before that night. But we still had an absolute blast. It was worth having to dry my dress with a blow dryer the next evening to dry it out and have it ready for the MK photos!

 

[cs2sgrl]

Thanks for all of the advice. Tonight I am heading over to see my future sister in law, who is an event coordiantor. She is going to see what she can do. We are having the sparkling cider, but I think I might cut that out as well since we will have an open bar at both the cocktail hour and reception and I dont think I can part with the MK photshoot even though it is at 5am. We are not having a lavish cocktail hour and I am making our favors. I think what really kills us are the photo packages. We havent even heard from Floral yet but our EM wanted us to have a preliminary budget...

 

[marn913]

If you are having an open bar make sure to do it "billed on consumption" rather than the hourly package. This option was not listed on our bar options page -- you have to ask for it specifically. This way you will only pay for the drinks that are actually consumed by each guest. We factored in 4 drinks/guest at $5/drink into our budget, and had open bar for our cocktail hour and whole reception. The total bar tab for 35 guests (who drank a lot) was about $750. It would have been about $1400+ to have the premium open bar for 5 hours and each guest would have had to have about 8 drinks to consume enough to cover the $40/person charge of the hourly bar cost! This is a good option and will save you a lot - but they don't openly offer it since they make a lot more money off the hourly packages! Like some of the other posters mentioned, you may also want to cut back appetizers at your cocktail hour. Most likely the bridal party will miss most of the hour and you and your husband will probably miss the whole thing while you take pictures after the wedding. We arrived just as the hour ended. Also, the plated meal that we had was HUGE! So keep in mind that you don't have to provide a huge feast during the cocktail hour, most will be filled up by the meal and the cake! We also chose to do the caracture artist (~$500) instead of a DJ.. this worked well for us because most of our guests were either single or older and my husband and I are not big dancers. Instead we brought a great Frank Sinatra CD and small CD player ($20 at Target) and they set it up near a microphone that piped the music throughout the Living Seas Lounge. This eliminated the $1100 DJ cost, and our guests went home with really cool souvenier pictures from the artist. Considering the time that we would have had for dancing, I couldn't justify the cost.
Floral is another place that you can cut costs. Ask your florist about alternate flowers that may be in the same color family, but less costly. I had lisianthus (spelled wrong), instead of roses in my bouquet. We also opted for floating candle centerpieces (~$18/each) instead of floral centerpieces for the reception. We used flower petals throughout the wedding and reception because it was cheaper than straight floral arrangements but still added a burst of the colors from our wedding.
In the end our total bill for wedding/reception with champagne toast and open bar/floral (not including photography from Randy Chapman) came in at ~10,000 exactly. Good luck planning.

-Marne
06-16-03
WP/LS