How much is too much?
The average American wedding costs about $28-30k. (The stats vary depending on where you look). My parents gave me a set amount of money to use for my wedding, and my goal is to only spend half of it. This means that my budget is well under the national average.
Now, honestly, I think $30k is a crazy amount of money to spend on a wedding. The sad truth is, however, that as soon as you say the word “wedding” prices start to go up because vendors assume you’re going to be some crazy perfectionist freak who will likely cry over floral arrangements and scream about chair covers. Which because I am a bride (weiiiird) I will, of course.
Anders and I are going a very nontraditional route with our wedding. The details are boring, but basically the reception is in a nightclub and we are likely going to have a separate (very small) ceremony in a location TBD. So far my favorites are San Francisco City Hall:
and The Hamilton’s Sun Deck:
Both of these venues have severe size restrictions. At City Hall you can “officially” bring six guests with you (sometimes they allow more. I think it depends on who is officiating that day). At The Hamilton we can bring twelve.
City Hall is the cheaper option, of course, but there is something so appealing to me about getting married on a rooftop. There are caveats, of course - my grandparents would not be able to come, the rental fee is a little pricey, and the venue seems…sort of strict. I wanted to be able to take pictures in their courtyard before the ceremony and the marketing director told me that would be fine unless someone else rents out the lobby on the same day. Their lobby is gorgeous and Art Deco to the max, I just find it super-weird and annoying that they rent it out for weddings, especially since part of the appeal of the place was being able to take pictures in areas I had perceived as public places. (I mean, seriously. This is a condo building! Who wants to live in a building where the lobby gets rented out on a semi-regular basis?)
So now I’m looking for other rooftop venues and the rental prices are all ridiculous because most rooftops in San Francisco are attached to hotels. So the question is, do I go over budget? It IS my wedding, after all. Special, once in a lifetime and all that. How much does having the effing rooftop really matter, in the long run? Should I just suck it up and have the ceremony at the reception site as planned?
All this just really sets me to thinking about the price of weddings in general and whether or not I’m “cheating” myself out of a wedding by wanting to be frugal-ish about it. Do you really need seating charts and place settings? Is the taco truck, as my mother fears, “too cheap”? Is having tequila shots instead of champagne for the toast indeed “trashy”? And even if the answers to these questions are yes, should I care?
