Couples spend more than $55,000,000 each year right here in Roanoke, VA for weddings, it’s a BIG business for many venues, vendors, and professionals and while that seems like a lot of money, the truth is many vendors barely squeak by each year.

Today, we want to dive a little bit into the local wedding market and provide you some data that you can chew on when it comes to spending those BIG bucks here in Virginia.

The data we collected come from two data sources, The Wedding Report and the Virginia Department of Vitals.

Wedding Clothing for the Couple

Here in Roanoke, couples spent more than $2,390,578 in wedding dresses in 2018 and thats a LOT of money!

With more than 2,033 weddings that year 1,931 purchased some form of a wedding dress from a shop either locally or nationally. (94% purchased a dress)

The average cost of a wedding dress comes out to an average of $1,242 and that doesn’t include a tux for the groom or any of the accessories for the wedding dress either, which we will dive into in a moment.

Grooms on the other hand in the region mostly rented a tux from one of those shops and the overall cost for the men was much cheaper at just under $200.

For those accessories which include a headpiece, veils, shoes, lingerie, a handbag, garter, and the like, well that number is a bit more than the groom’s rental at $227. Of course, you also have hair, makeup, and a manicure, pedicure too and those add up fast.

Just for the couple’s clothing for the day, in our area of Virginia, you’re looking at $1,817 and that doesn’t include alterations in any way.

How Much Do Couples Spend on Wedding DJs in the Roanoke area?

There are a ton of great wedding DJ’s in the region, many of them I’ve personally worked with over the years and love what they do.

With that, roughly 1,464 couples hired a professional DJ which is about 80% of the marketplace.

Of those couples, they spend collective an average of $1,057,008 in 2018 and breaking that down, it’s about $722 per couple that was spent on music services.

Let’s look at the numbers with the chart over the last 10 years.

Those numbers don’t include extras like lighting or ceremony services, which can add about $530 to the overall cost ($327 for lighting and $200 extra for the ceremony) and costs will vary from company to company but remember, these are averages based on past couples data collected.

A couple of things to note here, of the couples that choose not to have a DJ, some had a live band or soloist for the afternoon.

Those costs were different, a live band at the wedding can cost on average about $1,659 for our region, and a soloist or ensemble cost closer to the DJ price at about $600.

Nationally, wedding DJ’s cost about $278 more, at about $1,000 according to Wedding Wire.

What About Wedding Flowers and Bouquet Costs?

Wedding flowers are some of the best things I love about weddings, form the way they smell to the how they are arranged with the colors of the wedding mixed into the arrangements, flowers help set the overall tone of the wedding day.

Couples in 2018 spend big on flowers and here is a little bit of collective data on that.

Regrading bouquets, the average costs to make them for a wedding in Roanoke was about $346.

Boutonnieres on the other than were a bit cheaper coming in at an average of $154 while the reception center pieces were higher at $455.

In all, couples spent about $955 on flowers for the wedding day and there are a couple of noted here to look at.

The average number is base don the collective number, so if you break things down with flowers, not all couples even purchased them.

Those that did, 32% of those couples spent less than $100 while 7.7% of couples in SWVA spent more than $1,000 for their arrangements.

One number that we didn’t include was extras like flower pieces for the event itself near the DJ, sometimes at an wedding arbor or added areas like gift tables, food tables, etc.

Couples that added those things spent on average another $620 in costs to complete the wedding reception and ceremony although roughly 39% of couples purchased any additional flowers.

Wedding Photography Costs and What to expect to pay in Roanoke?

While you can find all sorts of rice ranges of wedding photography as well as experience here in our region, you can expect to pay about $1,573 for a single wedding photographer for the day.

According to the Wedding Report, that fee just covers the fee and not the extras like photo albums, second shooters and engagement shoot too, just something to keep in the back of your mind when thinking about photography pricing.

The wedding video cousins to photography saw an average of 33-36% less while the overall cost of wedding video gear has increased in recent years with things like drones, sliders, and gimbals.

The average cost of a wedding video in the marketplace seems to be right around $1,050, far less than the national average of $1,799.

For those couples that opted to have a second shooter for the day, an average cost of $1,135 more was added to that overall cost bringing the total cost to $2,708 while those that simply added wedding video to their wedding photographer combined costs on average $2,617.

What Wedding planning services cost in Roanoke?

When it comes to the wedding planner, we have a couple of points of data to share and those include the “day-of” wedding coordination, as well as the full-service wedding planning, the a la carte services, and of course the getting, started wedding planning services. They all seem to range in various price points and that’s because of the amount of work they do for each category.