While most large websites will tell you that the average cost of a wedding hovers in the neighborhood of about $33,000 to $35,000, the truth is, that’s VERY misleading.

Today, Carole and I want to explain what the best amount to spend on the wedding day is and how to best achieve that number.

The Right Amount to Spend

I’m going to level with you 100% here, the truth is you don’t need a large budget, in fact, you can get married for just a couple hundred bucks, maybe even less.

You don’t need a venue, you don’t need a photographer or videographer like my wife and me, you don’t need food or a large number of guests, you really don’t need any of that.

Just hop in the car down to your local Justice-of-the-Peace, fill out a form or two and you’re pretty much set. Aside from perhaps an officiant, perhaps some very basic wedding bands, you truly don’t need to spend a large amount of money.

So, the real question is, why do we in the first place?

Well, it’s truthfully a combination of things, some tradition, some of its business-oriented and some of it, well, peer pressure. Your friend had an over-the-top day, perhaps as a little girl, you dreamed about your perfect day and that’s carried you through now.

No matter what the deciding factors are, believe it or not, you can still have a great wedding day and spend less than $35,000.

A lot less.

The numbers that you see are pretty far off from what most couples tend to actually spend and I’ll provide you those numbers in just a bit, but first, I want to help educate you a bit.

(Scroll to the bottom if you just want the direct answer)

That number is a combination of all the regions in the US where weddings tend to be much more expensive than 79% of the rest of the nation.

Tradition

Tradition is one of those things where your mom and dad did it, so did their parents and perhaps their parents did too.

Take wedding photos, you have them because it’s tradition.

Your parents and grandparents most likely had a photographer and maybe your great grandparents did too.

They did it because it was a way to capture the family at the wedding, not so much the wedding itself, but that changed as time went closer to today.

I want you to look at something new to the wedding industry, Save-The-Date’s, and live streaming.

STD’s or save the dates are new, they’re a trend that started about 12 years ago and the idea is to inform everyone that a wedding, your wedding will be taking place sometime in the future.

Well, that’s an added cost to the line items on the budget.

Truth be told, you could just send out emails, perhaps set up a free website, but you certainly don’t need to spend a couple of hundred bucks on something that will be stuck on the fridge for a year then forgotten about, tossed in the trashcan after your vows.

Live streaming is another example of a recent line item that generally costs money.

While it does save you money in the long run by doing a live stream (fewer guests means less catering, beer, and cake costs), it’s kind of pointless if everyone you wanted at the wedding is there in person.

It does make sense if you have friends and family that can’t attend, however.

Business Tells You So

Sometimes wedding industry experts tell you that you NEED to do it in order to have the perfect wedding day.

Since roughly the 1920s, businesses started cashing in on the wedding industry with white dresses, engagement rings and setting a standard that the middle-class sought after, a dream day wedding.

Today, magazines, TV shows, vendors, and the internet have all set the stage that in order to have a perfect day, you need perfection. You see these grandiose images of everything white, everything picture-perfect, but most times weddings are nothing like that in real life.

Honestly, the perfect wedding day is one with you, your soon-to-be, and the people that are most important around you, not having a certain number of flowers or the right kind of venue that can hold 500 people.

Let me tell you something that some may find offensive, of the 519 weddings I’ve done in my career, not a single one was perfect.

Nope, not a one.

From the $100,000 weddings to the couple thousand dollar ones, SOMETHING didn’t go according to plan.

Maybe it was the flower girl, she dumped all the flowers at first or started crying, maybe the DJ skipped something or maybe the wedding photographer took 15 minutes longer than scheduled, something ALWAYS creeps up and nothing is magazine perfect.

Peer Pressure

And speaking of people, many couples will go over the top to “keeping up with the Jone’s” if you will, someone's wedding was glamorous and you want that too, we all do.

Why do you think brands like Nike, Apple, and Starbucks do so well? It’s because they have brands that people want. I myself drool over the latest camera gear and my wife Carole is right along with me, we want the best of the best, everyone does.

My best and your best, however, can vary.

If your friend has an amazing wedding, it will make you want that amazing wedding plus more, it’s just human nature. There is nothing wrong with that at all, in fact, you should be happy for your friends that have an over-the-top day, but just because they had it, doesn’t mean you should too, you do what makes you happy with your wedding.

It’s all About Education

If you follow us as a regular on the blog, then you know we don’t showcase a lot of our own work on the blog itself, rather we educate couples just like you on how BEST to save money.

That doesn’t mean you should skip on the important things like a venue, food, a photographer, videographer, and the like, but what it does mean, is that through smart shopping, smart thinking, you can have the wedding day of your dreams and not be broke in the process.

It means book vendors, products, and services within your budget, not what your friends paid up the street.

The wedding industry as a whole is designed around one simple theme in mind, trying to create that perfect day that you’ve been thinking about all your life, or, at least some version of that.

Some vendors in the marketplace prey on the fact that it’s a wedding, your wedding in fact and that’s one of the reasons you sometimes see vendors far out of your budget range, but not all take advantage of couples.

My good friend Bob Johnston is a great vendor that educates couples on what they truly need rather than overselling.

His property, Silver Hearth Lodge is a 40-acre wedding campus on top of a mountain made up of several smaller venues and he does two things very well, listens to the couple, and only offers things that they need, not overcharge for things they don’t need.

But let me provide you with a couple of secrets about our industry.

First, no matter how much or how little you have to spend on a wedding category, there is usually a vendor (or vendors) that will fit that budget.

Just because someone down the street paid $5,000 for their wedding photographer doesn’t mean you need to as well.

In fact, many of you reading this have it set in your minds that the more expensive a vendor is, the better they are, but truthfully, that’s not the case.

They have those rates because they are going after a select demographic, much like the automobile industry.

Take BMW or Mercedes-Benz for example. Those are higher-end brands that tend to cost a lot because of their names and the experience they offer with those brands.

But the truth is they are not any better at getting you from point A to B than a Toyota, Hyundai, or Honda. In fact, those more average cars are more reliable, offer similar luxuries like leather, GPS, and sunroofs, with many of the same features as a high-end brand.

What may be affordable to you, may not be affordable to the couple down the street, so like the car industry, there is a wide spectrum of vendor classifications.

Those classifications are budget vendors, mid-range vendors, high-end vendors, and luxury vendors. Some of us overlap and others are very specific in whom they target with regards to their wedding day.

That doesn’t make one better than the other, but it does affect some basic principles, like the experience you get, the end result that you get, and the like too.

Someone with 5 years under their belt will make fewer mistakes than someone with 2 years and someone with 20 years or more will make even fewer mistakes, like Carole and me for example.

So, What’s the Right Answer?

Truthfully, the answer is how much you can afford to pay for your wedding day.

That number maybe $50,000, $33,000, perhaps its $17,500, $500 or $3,500.

Not every wedding vendor will fit your mold and that’s perfectly okay.

Taking us as an example, we tend to cater to couples that are spending roughly $20,000 to $30,000 on the wedding, those that want $5,000 but can only afford $3,000, and those that see the massive amount of value that we provide.

Sure, we don’t typically follow the ‘light and airy” mold that everyone’s jumped on in the last 10 years, but that’s just a trend, and trends fade, and another one will pop up and take its place. We are a bit different, we’d rather you hire someone you can afford than booking us and go into debt.

Not everyone likes what we offer and that’s okay.

And quite honestly, we purposely keep our pricing on the lower end, we could be charging $4,500 for what we do, but we don’t. We understand weddings are expensive, so we make them as affordable as we can without cutting corners.

My point however is this, pay what you can afford and stop looking at others and what they did, the extra stuff they paid, and definitely don’t get into debt with the seal of a kiss.

The Most Important Key to your Wedding, the Budget

Figuring out how much the both of you will spend, how it will be paid for overtime, and actually sticking to that budget within reason is going to determine if you have a great day or one that’s stressful and just for show.

We have a wedding budget tool that can help break down the overall costs. (Or just scroll back up to it)

Sit down and have a real conversation about the money.

Perhaps you will move in together in order to save money. Perhaps you’re taking on a second job or maybe you will live off one income and use the other for the wedding.

I’ve had couples that have parents that sometimes help with a bit of it, others that got personal loans to cover the expenses.

What I will tell you is that most couples in the United States tended to spend much closer to $24,000 than the $33,000 WeddingWire and theKnot were spitting out, that number comes from The Wedding Report.

The Problem With The Wedding Industry

I’ve seen a HUGE change in the wedding industry over the years.

Everyone that’s anyone wants to try and cash in on weddings, but roughly 14% of the businesses today will still be in business 4-5 years from now.

Today, the biggest problem within the industry is two-fold, vendors don’t always listen to couples and their needs and the industry tried to dictate what they should be spending, using emotion as a way to tug at the pocketbook.

It wasn’t always that way, at least when I started videotaping weddings in the 1990’s.

To couples, they sometimes see vendors as sharks circling their rowboat and with good cause.

Most couples simply don’t know what they want or how much they should be spending, so they turn to a given vendor that tries to sell them on the most expensive line item possible.

Other times couples will make an online post and without reading the entire post, they drop their name into it in hopes they will get contracted, hey, I’m guilty of that at times too.

Not everyone in the industry is out to get your money, but yes, some are.

One of the BIGGEST complaints couples had when it came to vendors is that they simply don’t listen to the couple’s needs.

This Important Takeaway

I want you to understand that it’s not how much or how little you spend on the wedding day, it’s the celebration with friends, loved ones and close family that’s important.

Some of the most expensive weddings I’ve covered in my career ($147,000) were extremely stressful for all involved while backyard BBQ weddings for $5,000-$6,000 were some of the best weddings I’ve been to.

It’s not the money that you spend, but it’s the memories that you create, and that my friends is the absolute truth.