If you plan on feeding your guests in any kind of manner, this will, without a doubt, be your biggest expense. If your having a wedding with a budget of $20,000 or less, this will probably be at least half your budget. Typically, if you invite more than 100 people, your looking at $10,000 minimum. That’s for tables, chairs, forks, knives, linens, food and serving. Obviously there are major exceptions, like if you have a potluck wedding or grill yourself in a park. Restaurants are also a lot cheaper option. But even the $10,000 Bride Blog had a to put a call out looking for caters who wouldn’t cost more than $10,000(she did have a 120+ people though). And that was previously her whole budget.
The biggest way to save a significant amount of money is to cut your guest list. It will possibly save you hundreds of dollars a person. Obviously some services are not affected by the amount of people to a certain degree(like photography or music, though if your hitting 200 people or more it starts affecting everything). But things like cake, food, reception space, ceremony space, transportation, diy projects, and more all add up very quickly per person.
Going back to the money part, a guest list may be hard to come up with especially if your parents or a significant person in your life is contributing money. So coming up with a guest list(just the two of you) and then talking to others in the family about it is the best course of action.
Easy people to cut:
- Do not say “And Guest” on the RSVP card. My rule was if you have been living with or are in a committed relationship of more than 6 months(and I have met said person) I specifically added their name to their invitation. No confusion.
- We waffled a lot about inviting children. In the end, we specifically invited a handful of children we were close to. We love kids but the idea of letting everyone bring their kids…it was looking like that would add 20 or more people to our guest list. Yikes. Plus, what kid wants to sit still for a 45 minute Jewish Ceremony. Booooooring.
- If I haven’t seen(or talked to) the person in a year- their off the list. Even if I went to their wedding.
Hard people to cut:
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I ended up making a flag book, but went with simple layout. Instead of trying to pack our hundreds of notes into hundreds of handmade mini envelopes, I picked 6 from the 6 years we had been together. The last one was the card Natalie gave me after her proposal.
