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$15k is tough, unless you are willing to just skip stuff or have a very small guest list. Around here, if you can get out of the venue rental / catering for less than a $100 pp all in, you're doing a great job. That doesn't give a lot of money for DJ, photographer, dress, flowers etc. It's amazing how quickly a reasonable $40-50 per person food quote turns into a much higher number once you add alcohol, service, tax, rentals.
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Feb 15, 2015 16:04
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smackfu posted:$15k is tough, unless you are willing to just skip stuff or have a very small guest list. Around here, if you can get out of the venue rental / catering for less than a $100 pp all in, you're doing a great job. That doesn't give a lot of money for DJ, photographer, dress, flowers etc. We were able to do our entire wedding for 115 people for like $13k all in, not counting the honeymoon. The key is to avoid "traditional" wedding venues and whatnot because they're set up to overcharge. We saved bigtime by:
If you're around a major metro area (NY, San Fran, etc.) try looking a bit outside the city in more rural areas. Many times you can find a really quality restaurant that would love to sell the place out for an evening. I think for food and open bar with top shelf liquor and a professional bartender, we came in at around $70-75 per person including staff gratuity. We were lucky that we knew someone who could give us a good deal on live string music for the cocktail hour and dinner. And a professional photographer we knew through work. If we had paid full rate for both of those, we probably would have bumped up the cost to maybe $17k. Everything else was the going rate acquired merely by shopping around, not by haggling it down. The modern American wedding can be so overblown on needless details. As always, people remember the food, booze, and music. Don't go paying $10/chair for coverings or bows or whatever. Skip the frills and put the money where it counts. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Feb 15, 2015 |
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Feb 15, 2015 16:58
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Very true. Like we don't love the chairs at our venue but it's $8-10 per chair to cover or replace them. Do I really want to spend $1000 to fix bad chairs at a venue that was $1500 for the whole rental. No. No I don't.
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Feb 15, 2015 17:22
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What magical restaurants let you rent out the whole thing on a weekend? I could barely book our rehearsal dinner since every restaurant in the area balked at a 20 person reservation on a Friday and either outright turned us down or wanted to charge $3k+
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Feb 15, 2015 18:39
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Ugh that's what we're aiming for. Don't know if we can manage it either. The cost of this stuff is insane I feel like I've been going about this process like "I know weddings are really expensive, but it won't be for US, we'll figure it out and be smart about it..." then we sit down with the manager of the venue and go over food pricing estimates and it's like 18K just for food and booze.  (Including rehearsal dinner, hors d'oeuvres, and day-after brunch. Maybe that's not even that bad but we're still reeling from sticker shock.)
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Feb 15, 2015 19:27
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We looked at the average cost of putting together a wedding in our area first to get the sticker shock out of the way then we chipped away at it here and there (doing our own flowers, buffet instead of plated, no favors, no fancy rented table linens, hiring college kids instead of professional musicians, buying our own alcohol in bulk, small fancy cake to display with sheet cakes hidden in the kitchen to serve, only got a limo for me and my husband instead of the whole bridal party, etc) to get it down to something we could afford. What kind of food are you serving for 18k? Are you feeding an army or just serving really high end food? Our food was around $6500 for hors d'oeuvres and dinner and bar/wait staff for 100 people. Rehearsal dinner was around $1000 and we didn't do a day after brunch. Booze was an additional $1000 or so and we got to return a few cases of unopened beer and wine and got our money back. We did two hors d'oeurves, one passed and one stationary; and dinner was a buffet with salad, two entree choices (chicken or salmon), and two sides (veggies and mashed taters).
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Feb 15, 2015 19:55
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LogisticEarth posted:I guess it's a matter of individual taste, but I don't know why anyone would choose a reproduction movie prop for something as personal and "serious" as a wedding ring. Like, you're still going to be gung ho about "the one ring" in 30 years? You're right, it's just a matter of individual taste. As I mentioned, my ring was custom made - specifically, it's remade from my grandmother's wedding set. It's incredibly personal and special to me, and I couldn't imagine buying a pre-made wedding set from a store (how disgustingly commercial!), let alone a movie prop. But my husband wanted a cool-looking and cost-effective wedding ring, and the One Ring is cool and nerdy and looks completely traditional unless you're examining it up close. He doesn't care for jewelry in general, so why get a different band that he likes even less? It's still his wedding ring and I'm pretty sure he thinks of us when he looks at it, not Legolas' sweet orc-surfing. I guess I can't be sure, though... Do what makes you happy!  
Sweet Gulch fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Feb 15, 2015 |
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Feb 15, 2015 21:04
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:What kind of food are you serving for 18k? Are you feeding an army or just serving really high end food? Our food was around $6500 for hors d'oeuvres and dinner and bar/wait staff for 100 people. Rehearsal dinner was around $1000 and we didn't do a day after brunch. Booze was an additional $1000 or so and we got to return a few cases of unopened beer and wine and got our money back. We did two hors d'oeurves, one passed and one stationary; and dinner was a buffet with salad, two entree choices (chicken or salmon), and two sides (veggies and mashed taters). We're really guessing on our numbers at this point because we're having a semi-destination wedding (Adirondacks) and have no idea how to estimate who's actually going to come. So 18K is the high estimate (god, I hope) for around 180 people. Hopefully we'll wind up with more like 140 or fewer. We're not serving anything crazy; we do want some sort of steak/beef option which is the priciest part, but it's not going to be filet mignon. We're doing a buffet, too. What's killing us is booze, I think. Our venue doesn't allow us to bring outside liquor and basically they charge per drink prices for their stuff. Which means that a handle of vodka will be the price of however many individual cocktails you can get out of that. We'll probably end up just serving beer and wine for that reason.
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Feb 15, 2015 21:30
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:What magical restaurants let you rent out the whole thing on a weekend? I could barely book our rehearsal dinner since every restaurant in the area balked at a 20 person reservation on a Friday and either outright turned us down or wanted to charge $3k+ Depends on the restaurant and the location. Higher end places, B&Bs, and BYOBs that focus on dinner/brunch seemed to be more accommodating. It won't happen at a sought-after place in Manhattan, but a nicer, small restaurant in (as I mentioned) the rural/suburban areas not too far outside metro areas frequently seek business like that. For reference, this is the venue where we had our wedding and reception. About an hour and half from NYC, and an hour from Philly: http://www.goldenpheasant.com/ And there were multiple establishments in the area that would have accommodated similar events.
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Feb 15, 2015 22:15
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boquiabierta posted:What's killing us is booze, I think. Our venue doesn't allow us to bring outside liquor and basically they charge per drink prices for their stuff. Which means that a handle of vodka will be the price of however many individual cocktails you can get out of that. We'll probably end up just serving beer and wine for that reason. Yeah, when you consider that an average drink is going to have a cost of $1.50 or so, whether wine, decent beer or midrange hard alcohol, paying $6-9 for that is pretty painful.
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Feb 15, 2015 23:12
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LogisticEarth posted:Depends on the restaurant and the location. Higher end places, B&Bs, and BYOBs that focus on dinner/brunch seemed to be more accommodating. It won't happen at a sought-after place in Manhattan, but a nicer, small restaurant in (as I mentioned) the rural/suburban areas not too far outside metro areas frequently seek business like that. We eventually found a nice restaurant that was part of a hotel on a college campus for our rehearsal dinner and since our wedding fell during winter break they were desperate for business so they were super accommodating. We went through about 4 or 5 restaurants either outright ignoring us, saying "hell no" or charging ridiculous use fees before landing on that one though. Seriously colleges are the best resource for cheap wedding stuff.
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Feb 16, 2015 00:02
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Oh my god. One of my bridesmaids is mad at me because I shot down her stagette party plans. She lives in another province and hates partying (doesn't drink or really ever go out) so I really wasn't concerned about her missing it and didn't really expect her to contribute or come or care honestly, but she's coming into town a couple months before the wedding and decided that she was going to plan it to happen then. Did I mention she hates partying? Yeah, she had started to plan a Weekday afternoon tea party (and not spiked tea or anything that might make it fun, like fancy tea and crumpets in a quiet room with a bunch of senior citizens). I told her I would be happy to still do that with her but it would not be my stagette party since it's nowhere near the wedding date, not a party and no one else would be able to make it on a weekday. Everyone was bending over backwards to try and make it work for her but there's no way I want people to book off work for this nonsense. I don't even know man... Hopefully she calms down enough to realize just how absurd this whole deal was before she's here. It would seriously suck if her visit is soured by me not wanting this non-party.
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Feb 18, 2015 19:29
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Ugh. It is things like this that made us decide to not do wedding parties.
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Feb 18, 2015 19:52
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Jinxie Monroe posted:Oh my god. One of my bridesmaids is mad at me because I shot down her stagette party plans. She lives in another province and hates partying (doesn't drink or really ever go out) so I really wasn't concerned about her missing it and didn't really expect her to contribute or come or care honestly, but she's coming into town a couple months before the wedding and decided that she was going to plan it to happen then. Tell her like I told my fiancés friends when they tried to plan something behind her back...this is her day and she only gets ones, so do whatever she says and wants. If your bridesmaid doesn't understand tell her you have someone else that can stand in one place and wear a dress for a day. Wedding parties can be such a pain! I am thankful our wedding party isn't bad and understands whatever we tell them they have to do for that one day.
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Feb 19, 2015 14:54
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I can't casually threaten to boot her from the wedding party as her husband is both my fiance's best man and his oldest friend and it would release an epic shitstorm I have 0 interest in dealing with. She just had a baby a couple months ago and moved to a new city where she doesn't know many people so I'm just going to chalk it up to her being a little crazy from being cooped up with a baby 24/7 and excited about coming to visit. She's a lovely person normally and I'm sure she meant well but I can't totally believe I had to step in and veto that plan. I think we'll be able to work it out when she is here in person but goddamn it's still annoying to deal with.
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Feb 19, 2015 19:42
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It's getting to the time where I need to send out Save the Dates especially as I have relatives and friends traveling from pretty far distances and people have started specifically asking me to verify the date. Since my fiancé and I have our own small business with an office-sized printer and cutting machine, I was going to just design, print, cut and magnetize some myself, until I discovered that the place we get our business cards from (Vistaprint) also does "magnetic business cards" for less than $10 per 25 magnets. Since I was designing my own in Photoshop anyway, all I have to do is upload my finished design as a JPEG and they'll do the rest! I'll report back when I actually get them, but we've used Vistaprint for business cards and our store banner before and been really happy with them. They almost always have some sort of promo code available as well, and if you specifically do "magnetic business cards" it's cheaper than their "magnetic save the dates", though I didn't compare sizes at all since if always planned them to be business card sized.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:09
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Apparently My Mom's invitation got lost in the mail?!
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Feb 19, 2015 21:22
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KasioDiscoRock posted:(Vistaprint) That's what I used for all my wedding crap and all of it came out great. (The linen finish on the invitations was awesome and looked super professional.) I got the postcard sized magnets from them for save-the-dates and they came out looking great. The one on my fridge is still holding up awesomely after 3 years. The price was also very reasonable.I love Vistaprint. Great choice. Gonna use them soon for birth announcements, lol.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:33
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Bread Set Jettison posted:Apparently My Mom's invitation got lost in the mail?! I've never had anything get lost in the mail till I sent out wedding invitations. We had one come back as undeliverable 3 months post-wedding. Whoops. They couldn't come anyway but they probably thought were were being douchebags not sending them an invite  In total I think we had 3 or 4 kick back to us.
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Feb 20, 2015 00:54
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I'm having issues with my photographer. After 4 months he finally gave us a disk with photos on them. We're still waiting for the album and he said that may take another month. We finally get these photos and look at them and it seems 1/3 of them have been very strangely color edited. In a way that I do not care for at all. We asked him about getting the original colors and he hedged around the answer saying that some pictures were too over exposed to be in color or that he thought his editing brought more to the photo or made it pop. But I don't agree. Here's one he said was too over exposed. I would have been ok with pure black and white.  Why would he leave the plant, my hairpiece and my eyes colored? Am I crazy or is this super weird? Here's one that would have been beautiful. My vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. But the change in coloring to me makes them seem weird and unappetizing.  I feel like this makes the bridesmaid's flowers look photoshopped in.  And besides I loved the purple dresses they were wearing. The other non-color-edited ones are beautiful and I'm very happy with them, but these that he's edited to me are not at all what we wanted. He seems reluctant to give us the full color versions but we are sending emails back and forth today to try and sort it out. Is this common? Am I being picky and unreasonable? I just can't believe he did it to 1/3 of our pictures.
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Feb 20, 2015 16:04
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What does your contract say? Did you negotiate getting a flash drive of the raw files? I can't pretend to know enough about photography to make a judgement call on if exposure or quality would force him to take a weird style like that and not provide originals.
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Feb 20, 2015 16:22
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He did not want to release ANY raw files to us because he said he only wanted to put his name on photos that looked as good as possible. He wants to edit everything he gives us. Some are fine and beautiful and look normal. This is one of my favorites.  But the others just strike me as so strange.
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Feb 20, 2015 16:27
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Like that other poster said, did you sign a contract? If it were me I would demand the RAW files.
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Feb 20, 2015 16:46
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Artists can be really precious about their work and I think you have to be careful around that kind of thing, but you are totally within your rights. Unless you negotiated weirdly colorized photos, you should just say something like, "I understand that you want to be proud of the work you put out there, but I am not a fan of this colorizing. If you feel that some of those photos are exposed too poorly to be presented in color, please provide them just in black and white, and I'll post them that way." As a designer myself, I know for a fact that the weird colorizing is more time-consuming than handing over plain old black and white.
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Feb 20, 2015 17:54
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The colorizing would probably be okay if those photos were colorized well. They weren't. And that's pretty evident.
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Feb 20, 2015 18:01
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Buggiezor posted:I'm having issues with my photographer. After 4 months he finally gave us a disk with photos on them. We're still waiting for the album and he said that may take another month. That first one is really over-exposed, and if he darkens it any more, it'll become apparent. The white dress is probably too overexposed and has pure-white pixels in it, which means no information was retained in that area. That doesn't mean he can play with the contrast to make the B&W stuff pop a little more.
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Feb 20, 2015 18:09
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When I was photographer shopping anyone who had selectively colored photos like that in their portfolio were instantly crossed off the list. If I'm spending gobs of money on a photographer they better have better editing skills than a high schooler taking their first photography class. Check your contract. We didn't get RAW files but we got all of our pictures, edited and unedited.
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Feb 20, 2015 19:15
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I am going to have to make sure our photographer contract includes something specifying that all color-manipulated photos are also provided in original color formats. (Most of the online galleries I've seen do that anyway with B+W ones.)
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Feb 20, 2015 19:54
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He says he's going to "restore" the color in the ones we'd like and asked us to email him the ones we'd like him to work on. He said he's not going to charge for this service and made it sound like we should be grateful for that. His online portfolio changes and he rotates new pictures and old ones but he didn't have that many color manipulated ones online. That's another reason it was such a shock. I'll have to find our contract because it's been months since the wedding but I'll look for it today. Thanks for the input. Our whole experience with him has been bad but we're trying to play nice until we get all our photos and the book. I will not be reviewing him well and I regret hiring him. His pictures are nice (unedited) but he's not an easy person to deal with. 
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Feb 20, 2015 19:55
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That brings a question to mind: how do vendors react to bad reviews? It seems like wedding vendors tend to have five stars across the board and everyone loves who they picked. Except maybe they rate someone a one star if they are terrible. If you rate someone a two or three, do they try really hard to get you to remove it?
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Feb 20, 2015 20:19
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Buggiezor posted:He says he's going to "restore" the color in the ones we'd like and asked us to email him the ones we'd like him to work on. He said he's not going to charge for this service and made it sound like we should be grateful for that. His online portfolio changes and he rotates new pictures and old ones but he didn't have that many color manipulated ones online. That's another reason it was such a shock. I'll have to find our contract because it's been months since the wedding but I'll look for it today. Rofl hes gonna restore the photos aka load the first version. I mean his photography seems fine for the most part with the exception of the overexposed dress photo, the rest are fine looking without the weird coloring. He should have definitely said "Oh yeah sure I can just undo these coloration changes" but it sounds like he made it a bigger issue than it needed to be.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:23
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Yea those are all weirdly recolored...he made TERRIBLE choices if you ask me, but obviously art is subjective (to a point). I am happy I made sure my photographer will do touch ups but ultimately is giving me all the raw photos.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:42
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smackfu posted:That brings a question to mind: how do vendors react to bad reviews? It seems like wedding vendors tend to have five stars across the board and everyone loves who they picked. Except maybe they rate someone a one star if they are terrible. If you rate someone a two or three, do they try really hard to get you to remove it? I had most of my vendors email me shortly after the wedding practically BEGGING for five star reviews with a line about how if their service wasn't PERFECT to tell them in private. I dinged my venue a half star because the staff was kind of annoying and I think they got pissed off about that but never directly said anything. I rarely leave reviews or fill out customer service surveys but I did type up a review for each of my vendors because they all did a pretty fantastic job and deserved it. I left a three star review on Yelp for the bridal shop I got my dress from because I had major issues with their tailor that I felt like other people should know, the actual shopping part and buying the dress part was fine but their tailor sucked balls and almost ruined everyone's dresses by being a dumbass who can't pin a dress properly during a fitting. I love reading one-star reviews of bridal shops online though because 90% of them are left by people who assumed wedding dress shopping is exactly like Say Yes to the Dress.
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Feb 21, 2015 01:05
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smackfu posted:That brings a question to mind: how do vendors react to bad reviews? I just signed up on WeddingWire and am nervous as hell. I've had great clients to date but am always worried about a client in the bridezilla or groomzilla territory who I will be completely unable to please. I suppose I just always do my best and have to accept it if I do a poor job along the way. Lucky for myself, 99% of my bookings come from planners and vendors in my area, so they are the ones who can vouch for me. Another big thing I do is sit with clients to make sure I'm going to be a good fit. I gear toward clients that I can do my best work for. Salsa and merengue reception for fifty and no alcohol? I'm probably not your guy. Big party for 200+ people? I'm your guy. Just dropped on my uplighting for the summer and a couple new QSC K12 speakers. My condo is getting so small...
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Feb 22, 2015 03:30
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We are getting married March 7 that's in 14days !!!! I'm saying how many days not that you guys can't figure that out but to emphasize the utter bullshit that just happened . Last night at 1am my piece of poo poo DJ emailed me saying that whoops he's sorry but he is going out of town and will not be able to do our wedding . This total asshat let me know he would give me some recommendations of other DJ's if needed (like I would trust his recommendations) He also said he will mail our deposit back luckily it was not that much but still . For the record we found him on gig masters . I already emailed them freaking out also and got the $40 booking fee back for using them . So after a total melt down last night with tears and yelling ,my very pissed of fiancé and I Started looking through all the quotes that we got 6 months ago and started sending out emails to everyone 80% of them are already booked and the other 20% gave us new quotes that are doubled or tripled due to the short notice !!! Our last resort is a friend of ours thats is a professional DJ . However she has full time residencies in casinos all over the strip . I know she works on the weekends and she will have to cancel a gig to do our wedding . She will do it I know that but there is no way I could afford to pay her what she makes a night at a night club . I was going to offer her what I was going to pay douche bag . Do you guys think that's ok?or should I have her tell me how much she wants ? I just don't want it to be uncomfortable and make her feel like she shouldn't charge me . I'm really stuck on what to do about her compensation, and this is why I didn't ask her in the first place . People suck 
GlutenFreeBanana fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Feb 22, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 09:20
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GlutenFreeBanana posted:
Where are you located? I'm available March 7th.
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Feb 22, 2015 09:53
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GlutenFreeBanana posted:Our last resort is a friend of ours thats is a professional DJ . However she has full time residencies in casinos all over the strip . I know she works on the weekends and she will have to cancel a gig to do our wedding . She will do it I know that but there is no way I could afford to pay her what she makes a night at a night club . I was going to offer her what I was going to pay douche bag . Do you guys think that's ok?or should I have her tell me how much she wants ? I just don't want it to be uncomfortable and make her feel like she shouldn't charge me . I'm really stuck on what to do about her compensation, and this is why I didn't ask her in the first place . Maybe just be upfront with her? Explain the situation and ask her if she would be willing/able to DJ your wedding. Tell her that you really want to pay for her services and not make her work for free, but that you can only afford to pay her what you were going to pay Douchebag DJ, and let her know that if that really doesn't work for her you will look for another option? She might even be able to recommend one. Everyone knows weddings are expensive and you can't just magic a different budget out of your rear end 2 weeks before the wedding, but you also know that she can't necessarily just drop a nights wages. Last last resort - spotify playlist? Sorry you're in this situation, sucks!
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Feb 22, 2015 10:12
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19 o'clock posted:Where are you located? I'm available March 7th. We are in Las Vegas .
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Feb 22, 2015 10:43
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What did y'all wear or bring to bridal gown shopping trips in terms of undergarments? I had a David's Bridal appointment where they provided me with a bra/corset/spandexy thing so I assumed that was par for the course with other salons. But yesterday I went to a little boutique because they had the specific Sottero & Midgley gown I've been lusting after, and I figured after trying it on I'd either decide to buy it or get it out of my system because I would realize that I'm not a model and the dress only looks so amazing in stock photos because of the model. Anyway, I tried on the gown, but they did not provide any undergarments so I was stuck in my black bra that I'd been wearing (which they told me to leave on) which majorly disrupted the look of the gown. The floor sample was also way too big and I don't feel like they pinned/clipped it well enough on me to be able to really tell how it would fit. Similar thing with a few other dresses I tried on. So I left feeling really frustrated and like I still don't know how this dress might actually look on me because of the black bra underneath, no shapewear, and poor fit. How do I approach appointments at other salons? I don't really want to buy undergarments and shapewear before I even know what kind of dress I'm getting because aren't there all different kinds and they have to match the dress?
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Feb 22, 2015 18:34
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I wore a white bra and (black) spanx the first time I went dress shopping. It was good enough to give me an idea, and then I took the pictures to the bra store to find a long line bra that would work with my dress's low back. My bra still needs altered though. When I went back to try dresses on with the long line, I didn't wear the spanx and it made a definite difference.
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Feb 22, 2015 19:09
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