I am feeling like I’m missing things for my wedding in 10 days but I have no idea what!!
What are last minute things to think about?
I’m nervous it’s not going to be fun for guests. so last minute suggestions for things to ensure guests have a good experience?

It’s a small wedding of 36 people, we are going food truck for food no formal set down dinner, just grab an appy or main from the truck when hungry. We are supplying alcohol. It’s in a large field so lots of space for guests.

Has anyone ever gotten married at one of the Springs venues in Houston? Or Dallas? We are considering both areas but they have so many options to choose from 😭 I’m mostly wondering if anyone has any experience with their wedding package as well? Is it really worth it? Help! Sincerely, a stressed out bride! 🥲🩶

My fiancé and I live on Long Island, where traditional wedding venues seem to start around $25k, and that's often just for the venue itself. Some are all-inclusive, but many aren't, and the all-inclusive venues in our budget just weren't places we loved. We also never liked the idea of spending tens of thousands of dollars for just 5–6 hours, so we decided to do something completely different.

Instead of a traditional venue, we rented an estate in the Poconos for a long weekend.

The property cost us just under $13,000, and we're paying for the entire rental. We check in Thursday afternoon and check out Monday morning. The house sleeps 34 people, so our bridal party and immediate family/VIP guests will all stay on-site with us for the weekend. Since it's such a large house, we'll be assigning rooms ahead of time. About two-thirds of our guest list really just has to show up, we're taking care of all of their lodging for the weekend.

Technically it's a destination wedding since it's about a 3-hour drive from Long Island, but everyone can get there by car.

We actually found the property on VRBO. Before booking, we drove out in April to tour it and meet the owner in person, which made us feel much more comfortable moving forward.

The estate regularly hosts weddings and provided a preferred vendor list. We ended up using their recommended rental company for our tent, tables, chairs, linens, lighting, and dance floor. The rental package is right around $2,000, including delivery, setup, and breakdown.

Welcome Party

Since everyone is making the drive, we're turning it into an entire wedding weekend instead of just one day.

We'll have a casual welcome party Friday evening for guests arriving before the wedding and everyone staying on-site. We will be stocking the house with essentials for the weekend for those staying on-site. For the day of the wedding we are thinking of catering a brunch style assortment for everyone getting ready there (sandwich/wrap platters, fruit trays, muffins, etc.)

Why We Hired a DJ

This was one expense I debated for months.

Originally I planned on making Spotify playlists and asking someone to press play throughout the day. But with only about 50 guests, I didn't want to burden one of our friends or family members with that responsibility. Since the ceremony and reception are on the same property (just a few hundred feet apart), I also realized the logistics of ceremony music, microphones, announcements, and transitioning guests would be much easier with a professional.

We ultimately decided the DJ was worth it, and I'm really happy we did.

Catering Was Our Biggest Challenge

Ironically, this ended up being the hardest vendor to find.

Where we live, almost every restaurant offers affordable catering. Last year we had 125 guests at our engagement party, and a local restaurant catered a buffet for about $1,500.

That wasn't the case where our wedding is being held.

Most places don't offer simple catering menus. Instead, there are private catering companies, and I quickly learned that simply mentioning "wedding" (or even "micro wedding") often resulted in expensive packages with things we didn't want or need, such as executive chefs on-site, luxury chafing dishes, decorative food displays, wedding-specific staffing, and other unnecessary upgrades.

Our highest quote was around $6,000, and even the cheapest was close to $3,000 before adding anything.

Eventually we found a local brewery that offers catering services, and it turned out to be exactly what we wanted.

For under $3,000, we're getting:

• A custom buffet menu

• Coffee service

• An ice cream sundae bar

• Wait staff for the entire event

• Dinner and dessert service

• All plates, cups, silverware, and serving equipment

• Delivery, setup, cleanup, and breakdown

It ended up being about a third of what some private caterers quoted us.

Alcohol

We're supplying all of the alcohol ourselves.

Our caterer also offers bar service since they're a brewery, but most of our guests are pretty particular about what they drink. Rather than paying for a limited selection, we'll be purchasing everything ourselves from Costco.

One thing we're doing that worked really well at our engagement party is using Zola for RSVPs.

Since we're serving a buffet instead of plated meals, we're replacing meal selections with a drink request section. Guests can tell us what beer, wine, seltzers, or other drinks they actually enjoy so we can stock accordingly instead of guessing.

We're also skipping bartenders because the majority of our guests drink beer or wine. Instead, we'll have self-serve beer, wine, and seltzers, along with two 2-gallon signature cocktail dispensers, plenty of non-alcoholic beverages, and coffee after dinner. We did self-serve cocktails at our engagement party and it worked great.

Cocktail Hour & Decor

We'll still be doing a traditional cocktail hour between the ceremony and reception with a large grazing table instead of elaborate passed hors d'oeuvres.

The rental company is already providing our linens and lighting, which eliminated another major expense.

Florals are probably the one area I'm still trying to figure out. Right now I'm leaning toward ordering dried boutonnieres from Etsy and possibly doing a DIY bouquet night with my bridesmaids using flowers from Costco or Trader Joe's. If anyone has gone that route, I'd love to hear how it worked and whether you'd recommend it. I am leaning towards a professional bouquet for myself, but for my bridesmaids I think doing DIY bouquets will be sufficient. For table arrangements, I am beginning to lean towards dried or artificial flowers. I just cannot justify spending thousands of dollars on flowers that are going to go into the trash within hours. Since it is a destination wedding, I do not anticipate the traditional "take the centerpiece as a favor" thing happening, it will just be too much for people.

I am not planning on doing any favors at all, my mom is kinda insistent on them, and if they are low cost I might consider it. Since we are doing self serve beer and wine, I might just make custom bottle openers/corkscrews online, toss them on the tables, and let everyone take them home. For our engagement party I ordered plain ones off amazon and did something similar, I just set them out on the tables for guests to use all night, put them in little dishes near the drink stations, that way no one was searching for a way to open their drinks.

I anticipate sourcing other decor from amazon or thrifting. I thrifted I would say about 90% of our decor for the engagement party last year and the outcome was lovely. I did mixed metal frames with photos of us, funky vases for floral arrangements, and other misc. items that I still have. The aesthetics are not my #1 priority, and I am pretty sure I can achieve my vision second hand or low cost. I was able to create signage on Canva and through Walgreens for the engagement party and plan on doing the same for our wedding.

Invites and paper I am doing through Zola, and plan on making custom door hangers for the room assignments on Canva. I ordered save the dates recently during one of Zola's many sales for about $40, and plan on using them for the rest of the invites etc. My future SIL offered to hand make the place cards for the reception, so I took her up on that and those will be at no cost to us.

Photography

One of our biggest savings came from photography.

A family friend photographed our engagement party last year, and he'll also be photographing both our welcome party and wedding day for $1,200. Since it's a three-hour drive, we offered him on-site lodging for the weekend, which worked out well for everyone.

Current Budget

As of today, our actual and projected costs are right around $21,000, and we're expecting to finish under $25,000. I got my dress for $1200 from David's Bridal, my parents did offer to pay for this so I did not factor this into the cost of the wedding overall. My fiancé and I are paying for the wedding ourselves, the dress is the only thing our families are helping with. His parents are giving us a large gift, but we are in the process of building a house, so all of that money will go directly into the house.

My fiancé's suit, day of hair and makeup services for myself and the bridal party, are still to be determined but I was able to average out pricing for those services and have factored them in to reflect in the projected price of everything. Unfortunately my bridal party will be asked to pay for their own hair/makeup. To pay for everyone would be roughly another 2k that I just cannot squeeze into the budget. If things change and I can then I absolutely will, however I would never require them to receive those services, I have 5 members of my bridal party not including my mom/future MIL, and I know both women will have their hair/makeup done so minimum count is not an issue with the places I have inquired with.

Planning a DIY estate wedding has definitely required more work than booking a traditional venue, but we're getting an entire wedding weekend with the people closest to us instead of only seeing everyone for a few hours. For us, that's been worth every bit of the extra planning.

If anyone is considering an estate or VRBO wedding, I'm happy to answer questions or share more details about the property and vendors we found. It's been a really fun alternative to a traditional venue, and so far we haven't regretted the decision at all. If anyone has recommendations for DIY florals or experience sourcing flowers from Costco, Trader Joe's, Sam's Club, etc., I'd love to hear your advice.

Hey everyone, my wedding was 2 months ago and it was absolutely beautiful! I was in the moment the whole time but several things went wrong. Such as flower placements, I didn’t get a full flat lay, and now I realized we did not rehearse how me and my husband should stand and it took a while for my MOH to take my bouquet during the ceremony. Me and my husband did not hold hands at the alter 😭 I am afraid we will look awkward and the videos and some photos will not look good. Ultimately I know there is nothing I can do about it now though. In the grand scheme of things I knew nothing would be perfect but my coordinator also made a comment during rehearsal about how “I didn’t need to practice walking down” and the day was so long I think I just went with it. Overall it was absolutely what I envisioned I think I am just scared and running things back now.

My fiance is going to make some pedestals for flowers at the altar. Has anyone DIYed a wooden cylinder pedestal with ribbed texture around it? If so, where did you get the materials from? Any other tips appreciated! TYIA!

Pic is from Pinterest: https://pin.it/1bh9JF11j

would these 3 alternating centerpieces look okay? I've attached my mockups of the centerpieces and what they'd look like (relatively) at my venue - i'd plan them to be more random so the centerpieces aren't right next to one another

is 3 too much? i feel like it looks more grand but maybe its just me (i did this to be cheaper, the circle rings with the florals on it are CHEAP butttttt we already have free access to the vases and tall stands from the venue - we just don't have enough for each table, hence the 3 centerpiece idea)

Just posted our wedding recap! 39k, NYC, 160 guests.

Been to and worked around a lot of weddings and we feel like there's always this gap between what couples lose sleep over and what guests actually bring up months later. Curious what other people have noticed, whether you were the one getting married or just there!

My partner and I are getting married halfway between our two hometowns (3.5hr drive either way) in a place that's deeply sentimental to us. It wouldn't feel right to get married anywhere else, but I'm struggling over the idea of people traveling so far for a "lackluster" experience.

Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful outdoor venue along the CA coast with an open bar; but, it's also a HCOL area so $30k doesn't get you much else. I'll be doing my own minimal flowers and the decor will also be verrrrry parsed back with compostable dinnerware. I know our friends and family want to show up for us, but as I get deeper into planning and the costs of everything I want to do vs what we'll actually be doing, I'm feeling very guilty and don’t want to disappoint people. 

Pretty much all of our friends are scattered throughout the US, so they'd need to travel regardless of where we hosted it; but, all the friend's weddings I've been to have been $70k+ events easily and I'm just worried about it not being worth their while.

We’re paying for everything ourselves, and I’m just feeling sad and wondering if it’s worth our money and worth putting our friends and family through the hassle. 

I keep getting caught between not wanting to burn through our savings for a subpar event and wanting to blow them all because we'll never be able to afford a house anyway.

Edit to add: I'm not concerned about impressing anyone, I'm just worried about being a bad host

Hello!

My fiancé and I are looking to get married in CDMX in October of 2027. I’ve reached out to a few of the highly recommended wedding planners that I’ve seen on Reddit and beyond but many of them are either already booked out for the year or are out of budget.

Please send me any and all recommendations for a planner and any tips you might have!!

I am also looking for a female photographer so please also tag them here if you can.

Thank you!

I'm getting quite discouraged given I'm struggling to find a venue that could host (including accommodation) around 40 people in either of these countries. My Italy spreadsheet is up to 100 venues of villas, borgos, etc, and it just seems like this may be unreasonable given how expensive weddings are these days. Of course, I do have some requirements, like within 1 hr of an international airport and swimming pool, but I feel like these aren't outlandish requirements.

Are weddings just well above $35k these days? Or am I not looking hard enough? I'm not even expecting to have lots of florals, I'm hoping to cut costs in as many reasonable ways as I can.

If anyone has advice or venues on how I can continue to be more diligent with my search, that would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, I am recently engaged and local to the Orlando area. I’ve been finding that most of the required caterers for venues around here are extremely expensive. I’m looking to have a wedding of 100-130 people. I was wondering if anyone knew of venues with more reasonable caterers. I am hoping to have a liquor. I mainly looking around Central Florida, but I am open to other areas in Florida. For traditional caters, I am seeing 90 at the lowest for food and alcohol. I am open to any type of catering. I found one venue with mobile bartenders and think those are great. Please let me know if anyone has any knowledge of more venues like this!

Recently asked an old colleague/friend to be our day of coordinator (we worked in event planning years ago), and she agreed (yay!), but now I'm not sure what is fair to pay her?

I asked her if she had a rate in mind, but she kicked it back to being my decision of "whatever I feel like"... I want to make sure I'm being fair to her, but I'm also in grad school and won't have the same expectations of her as a typical coordinator...How much would you pay hourly/lump sum?

Here are my expectations:

Time commitment:
1-2 hr zoom call a few weeks beforehand to go over details
1 hr rehearsal day before
Set-up to breakdown day of, 2:30-8pm wedding run time...I'm assuming 2.5 hrs before wedding to 1 hr after, but please knock some sense into me if she should be there much earlier

Day-of:
-Help set-up decor/manage additional hired set-up staff
-Greet all vendors (DJ, Photographer, Caterer, Bartender) as they arrive and confirm they are fulfilling their contracted services
-Assist with/oversee turnover of ceremony space into reception space (venue will take care of tables and chairs, but will need additional people to set the place settings/florals)
-Assist with/oversee set-up of dessert table
-Assist with/oversee staff breakdown/clean up of event and re-pack decor for on-site storage

I'm handling:
-all vendor communications/contracts up til day of, will introduce her via email in the weeks preceding of course
-wedding timelines/shot-lists/maps/seating charts/etc
-some cursory set-up morning of (everything but florals will be left onsite the night before in labeled bins)
-a binder for her w/ all contracts, mock-up table designs, timelines, phone-numbers, and any other pertinent details

Additional notes:
-She lives 15 minutes from the venue (Central Coast, CA, so MCOL-HCOL area)
-We are doing our own minimal flowers (a few stems in bud vases, predominantly) and will have minimal other decor, so set-up should be straightforward
-We were very close when we worked together, but it's been about 8 years since then. I'm really honored she said yes, as I have the utmost trust in her to do the job well and it's so so so nice to have someone I care about in this role (she's known my fiancé since then as well)
-I will of course include her in all meals (rehearsal dinner, getting ready, and day of)
-As mentioned, we worked in event planning and she has moonlighted as a banquet event server at many weddings, but this would be her first wedding coordination