The Bay Bride

So out of 188 guests that RSVP’d yes, we had 5 people not show up for various reasons.  This means we had to pay for 5 dinners even though the 5 plates of food were not served.  That is over $550 spent on empty seats.  I asked the banquet manager if they could wrap up the food and bring it up to our hotel rooms but they said for food safety/health reasons they didn’t allow this.  (Sadness because I could totally see myself happily pigging out the next day with these 5 plates of food…I heart leftovers!)

Anyway, I had a friend underestimate her final head count by 4-5 guests and little did she know 4 guests ended up not attending the wedding.  Her logic is that she could always ask the caterer to provide 5 additional meals if she did have 100% attendance and the caterer will have no problem adding the cost to the final bill, but if guests don’t show then caterers won’t deduct the cost of meals to the final bill.  Is this smart? or just plain risky?  This could have seriously saved us some serious cash.

Maybe discuss your options with your banquet/catering manager before finalizing the head count.  See if leftovers can be bagged up to go and I’m sure it’ll be enjoyed by either you or your hungover buddies the next morning.

Darn it!  Just found out that the 20% service fee which most venues charge for food and beverages is taxed.  That is a few hundred extra dollars to take into consideration when calculating your wedding budget.  This is of course dependent on where your wedding is so you should double check with your venue and local tax board.

Basically for our Northern California wedding, our total for food was $15,436 with an additional $3,087 for the required 20% service charge.  But instead of getting taxed on just $15,436, we got taxed on both the $15,436 and the $3,087.  OUCH!!!!

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Current Sales Tax % = 8.25%

Cost of Food = $15,436

Sales Tax for Food = 15,436 x 0.825 = $1273

20% Service Charge for Food = 15,436 x 0.20 = $3087

SALES TAX on Service Charge = $3087 x 0.825 = $255

A GRAND TOTAL OF $1528 on SALES TAX for FOOD & SERVICE CHARGE!!!!   INSANE!!!!

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Here’s a link to a forum post with some helpful information on this matter:

http://www.projectwedding.com/post/list/service-charge-and-sales-tax

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We ended up getting married in Monterey so the sales tax is 1.25% lower which probably saved us a few hundred bucks, but it probably evens out with all the parking/gas/travel costs.

So not too long ago, the fiance (I’ll call him Tobes for privacy sake) and I spent a Saturday night at home calculating our finances and determining a wedding budget.  Woo hoo!  Boring I know… but it had to be done.  Money is never a fun topic to talk about unless of course its the “what would you do if you won the lotto?” question.  Anyway, we were pretty clueless to how much weddings really costs these days so we ended up blindly just setting a budget of $50K for a 220 people wedding.  The $50K wasn’t based off any solid research.  We heard from friends that Bay Area weddings averaged anywhere from $30K to $60K so $50K sounded like a good number.   It was a budget we thought we could afford and was determined off some initial research we did on wedding venues, food, etc.

We checked out a few wedding venues and prices ranged anywhere form $3K to $10K just to rent, not including food.  Doh!  We also did some initial research for food. It costs anywhere form $35/person on the low end and $150/person on the high end.  We hope to spend somewhere in the middle.  I mean just the cost of the wedding venue plus the cost of food was going to set us back at least $20K.  OUCH!!!  That’s already 40% of our budget.  I’ve heard that 40% of your budget should go to the ceremony (site fee, officiant’s fee + tips) and reception (site fee, food, drinks, tips, part favors and parking).

Reception and ceremony should be the bulk of the cost.  Hopefully we’ll find other areas where we can cut costs by prioritizing items like cake and invitations.  I mean I’d really love to do some DIY projects to save money but with a hectic full time job and lack of creative skills, I’m just not sure if its possible.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

I don’t think there’s an exact order of how things should be planned, but figuring out a few things first will make wedding planning much easier down the road.

I’d say the easiest place to start is figuring out who is going to be paying for the wedding.

Traditionally in American culture it’s been the bride’s side of the family who pays for the wedding and the groom’s side who pays for the rehearsal dinner.  In some Asian cultures, the Groom’s family foots the entire bill.  But these days there seems to be a more modern approach.

3 way split

- Bride and Groom pitch in 1/3

- Bride’s side pitch in 1/3

- Groom’s side pitch in 1/3

This usually means each party invites 1/3 of the guests as well.

Bride and Groom

- Bride and Groom pay

This option is for the couple who has been working at least a few years with some money of their own saved in the bank. Families seem to get a lot less involved (unless of course you want them to be) in the whole planning process.

Whatever I can get

- No set percentage of who pays for what

- Whatever the couple can get.  Any help is a good thing.

The families can help out here and there by offering to pay for a rehearsal dinner or florist or photographer etc.  The families may not be contributing evenly but the couple will be happy with whatever contributions their families can afford (or would like to give).  If you pick this route, things should be discussed early on and agreed upon before starting to plan.  One thing to be careful about is that the families may want to have more of a say on the items they are paying for which may not be a good thing for “certain” types of brides.

Every couple is different so there is definitely no wrong or right approach.  From there you’ll be able to determine budget and start creating a very rough guest list.  Happy wedding planning!