P.S. Mike Dang I am HAPPY to itemize my wedding expenses – and I’m also an event planner as a job so…maybe helpful? I guess mostly why I bring that up is that I have a VERY comprehensive spreadsheet detailing every cost. Of everything.

Preparation: There is a lot more uncertainty & people change their minds & every time they do so, I MAKE A NEW QUOTE. That chicken example is in no way far fetched that I’d have a month of back & forth emails about how can they have a steak option but pay the chicken price. Can we just have less servers? No, never negotiable. What if we have smaller portions? No, that just makes me look unprofessional & you look cheap (No one will have anything to say about a happy belly full of chicken, but your guests will remember that they ran out of protein). Just to clarify, I am not judging someone if they cannot afford the steak. It is the emotional attachment to the steak that I find frustrating. If a corporate client tells me that they would like steak, tells me their budget & those things do not match, then I’d tell them what the price would be, & hey, you totally could do a great chicken & stay within your costs. Their decision is normally, “I’ll find more money” or “Great, let’s do the chicken.” If I have the same conversation with a couple planning a wedding, there is a lot more emotional attachment to the steak followed by back & forth decisions of do they want to go over budget in order to have steak or not. Yes. No. Yes. Wait. Well, what if… HOW CAN WE HAVE STEAK? On top of that, I find it comes from this really ugly place of feeling like their guests will be judging them & keeping score. No one is doing this. Your guests need to feel like they are taken care of & after that, they are busy dancing & celebrating & showing y’all with love. No one will remember. Make a decision. Stop the revisions.

As far as the day of: It’s mostly a matter of the shuffling of people. Most of my weddings would have the reception on one end of the property, followed by cocktails in another & then dinner in whole ‘nother location. Every time, a location is added it also adds- trash pick up, rentals- set up & break down & then all of the rentals need to come back to the same location to be processed. Trekking 150 chairs across the property is hell- especially at the end of a long night. Not only that, but even if you have one location, there a lot more “activities.” The cake cutting, passing the cake, champagne toasts, special flutes for the couple that are always lost until the minute before. There is always constant running in anticipation the next thing. & yeah to the drunk wrangling- people tend to get wasted at weddings. There is a higher probability of vomit or just stupid shit we’d have to deal with. There was one woman who was out of her fucking mind & she sliced open her foot on the dance floor. Our chef ended up driving her to the ER. Good times. I’m not saying that every wedding guarantees this kinda fun filled adventures, but it sure increases the chance.

There is no standard for the catering industry that dictates quote format. Some people calculate a flat package rate, a per guest cost (everyone will sell it to you like this), some line item everything & some just say, here’s the bottom line. Most of the time though, you will pretty consistently see something like “service charge” or “production charge” that is a percent of either the food & labor or just the food. (This is not a gratuity that goes to your servers as you would think a “service charge” would be. Really, the charge goes to paying rent & insurance & taxes & well, profit. Your servers don’t see a dime). Anyway, that % varies. What I set up is a standard 22% production charge for all weddings. If you have a wedding planner who will act as a buffer for the crazies, I’d drop it to 18% (18% is what I would charge for a family reunion or any other regular event). That said though (!) I have brought down that percent based on conversations with the couple who did not have a planner. There was one that was so laid back- it really was not a wedding. They had only passed appetizers & they wanted it to feel like a cocktail party. They were up front with their budget, communicated well & so I moved numbers around to make it happen within their budget. If you really feel you are not having a wedding-wedding, explain why & you may get a discount. It is a lot easier for me to remove a “batshit fee” at some point along in the process rather than tack on when things get all batshit. Also, it sounds like you guys were pretty cool about it- That might be why your rep still honored the initial quote.

I managed to get married, and none of this madness happened. None of it.

Venue (including ceremony, day-of planner, cake, and catering) – $8,500
Officiant – $300
Stationery and postage – $775
Photographer (digital images, no prints or albums from them) – $1700
Band – $1750
Hotel suite for 3 nights and late night room service – $700
Flowers – $600
Transportation (family, wedding party and out of towners) – $1100
Beer and booze – $775
Wine - $800
Rings – $550
Suit for him and ties for wedding party – $500 (I think?)
My dress and jewelry – $1000
Gifts for wedding party – $250ish
Primping for me – $200

I honestly have no idea what the rehearsal dinner cost but it was really nice and included all of our out of town guests (around 45 ppl) and was generously paid for by my in-laws.

I refuse to add up those numbers because I know it will equal a ridiculous amount.