The Q: I came across your blog & web page. I just love, love your work. Especially the wedding you did at The New Leaf Cafe (Mid-Summer Romance). I always wanted to get married at Fort Tryon Park. We live near the park & often take our kids on picnics there. My boyfriend & I will be getting engaged in the next few months. I just started looking at wedding info. We really want something small & intimate. 60 guests & a budget of $10,000. Living in NYC is this possible?? Any advice would be most helpful. Your blog has already been amazingly helpful.  Thank you in advance   – Alexandra

The A: Hi and thanks so much for writing!  I think that you can have a celebration on that budget, but I think that often what goes wrong is that people try to execute all the elements and functions of what we think of as a “wedding reception” and THAT, frankly, isn’t possible on this budget.  Which isn’t to be negative, it’s more to say that 10K breaks out to about $166 per person.  I couldn’t take 60 people to a restaurant in NYC, buy them open bar for 5 hours and feed them a full meal on a Saturday night for $166 per person, let alone rent a private venue, decorate, buy a new dress, hire a photographer, entertainment, etc.

But that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t host a 3 hour cocktail event for your nearest and dearest, or, host a brunch or luncheon at a restaurant for a couple of hours with beer and wine.  That is do-able and possible.  I featured a gorgeous wedding of a friend of mine from college that was about 50 people. They had a ceremony in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and then had a brunch for about 3 hours at the stable at Frankie’s.  It was stunning and special and pretty, and what they could afford, but it wasn’t what maybe your average Joe on the street would imagine when you say wedding in NYC.

One flaw that I often find when people are planning weddings on budgets is that they don’t want to be flexible in defining what “wedding” is, and instead do watered down versions of what they think they should be doing.  It’s much better to creatively re-define the day into a celebration and have whatever kind of party you can afford. Pick one thing to focus on and do it really well.  If you care about dancing, have a dessert party with a few signature drinks and a great DJ.  If you care about feeding your guests, have a brunch or luncheon and fill the air with music from an Ipod and toasts from your friends and family.  Find a space you can afford, which will almost always be a restaurant who has a private room or a small event space that comes with something when you rent it..

Good luck to you and congratulations!!!

I’m preparing for my trip to The Special Event where I’ll be giving attendees two opportunities to see my on my soapbox! I know most of you readers are brides to be, but for those event professionals out there, I hope to see some of you.   The first with the fabulous Liene Stevens of Think Splendid, where we’ll be discussing strategies for marketing to today’s highly educated bride. Her summary is way better than mine.  My second talk is Solo Mio, on a topic near and dear to my heart- how the event industry can better understand and cater to the growing multi-cultural marketplace. If you are at The Special Event this week, I encourage you to please come up and say hello as I’d love to chat with you.

So, all of that said, I wanted to write a little bit today about Costly Bargains.  I was watching “Say Yes to the Dress” this week and saw a bride who bought a really rather amazing gown at a sale for $250.  It actually was fabulous, especially for the price.  Except that she didn’t actually like the way that it looked on her. So, off she was to Kleinfeld to try and find a dress that she loved for less than her original $2,000 budget. They couldn’t. But they DID find a great gown for $2,600.  She looked LOVELY, but I was thinking that she was now more than $850 over budget. Fixing her original mistake added even more money to her “splurge”.

Sometimes, and this isn’t just with weddings, it’s across the board, we become blinded by bargains.  Actually, I have a red Burberry coat that is sitting in my closet because I bought it at an outlet and it was SUCH A BARGAIN even though it actually was too big…  Whatever I spent on it was simply too much because it ISN”T ACTUALLY WEARABLE. I have a similar story about going to a beauty school to get my hair done before an important function because I wanted to try and “save a little bit of money” and, well, $400 and 5 hours of corrective color later….

With your wedding, when you have just ONE CHANCE to do it right and generally speaking, a FINITE amount of money to do so, it’s so important to trust a professional.  Unlike my hair or coat, if the “Bargain” photographer you found screws up on your wedding day, you can’t recreate the memory.  And if your “friend” makes a mess of your flowers, you’ll be hard pressed to complain to someone who did you a favor.   Reality TV likes to make a big “to do” about vendor mistakes, but in truth, amongst professionals, they are rare.  Part of what you are paying for is a strong track record of reliability, QUALITY and doing it right when you just have one shot to do something. (that Eminem song is playing in my mind right now)

So, what is a bride on a budget really to do?  Well, make your budget something you actually want to spend.  If your budget for your dress is $2,000, shop considering that $2,000 already spent.  Act blind to the price tag as long as it’s BELOW the $2,000 mark.  Treat all the dresses the same and you won’t be blinded by a bargain.  Apply this same principal to your other vendors. If you truly are committed to your budget, be mindful not to go OVER, but stop shopping on price.  It’s the best way to insure you truly get the most “bang for your buck” without having to “redo”.

Tata for now, Kittens! Off to Phoenix, and Mayra will be keeping you entertained for the rest of the week as I flap my gums in warmer weather!

The Q:“I’m finding wedding planning so frustrating.  I felt like I had a healthy budget (even by New York City standards) and yet it seems that everything that I’m looking at is a blowout cost and this wedding feels like it’s ballooning out of hand.  Is it possible to have a dream wedding and stick to a budget (here in New York)?

The A: Yes… and no. It’s totally possible, but it involves 3 disciplines, Compromise, Restraint and Resolve.

As a planner, I often hear brides say that they really want to stay on budget, but often, when push comes to shove what they can afford at their budget isn’t necessarily what they would like.  This is where Compromise fits in.

If you know that budget it important, it’s important for you to accept compromise as a part of your wedding planning process from the outset. Do I mean settle for less when it comes to your dream day? No. But I do mean identifying areas that are of the UTMOST importance to you, prioritizing those and maybe deciding where you can go “Loehmann’s” in other areas.

“Loehmann’s” wedding planning means that you don’t need to go highest end, most well known vendor and pay retail price for every single service. You should find areas where you can find “designer discounts”. For instance, let’s say you know for a fact that you want So and So Photographer. He is 12,000. (don’t gasp, its possible here in NYC) This is the most important thing for you. You also love the work of Such and Such graphic designer and stationer. They do the most interesting things and you are just in love with their designs. However, you realize that the Photographer is the MOST IMPORTANT thing and this is less so, and you have a strong sense of what you like and what you don’t. So instead, perhaps you visit a couple of stationers and look at some ready to order lines of invites or you shop around online for a line or designer out of the city that has more reasonable rates, but isn’t short on style. That is a Loehmann’s approach to wedding planning. It isn’t less fashionable, but it is less expensive and you pick and choose your “splurges”.

So, in addition to compromise of expectation, I think the other tip is to CONTROL your guestlist.  If you can do this, you can splurge on what happens with each guest versus simply paying to get people to the table. This will involve some restraint. But if your dream day involves a 4 star meal and a fine wines and the best band ever, then you MUST control the number of people if you are on a budget. However, if your dream involves everyone the two of you have ever known being there, then you should re-think the need to have everything be really high end.  In today’s tough love lesson, if you realize that you can’t afford to have (or don’t want to spend to have) everything that you want, it’s not a reason to be angry.  You wouldn’t be angry if you wanted to wear Prada every day but instead recognize you may have to make do with some DVF sample sale dresses, would you?  So don’t be upset if you can’t afford every single thing that you might want for your wedding, it doesn’t mean it won’t still be glorious.

And that really brings us to the final idea, which is Resolve. When on a budget, your worst enemy is indeciscion and uncertainty. If you don’t know what you like or what you want or what style of wedding you want, you will have NO guidelines with which to direct your budget. If you don’t know if you want a black tie, sit down dinner or a casual buffet, how will you set a catering budget and how will you know if you can afford 75 people or 175 people? How will you decide? You must decide the kind of atmopshere and style of wedding you want in order to make your life easier. For instance, if you are the couple I referenced above who wants everyone on the planet at your wedding reception and you look at your budget, you might realize “OK, I think that necessity is going to dictate buffet, so let me wrap my head around WHY I wanted everyone there- is my real dream to be dancing and partying with all these people that we loved? If so, then let me not stress out that we’re having buffet (because that’s totally acceptable) and let me focus on the entertainment and the drinks and making the large celebration the focus of the party.

So, yes, you can have an amazing wedding, but I think the real advice is to adjust your “dream” wedding around the things that are most priority to you and it will be much easier to find satisfaction in your wedding planning process.

Earlier this week I blogged about my new love…Polyvore.com. I think I could spend an entire day on this site. Honestly. Now that’s saying something because I have a really short attention span for things like that. Today I started to try to find ways to use the site and decided to use it to create an inspiration board for our 57 Grand Bridesmaid Dress Give-away. It was so quick and easy! 

I decided that I would turn my favorite dress (from the Riverside collection) into a work dress. Since I need to try to blend into the background on wedding days, I kept the shoes and dress basic and classy, but I tried to add some spice to my life with the accessories. I am now obsessed with that watch! I hope this gets you ladies inspired to create your own inspiration boards. I mean, how much would your ‘maids love you if you won their dresses for them?

The Q: I am so excited to say that I am engaged! (yay) Because I’m in graduate school and my fiance is in medical school, there is a really brief window that we can have our wedding in if we want to do it this year, and I’m really anxious to get started. I went to see 7 venues this past weekend!!!! That said, I’m not totally sure of what our budget is, as we want to ask my parents for help, but I feel weird having that conversation over the phone and I’m not able to get to see them for another few weeks. Do you think it’s a good idea for me to book my venue if I’m not 100% sure of our budget? I’m nervous that I won’t get the dates that I want if I wait too long.

The A:Yeah, NO. Don’t book ANYTHING unless you have a sense of what your total budget it. When it comes to money, and family contributions there is really no guaranteeing anything, and so it is simply imprudent to count your chickens before they are hatched.

I think unfortunately, when it comes to weddings, brides often see a BUDGET as a confining and stressful thing: “I’m on a budget” or “I can’t have what I want because I’m on a budget”. In reality, creating a budget before you do ANYTHING is one of greatest stress relieving tools that a bride can create for herself. And that goes for brides who can only spend $20,000 and for brides who can spend $200,000.

How can a budget be a stress reliever? Very simple: a budget acts as a road map for you to work on your wedding. Before you start looking around and checking people out and getting attached to ideas, locations, vendors and stationary that are beyond your reach, a budget can help direct you of where to look first before you begin to get into things that are beyond your reach. If you are on a tight budget there is nothing that can make planning a wedding feel frustrating than meeting with vendor after vendor and feeling that you can’t afford anything. Secondly, and this is particularly true with brides with a bit more wiggle room: starting with a budget will help prevent you from spending yourself into a corner. For instance, you are 150 guests and an $80,000 budget, but you spend $15,000 on renting your fantasy venue (without catering). That one decision is going to mean that you now are on a very tight budget for entertainment, floral and decor and all those other decisions that sometimes come a little later down the line. And, when the last minute unexpected bills come in (and they always do) suddenly you will go from feeling like you had a really nice budget to feeling like every decision is a stressful compromise.

So the next question, and this is usually why most girls don’t START with the budget, where do you even begin in creating a budget? Well, the first thing is to figure out approximately how many people you think you are going to have and then to have the “funny money” conversation where you talk to everyone about what everyone can actually contribute. It’s sometimes hard to lock people into numbers, but you have to be straightforward and let them know that you just want to get the best sense of what your realistically working with so that you can make the best decisions.

From there, I usually recommend calling a few venues to get a sense of pricing in your area. My rule of thumb that will give you a good sense of what is a “realistic” budget or the “actual” cost of weddings at a particular location is to take the cost of venue, food, beverage, service, tax and gratuity and to double that cost. For instance, for a wedding of 100 guests, a venue that is $90pp including all of the costs above is likely to yield a wedding that comes in around the $23,000 (not always including gown and attire stuff that is more subjective). For some reason things tend to scale out… i.e a venue that is about $250pp is feasible for someone with a budget of $65,000 for the same 100 guests. Knowing that, it’s easy to see which venues will come in around the right price point to make your budget work. If you are still feeling tripped up, or dealing with things like tents, off premise catering, etc, it’s a good idea to get a professional on board to help you out.

I have a dear friend, and we nicknamed her Captain Crunch, because when we were younger and carefree (aka, silly), we’d all make these elaborate plans for big nights out on the town or weekends away and she’d always say “Let me crunch the numbers, and see if I can join you.” Needless to say she’s about to buy her 2nd beautiful home and I have a large collection of lovely handbags. :-)
I mention Captain Crunch because when she was a bride, she was the most calm and chill bride I’ve ever seen. She decided on a budget, and was very clear when something was beyond that budget, no matter how appealing it would be…. “Thank you, that’s lovely, but not withing my budget” and she would go on to the next vendor to see if they were more in line with her line item. We aren’t all able to be so strong willed, but if you use your budget as a tool instead of a chain, I think you’ll be a much happier bride-to-be in the long run.