Transcript:
Hi, everyone! Welcome to my channel and thank you for watching this video. So in this video. I’m going to be talking about our budget. The planning, the big expenses, the small expenses, the unexpected expenses Because those come along with planning a wedding as well. The reason why we chose to have the backyard wedding is because I just like the whole idea and the intimacy behind having about carat wedding. We got married in my mother-in-law’s backyard. So this is the house that my husband grew up in. He has childhood memories here, so it was just a very special place to have our weddings a little bit of background on our wedding, My husband and I got married. October 19th in Fresno, California. The weather is usually pretty mild year round, but especially mild in October’s. I felt like this was the perfect time of the year to have a backyard wedding. We split our wedding up into two. We had our ceremony and we had our reception. Both took place in the backyard, but the ceremony only had about 30 people in attendance. We wanted it to be something really intimate and something really personal, so we only had our family and really close friends. Attend the ceremony. The guest’s attendance for the reception was about 80 people, so that is a fairly large on a guests for a backyard wedding. But we made it work. I think a lot of people go into the planning process thinking that if I have my wedding in the backyard, it’s gonna cut the price of my wedding in half, which is not true, There’s a lot of unexpected expenses that go into planning weddings that are in your backyard that people just don’t account for so when it comes to planning a backyard wedding. I would say the number one tip is to have a workable backyard. I know that may sound a little bit redundant. I’ll go ahead and post a picture of what the backyard looked like prior to the wedding, but what I mean by workable backyard. Is you want to have a lot of space? So depending on what your guest’s count is, you want to have enough space for everybody to move comfortably to be able to walk from point? A to point B without having to shake and shuffle to get around others, so I kind of went back and forth with myself on whether or not I wanted to talk about the wedding tire, specifically my wedding dress just because I’ve seen so many brides that have been able to score wedding dresses for extremely low in reasonable prices. So my dress is the Bruna dress by Fea Couture. I had the most amazing service and the most amazing experience in picking out my wedding dress. The sort that I went to is called the wedding party and it’s located in Berkeley, California. So if you’re a Bay Area bride, if you’re a California bride, I 1000% recommend this bridal shop. My wedding specialist was Clara. She was so patient with me. I didn’t decide on the dress that I wanted that day. I had to go home and think about it at the beginning of the wedding planning process. I told myself I’m a super simple bride. I’m not gonna go crazy with the dress. I could wear anything and I would be happy. All I care about is getting married, but that wasn’t the case. I probably tried on about 40 dresses before I decided on the one, and even when I decided on the one, it wasn’t like immediate rush of like euphoria, and it was it. I wasn’t a hundred percent decided on the dress. I tried it on. I said, okay, put it on the list. I’m gonna go home and think about it. The next day was actually when I called back to you. Finalize my order and ordered my dress, so don’t feel pressured to pick a dress. Not everyone has that the say yes to the dress moment when picking out their dress. Just be patient with yourself. Find something that’s comfortable. Find something that’s within your budget for me. It was important to find something that was going to be classic so. I wanted to pick a dress that I could look back on pictures with my grandchildren. Fifty years from now and not be like. Oh, my gosh! I just picked that dress because that was what was in style. I wanted something really modern, really simple. So that’s what I went with, so luckily for me. They had a trunk show going on for that specific designer and the sale. Price of the dress was 1,300 I would consider that a little bit of a splurge like I said there’s. I’ve seen that lots of women Find dresses on Amazon David’s Bridal. I’ve seen lots of women Find dresses for way cheaper than what I found my dress. Low total cost for alterations was $600 The lady that did my alteration. She put a bustle. She took it in little bit on the straps on the waist on the hips, and then, of course she shortened the dress, so she did a hem. I got really lucky with my accessories, so accessories being shoes, veil earrings. I kept the jewelry really simple. I only had earrings on. I didn’t offer a necklace or bracelet or anything like that. I didn’t want any jewelry That was gonna clash with the overall Look of my wedding dress. So I just went with simple diamond studs. I think they were like 15 bucks on Nordstrom as far as the shoes and the veil. I got so many compliments on the veil. Veils tend to be a little pricey. I looked down a couple of veils at a couple different bridal shops. They all were priced about 150 to $200 the veil that I got was. Actually, I think it was twenty two to twenty three dollars off Amazon. It was a Cathedral style veil with a little bit of lace on the trim. The thing that I love about my veil is because the dress was so simple. I wanted a little bit of something just to kind of kick up the notch on the overall Bridal. Look, and I feel like the lace on the Vil just totally tied this look together as far as other expenses that are gonna be a hundred percent optional. The cost of me to get my makeup done was a hundred dollars. I wanted to get my makeup done. Because the way you look in the mirror, it’s a lot different from how you look in pictures, especially with professional photography so. I wanted something that was gonna hold up for the five or six hours that the wedding went on. So it was important to me to have my makeup done. The hair was free. I did my hair exactly how my hair is now. This is just my go-to hairstyle again wanted. Something simple wanted something. That was gonna be really classy, something. That’s not gonna be too trendy, so I feel like this is a perfect look. As far as the tuxedo rental, my husband paid one hundred and ninety six, which was gifted to him from his and his uncle. They paid for his whole tuxedo rental. My wedding dress was actually gifted to me from my parents. So this price. I’m gonna work into the cost of the total budget for the wedding because it does technically still count, but this was not an expense paid for by myself or my husband. So when I was deciding on what I wanted to use to design our wedding infant Asians, I’m starting to a co-worker of mine and she mentioned the idea of Etsy, so the cool thing about FC is they have templates, so you go into the Etsy website, you type in a search bar wedding invitation and a lot of different options will come up and all of these options are a hundred percent customizable envelopes stamps, address labels. All the wedding stationery totalled to two hundred and twenty-five dollars. Another important. Wedding expense is the photography so? I was lucky enough to grow up with someone who is a photographer, so she gave us a really good deal on the photography. It was two thousand two hundred dollars. This included the date of ceremony photos as well as the engagement photos, which we use for our invitations again. This is something that was gifted to us from my mother-in-law. She paid for the whole price of the photography so again, not something that isn’t expense by myself or my husband, but something that I’m gonna work into the total cost of the wedding budget, so the total cost for the flowers that we used on our wedding was two hundred and three dollars for the centerpieces and other various decor. We didn’t go through a florist for the flowers. We actually purchased them ourselves, and I decided to take on the challenge of creating our own centerpieces, so I was lucky enough to have my husband’s cousin who was actually married in the backyard to help us put together the flower arrangements. This included one case of white roses, one case of baby’s breath, one case of mixed greens, which is eucalyptus and other pop fillers. And then we got six bunches of chrysanthemum. So all this together came out to look like this. I’m very happy with the way. The centerpieces came out again was going for a really simple modern. Look to our wedding other wedding flowers that I wasn’t going to risk. DIY was my bouquet. Their corsage is for my mom. My mother-in-law and my best friend. And we got five boutonnieres. The total cost of that was $200 My bouquet was a bundle of white roses kiyomis. I actually got lucky and I knew the person that worked at the flower shop. It was actually the parent of one of my little brother’s best friends growing up, so she gave me such a good deal on the bouquet. So as far as the rentals, we’ve rented 110 chairs, napkins, plates, silverware, sets, cups and linens for the tables. In addition to 14 tables, this included the guest tables, the food serving tables and the gift tables, so the upside to renting. All your dinnerware is not only. Is it easy to return? But you can also save on space in your trash cans. So having a party, anyone, that’s how to party knows, it’s so easy to accumulate trash whether it be plates cups, napkins, food scraps, things like that. It’s so easy to accumulate trash When you’re having lots of people over wedding is gonna be no different. He also rented a nine by ten dance floor. Just because people dancing and a lot of traffic can be a little harsh on grass, so we opted to rent a dance floor that all totaled out to one thousand two hundred and ninety six dollars another rental that I am just so over. The moon about is the portable bathrooms, so we decided to rent a luxury mobile bathroom. This is something that. I’ve never heard of this is something that I think is fairly new on the scene. I actually found out about these luxury porta-potties. After going to a bridal show, our bathroom, Specifically that we rented It had Wi-fi connection. It was heated and it was air-conditioned so it all the bells and whistles was included. This was probably one of my favorite rentals and the favorite parts of my wedding still to this day. I rave about it, so that’s something to consider when you’re having a backyard wedding is where everyone’s going to go to the bathroom. As far as the appetizers, we didn’t want to get too crazy with those because we knew we had such a good dinner that was going to be served. So for the appetizers we literally just went to Costco. We purchased two big things of hummus. We purchased two bags of pita chips, and then I had members of our family. Chop up fruits and vegetables. And then we all how to ranched it for the vegetables In addition to the hummus so that in total cost about $75 so we decided to hire a DJ Because I wanted someone that can kind of help navigate the night. I wanted someone that could announce the wedding party. Someone that could dismiss tables to get food. I wanted to take the pressure and the Sharks off of my family of having to delegate a bunch of tasks and kind of put that on the DJ. It smart the lighting. The lighting is right up there with one of my favorite parts of the wedding next to the porta-potties. So like I mentioned before my husband’s cousin got married in the backyard. So there was a lot of things that we were able to reuse from her wedding and incorporate into our wedding just for the sake of being complete. I went and I did my own research, and I searched the exact string lights that she bought and I took. I incorporated that into how many lights we used. So for these specific street lights, They’re about 10 to 12 dollars. So in total, we used eight rows of two strands so 16 string lights That’s gonna cost about 160 to 200 dollars if you’re planning on having a backyard wedding lighting is very important, most people. I know they don’t have much lighting in their backyard. Besides a porch lights, do you want your guests to be sitting in the dark and to miss an important moment because they couldn’t see it, so I would definitely look into either renting lights or maybe purchasing lights just to kind of add to the overall ambiance of the backyard wedding. As far as the cake we purchased a 10 inch round. The reason why we got such a small cake is because we just wanted a couple’s cake to cut. As far as the dessert for the guests, we purchased 100 cupcakes totaling at 350 dollars. The favors were right up there with the Porta Potty and the lights as part of my favorite parts of the wedding. So what we did was we purchased a big box of Kirkland Brand Dog treats we purchased small brown paper bags and stickers off of Amazon with a little dog. Paw that say thank you and what we did was. We basically just packed a couple treats into those paper bags. Set them up in a box and let people take them home to their dogs. We love our dogs. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t love their dogs. So I felt like this, The perfect favor for us to give out for the food. We spent about a thousand dollars for about 80 to 90 guests. I think that’s about the average cost. We had 35 pounds of grilled chicken 40 pounds of tri-tip. We had green beans and mashed potatoes at the side, and my mother-in-law made the salad. This was way more than enough food for everyone. That was there. There was enough food for people to get second and third servings. The food is probably the number One way that I gauge my experience at a wedding. So of course for me. It was important that I served food that I liked. I starts the drinks for the drinks. We had peach. Bellini, tea from Olive Garden, which you can purchase just as a syrup and mixed with any black tea or iced tea. My husband’s aunt made the most amazing strawberry lemonade from scratch, and we also had water as far as the alcohol, we purchased five cases of beer and 35 bottles of wine. Trader Joe’s really came in clutch for a lot of the items that we purchased for our wedding. We paid about 240 dollars for the five cases of beer and 35 bottles of wine again. We have so much left over. After the wedding, we just gifted them to our neighbors and to friends and family. I also accounted for about $500 for miscellaneous decor that we purchased for the wedding. This included the seating chart. Mason jars for the centerpieces. The cake table backdrop serving platters drink dispensers is accounted for all our. DIY projects, lanterns, candles, the posts to hang the lights, wooden crates. The cake stands the signs. All that kind of tight together totaled out to about $500 You totaled about that we spent on our wedding. Is approximately nine thousand two hundred dollars. This accounts for food, catering, drinks, alcohol, flowers attire, all those expenses. I felt like everything about the wedding. Just came out perfect. It was everything my husband and I wanted looking back. I don’t think there’s anything that I would change. I truly feel like everything came out perfect. Even the things that I was stressed about. Everything came out perfect hope. You guys enjoyed this video. Thank you for watching to all my brides and grooms that are looking to planning a backyard wedding. I wish you guys the best of luck and happy wedding planning [Applause].