Transcript:
[MUSIC] [Music]! Hey, guys, welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for clicking in, Um, if this is your first time here, my name is. Sofia, I am located in sunny. San Diego in this channel is all about lifestyle travel productivity. And this is actually my wedding series, so I got married in Jamaica back in July July 5th. And it was amazing and it was unique and perfect, so Ill. Add a little card if you missed the first one and what we’re talking about today is all about budgeting. I’m going to break down how we budgeted for our destination wedding. And then I’m also going to talk about how to save on the biggest expenses. So that’s tips and tricks on how you can get more bang for your buck fun upgrades and all that good stuff and then finally at the end of the video. I’m gonna talk about how to cut down on cost. Essentially, what we’re gonna be talking about is where you can cut where you can save and people won’t notice, so let’s get started first thing. I want to talk about is how we budget our entire wedding. So what we’re gonna look at is your entire budget and where everything is going to go so your biggest amount of money that you are going to spend on is going to be your venue in your travel, So that means that you are looking for locations that you are not only going to need to get married in, but you’re also going to potentially be staying there. We found a venue. It was an all-inclusive resort and we broke it down by per. Buy per person costs. We had to look at ideally, what our wedding Guest’s Budgets would look like of how much they can afford to not only travel to our wedding, but also stay the amount of days that the resort required of them to stay so our resort required. They stay a minimum of three nights and it was inclusive. So that was going to include everything from your food to drinks. The only thing it didn’t include was spa. It actually includes scuba diving, which was great for some of our guests. Who do scuba a lot? I think there was a good like six people. That we’re scuba diving pretty much every day so it was worth. It was definitely a bang for your buck kind of situation, but personally for our budget. That was, you know, the definitely the biggest amount of money went towards our resort and our venues so essentially we didn’t have to pay any money for a site fee or anything. The only thing we did have to spend money on is that? I wanted a twilight wedding. That was a non-negotiable. I didn’t want to have a daytime wedding and I want it to be. I wanted to get the Sun sunset shot. Huh, just know that you’re gonna spend a lot of money on not only the resort, but also the plane ticket there. That’s a good, you know, depending on where you go could be a really cheap plane ticket. If you’re lucky if you’re flying out to like Thailand or Bali like that’s definitely gonna be a cheaper plane ticket, But to Jamaica, it was around. I think everyone spent between 600 to maybe 800 roundtrip. And then the actual resort was I believe per person. It was like 200 maybe 300 dollars per night per person now. Brian and I did some upgrades. We did the over the water bungalow, which was important to me. That was definitely on the super side and we budgeted for that. We knew that it was gonna be, you know. It was a couple grand per person per night for the over the water bungalow, and we stayed there three nights, so that took up a lot of our budget. The least important parts that. I wasn’t trying to spend a ton of money on included photography now. Photography is only important. But I knew that I wasn’t gonna see the photographer beforehand. He didn’t know my aesthetic, bringing in an outside photographer would have been an extra grand, plus whatever services I would get from, this said outside photographer that I would have had to fly out. I love I have a ton of photographer friends, but I’m not gonna spend the extra grand, plus their services, which can be from like. You know, five to twenty grand, depending on what you’re getting. We didn’t get videography because that wasn’t important for us because it was an all-inclusive resort. I was having this like I don’t know. I felt like I felt kind of stupid spending money on food and beverages at a place That was all-inclusive for my wedding, but it was worth it in the end because we did a four-course menu. It was delicious. It was amazing food and we had drinks the entire night, which was paid for so we didn’t have to spend any money on a bar. We did have to spend per person now. The food cost per person was only like 12 bucks per person, so it wasn’t that expensive. However, it still was like a good, you know? I mean, that’s 1,200 bucks or something like that where I was like. Everyone can just go eat and then come back, you party. So the other part that we didn’t want to spend more than I think, like 3000 on decor. So that was chairs, linens, flowers. We didn’t want to spend. I didn’t want to spend any money on flowers because we were in Jamaica. It was totally green it. Was, you know, beach? What do you need more than green? Gardens and beach. There was really, you didn’t need anything else, so I was trying to go into a different direction with the flowers and the decor making it more romantic. I spent a little bit more money on my lighting. I want it to be lit up in the tree. I wanted little hanging gloves everywhere, and that’s where I wanted to spend my money. So the the lighting ended up costing us. I think like fifteen hundred and then the flowers. I did all custom because everything that they were selling was like at least $500 per bouquet for the bridesmaids. I had four bridesmaids and then my bouquet would have been like $700 so I asked for a baby’s breath because I know that traditionally that’s a less expensive flower and not dropped the cost By like I think per bouquet. I only spent $200 so when then everything that was on the tables. I only got three Garlands. It was still expensive. I mean, the flowers, they’re gonna be expensive. It’s gonna be between, you know, like people spend at least $5,000 towards flowers and it’s so hard to get it lower than that. Luckily, you know where? I got married. That was not the main thing it wasn’t about. You know, spending as much money as possible on flowers Because I already had the destination. This is controversial, but I didn’t wanna. I didn’t want to get a wedding cake. I didn’t want to do a wedding cake. But that ended up being important for Brian to have. The wedding cake was his thing. He paces the flavors and he enjoyed it. We ended up getting our wedding cake for free, So because I booked with sandals and I had X amount of guests coming to my wedding, and I was spending X ma dollars towards decor. You get free credits towards things. So, um, my bar was free and my cocktail hour was free The tray, past appetizers, no cost and that my wedding cake was free, so look for places that maybe have perks like that. Because that’s where you’re gonna be able to save money. Then the other smaller parts of the budget are gonna go towards the dress. We were lucky enough that my mom gifted my dress to me. Um, and my dress was amazing. I’ll do a quick photo down here or here. Wherever also have to take into consideration. What the alterations are gonna cost. If you buy a wedding dress, that is, you know, you think it’s gonna be perfect, but you have to, and it’s a great deal like a $300 dress or something, but it needs to be completely altered. You’re gonna end up spending about a grand and then finally gifts, so I’ll get into cutting costs at the end of this video, but as far as gifts went. I did for my bridesmaids. I did a cute little pajama outfit. That would be adorable in photos for getting ready and then. I did like a little dream catcher with it. So something unique, something small the Ill link where I got the pajama sets because those were such a good price point, they weren’t cheap, so all of them are still wearing them. At least they told me and others don’t wearing them. Let’s talk about how to save on the biggest expense, and that is your travel and venue, so I would recommend doing is looking into credit cards that are going to reward you for your travel. So we opened three separate credit cards that we knew would ultimately benefit us in the long road that we would be saving money, so you’re going to have to make big payments at, you know, Five grand at a time to X amount, you know, first one that we got was the the world of Hyatt credit card, so none of this is sponsored, also not big enough for a sponsorship quite yet, but you’re interested. So the world of high credit card helped us book Our honeymoon stay at the Montego Bay Resort that we stayed at so it was a Hyatt and we ended up getting a crap-ton of points that ultimately we could put towards that. Stay and save money. Ultimately, what you have to do Is you got to spend a certain amount of money in order to get a certain amount of points and because we were spending so much money on our wedding. We instantly got points the other one that I personally signed up for because I knew that is going to be making payments. Was the Chase Reserve card. I’ve been looking at doing a chase credit card for a really long time, but I want to wait for the right time, and this was a perfect time because what you had to do was spend $4,000 and you had to pay that off and then you’d get 60,000 miles. Essentially, plus all of these other benefits definitely looking to chase credit card, so that’s how? I got my miles the third credit card that we got that was a huge score. Was the the Delta miles card and that got US First-class tickets. We only spent $300 per person on our round-trip first-class because we had all these points because we put our wedding costs into that, so finally. I want to talk about where you’re able to cut costs and ultimately save big in the long run. So my first suggestion is to be flexible with your date. You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself into a Saturday and you have to get married on a Saturday. You because you’re going destination What’s wrong with a Tuesday? What’s wrong with a Wednesday? People are going to travel out anyways. Doing that day is going to save you money. Ultimately, because the resort’s a going to either discount, speaking from personal experiences. If I sold a Tuesday wedding, I was discounting the out of that wedding. Well, excuse me, because we’re not gonna sell it anyways. I think the least expensive time to go to. Jamaica was in January and I didn’t want to wait a full year to get married. So next thing I would recommend it is now. We didn’t do this because it was important to. Brian to have a wedding cake but doing something else instead of a wedding cake. Because what in case can cost between? I think it’s like $12 per person. At least if you do go somewhere foreign, they might give you some sort of cost benefit to it, or it might be really difficult for them to make a wedding cake. If that’s something this on their tradition, so doing something, that’s maybe part of their tradition. I know my friends doing ice cream sandwiches, and maybe I think she’s getting them for, like a buck apiece. Huge savings, huge, huge savings, twelve dollars per person, rather than just a buck, even two dollars to give to ice cream sandwiches per person. The other thing that is really controversial. Is the guest count? The guest count is huge. We knew that we wanted just best friends. People that we talked to you it. If not every day every other day, at least once a week and then immediate family, it was 25 people. It could have been 40 people and while that doesn’t make the biggest difference as far as the food cost goes thinking about another table, more flowers, more wedding cake or whatever it could have been a little bit more expensive. So that’s it for today’s video. If you liked it, please give it a thumbs up below. Make sure that you do hit the subscribe button. I would love it if you were part of the family, I do upload Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays Or at least I try to. I will post at least three videos in a week and there will be more on this wedding Serie So that’s gonna do it for this video. If you liked it, please give me a thumbs up down below. If you have any questions or you have any videos that you want to see in either. This wedding series or just any normal videos also leave it down below. I love interacting with you guys. Make sure that you hit the subscribe button. I do upload at least Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Um, if I don’t make one of those days, you will get three videos in one week. Um, and check me out over on Instagram. I do have a lot of my wedding. Pictures listed over there and just kind of my day in the life, so hashtag, so thanks for stopping by subscribe and Ill. See you next time bye.