TIKTOK Budget Advice | How to Plan a Wedding for $10k (real advice from a real planner)

How to plan a wedding for $10,000 in 2026. Hi, if you're new here, my name is Jamie Wolfer. I'm your online wedding planner, and in today's video we are going to be planning a $10,000 wedding. Yes, in this economy, we're gonna do it with receipts. So before we go any further, jump on down there, hit that subscribe button, especially if you're a bride on a budget, because I'd love for you to camp out. Just come hang out with me. I can walk you through this entire thing. I promise you, it does not have to be as stressful as the internet makes it sound. Okay, so without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. interpretation of a $10K budget, let's look at an actual realistic one from a real-life bride.

So I saw a video the other day of a girl who said that she did her wedding under $12,000, and I wanted to piggyback off of that and let you guys know some of the tips that my husband and I followed to keep our wedding rehearsal dinner, ceremony, reception, and our honeymoon all under $10,000. We budgeted just over $10,000 for everything and ended up coming in right under $10,000 to keep us under our limit. Honestly, my biggest tip if you are planning a wedding on a budget is to use the people that you have as resources. Pretty much all of us have people that are really talented at different things. If you have a friend who's really talented at flowers or someone who's really good at design or people who are just really— people who just want to help you in whatever capacity, whether that's like running errands or things like that, use the people at your disposal. So here's what that looked like for us. I bought all of our live flowers for our wedding through an online website called Flower Moxie, which was an awesome website and I would totally recommend. And then my bridesmaids and I got together, and my mom and grandmother were there too, and we did all of the centerpieces, flower bouquets, boutonnieres— literally every arrangement that we needed for the wedding day, we put them all together ourselves.

Well, I wish she gave receipts, and I wish she gave a number for this. I do absolutely love— I love Flower Moxie. I love them specifically because they offer recipes for how to put things together. So while there are other DIY options out there or places where you can order in wholesale, Flower Moxie— while you might spend a little bit more on the themselves or the experience to like have a guided DIY process, you're not flying blind, right? So you can get wholesale through Sam's Club, through Costco, through Trader Joe's if your local location will do that. You can get it through Fifty Flowers. They provide a lot more variety than some of those like typical wholesale locations do. And I think Fifty Flowers has some like guided DIYs. If not, they have some pre-done centerpieces, boutonnieres, corsages, everything already done for you there as well. Um, Flower Moxie's got that option of like teaching you how to DIY. There's some really, really good options. In fact, I have a whole floral quiz. I'll go ahead and link it up there if you want to go ahead and take it. It walks you through all the different floral DIY options that are available to you, and then you can decide what works best for you. In a $10K wedding situation, your money is finite, so you have to use your other valuable resource, which is time. And your time is finite as well, so you might need to be inviting other people into this experience with you, uh, with grace and with kindness. But DIY florals is a very smart way to go when you're working with such a tight budget.

My husband also has a lot of experience with graphic design, so instead of paying for a company to do our wedding invitations for us. He designed them for us on Canva, and then we had them printed through there, which was a huge expense that was cut.

Canva's the best. I'm obsessed with Canva so much. I love it so much.

My mother-in-law has a really good friend who is an absolutely incredible baker, so we used her to do our wedding cake. Um, we kept what we wanted super simple, which I wanted a really simple wedding cake anyways. It was just a one-layer white cake with some texturized icing, and then I saved some of our flowers from centerpieces and whatnot to put on the cake when we got there too. The shoes that I wore for our wedding were the same shoes that I got for my college graduation. My dress was long enough that no one was really going to see my shoes, and it wasn't a big deal for me to buy new ones, so I just wore them. They were basic, they were nude, and I knew that I was going to be comfortable walking in them all day, and so that made me feel a lot more comfortable. Amazon was also our best friend. I got my guest book from Amazon. I got all of the plates silverware, napkins for our reception, all from Amazon. Our rehearsal dinner was also super relaxed. It was in my parents' backyard. We borrowed tables and chairs from our church so that everybody would have a place to sit in the backyard, and my parents picked up barbecue from one of the barbecue places in town for us. Those are just some of my best tips. I'm sure that if I kept thinking, I'd come up with some others. So if you guys want to make this a series or want to hear more of the things that we did to keep our wedding budget-friendly, I would love to share. Just let me know what you want to know and I'm happy to keep sharing.

What we tend to see a lot with videos like this is one, well, how many people did you invite? Which is valid. It's fair. We didn't hear how many people she invited. Two, she didn't include any costs. She just included techniques, which I do appreciate. We're not negating her helpful advice, but it does kind of feel a little bit limiting when we don't have actual numbers. And three, when was this wedding planned? Because if it was 2 years ago, the numbers are going to be different than they are today. So we do have another video to watch, a cost breakdown that actually has numbers associated with it, which I specifically love. I love numbers, but we will get to an actual cost breakdown with numbers from a metropolitan area near me, um, for 2026 dates. But first, let's cover a couple of ground rules when we're talking about weddings and weddings on a budget. One, what is a wedding? A wedding is an event that typically has a ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception where you host a minimum of 50 guests. Anything underneath that would be considered a micro wedding. Anything underneath like 20 or something could be considered an elopement. The numbers are a little bit flexible here, so for the sake of conversation, we're going to say a wedding should be at about 75— it could be 60, but 75 to 100 guests. Like all the other videos in the series, I will be using 100 guests as the number we are operating off of to prove to you that it's not just like one of those videos where you watch all of it, you're like, oh my gosh, how did you afford all this? And then you realize it was for 30 people and you're like, well, that's great, I'm so happy for you. That's like my immediate family alone. So hopefully we can provide a little bit of clarity there. But we will be planning as if there is a ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception with all of the typical fixings, which means food. Which means alcohol, which means desserts, which means florals, music in the background, someone to take photos, etc. So while we may not be able to afford a professional vendor for every single category, I'm doing my best to structure these in a way that you aren't missing any elements from your wedding day that would feel strange to have them be gone. Okay, all right, great. So love her tips here. Definitely go DIY with the florals, definitely go DIY when it comes to cake, when it comes to desserts. Other rules, I mean, we already talked about like DIY versus professionals. At a $10K budget, you're probably going to have not very many professionals filling in a lot of those categories. You're gonna have a handful, but not very many. So if you want to have them fulfilled, if you want to have alcohol, if you want to have dessert, if you want to have music, you are going to need to DIY them, which means probably either bringing in the supplies yourself or having a family member or friend do it for you. We're also going to trim down the variety drastically. Instead of offering 3 to 5 different dessert options, we're offering one. Instead of having 7 different floral types and 4 different kinds of greenery, we're limiting that down to maybe 3 different types of flowers and 1 or 2 kinds of greenery. Or if you want to go even more simple than that, you can do just like Italian or Israeli ruscus on your tabletop with candles instead of actual floral centerpieces instead. So we can really ratchet back what we're looking to spend as long as we ratchet back our expectations on the amount of variety that we will be presenting. This also includes alcohol, types of alcohol, uh, red versus white wine, the amounts we have for each of those, the dinner itself. We already covered desserts. You get the picture. You just— you're going to be a lot more limited on your options in general. And Last but most certainly not least, the last rule we need to follow is to not fall into the venue trap. Now, what is the venue trap? I've talked about it in all the other videos, so again, if I repeat myself, that just makes you a really good student of this series. Okay, the venue trap is where you book a typical wedding venue that the only thing they do is they host weddings. That's it, point blank. That's the only thing they do. And so while you're looking at a $10,000 wedding budget, if you find a wedding venue that's $5,000, well, most of the budget breakdowns online tell you that your venue should be about 50% of the cost. What they don't tell you is that number should include catering, alcohol rentals, and maybe a couple other miscellaneous things in that overall venue cost because that isn't an all-inclusive typical wedding venue. When you're working with $10,000, it's very unlikely that you could feasibly pull it off if you spend half of that on just your venue space alone. No chairs, no tables, no extra amenities, no speakers even to plug your phone into. If you are paying just that amount of money for the location within which you're getting married, you will very likely go over budget. But not even just that, if your venue has preferred or required caterers and/or other vendors, then you are forced to select from a list of people that they've worked with. Listen, they've been doing this for a really long time. They have earned the right to say we are only working with full-service catering companies because they make sure everything gets done and they take the trash with them and they leave it exactly how we want them to. They are allowed to do that. That's great. But if we don't have $10K, then we cannot sign up for a $5,000 venue with a caterer that has a $30 per person minimum. We just can't make those numbers work if we want to hit all the categories that you have in a typical wedding. So those are the ground rules, those are the basics. Uh, we are going to be getting a little creative when it comes to our venue selection, as well as some of the DIY options and/or ideas that we're presenting. Okay, humor me, this one is $10,000 for her reception, but I would argue that a lot of her numbers are still valid for a $10,000 wedding in general because there aren't very many additional costs that would be missed for ceremony only. But anyways, we'll be the judge of that. Let's take a listen.

I need to give you all an update on our budget and spending for our wedding reception that's going to be in 2026. In case you're new here, my fiancé and I are getting married next year, but we're going to get married at the courthouse and then have just the wedding reception. Our budget initially was $10,000, and I think we can for the most part stay at that. My guess is that the cost of everything for the party is going to be about $12K though. I'm going to break down the cost now that things have become much more finalized. So first of all, the venue— this was finalized a while ago, $3,500. That's the same. We're inviting about 50 people. For food, our next largest expense, initially I really wanted this vegan chef and he quoted me $3,500, which actually I think is quite reasonable and his food is spectacular. That also included travel cuz he lives in Florida. So I thought it was reasonable, but that was out of our budget. And long story short, my Dad did offer to cook for our wedding. My dad's an amazing cook. He's Iranian, he's Persian, and I don't know anybody who doesn't like my dad's food. So we are going to have my dad cooking. His sister will help him as well, as well as my stepmom. So this will be Persian food for the most part. He offered even before I was getting the quote from the chef. So I was like, all right, let's do it. I'm expecting between dinner and the appetizers, cuz we're gonna DIY that as well. I'll probably handle some more of the appetizer stuff myself. I'm expecting about $2,500 there. However, I feel like this is high. And then I know that my dad will cover a portion of this. Honestly, he would probably cover all of it, but I, we don't really feel comfortable with that. So at the end of the day, we would probably give him at least $1,000 to cover food. So for now, I put that at $2,500. Photographer we've booked, that's gonna be $1,000. Videographer we have also booked and signed contract for, this is $1,300. This one I am relieved about because because I had some trouble finding a videographer. We did sign a contract with a DJ that is—

okay, wait, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. One, we don't know how many guests are coming to this, so like take everything with a grain of salt when it comes to any consumable number that she's offering. You got photographer for $1,000 and videographer for $1,300. If you watch enough of this channel, you know that I usually am like, yeah, I would prefer your minimum be $2,000 for photo. That's my preference. Just want to make sure you get someone who's like been doing this for a while. And video, again, it's about $22,000, $2,500 as a minimum. But here we have like a real bride out in the wild planning a 2026 reception who found a photographer and a videographer for $1,000 and $1,300 respectively. Now you might argue, well, they're not there for the getting ready time, they're not there for the ceremony. Correct. Yes, we are looking at a shortened amount of hours, which is one of the hacks if you're working with a smaller budget. Have your photographer and/or videographer teams— although in a capacity like this, I recommend trying to say just photographer only— have have them there for a shorter period of time to make it more affordable. You don't need them there for a grand exit. You don't need them there for a full 8 hours. You could logically get by quite easily and get a lot of your event captured for about 6 hours, which will lessen the overall cost in general. If you want to skip getting ready photos, you can. I do love a gallery that tells a whole story though, so that's, that's where I place my value when I'm putting together these numbers and these quotes. Um, but if you want to, cut the hours down. You don't want any photos of you eating the food. You probably just want photos and videos of this— the toasts, the speeches, the dances, you know, those sorts of elements. But they don't need to stay through the entirety of the evening. Maybe they only stay for 30 minutes of dancing time and then steal you outside for some sunset photos, and then they go on their merry way, and they don't even need to capture the cake cutting. We can really narrow a lot of that down, cut it down a lot of those hours on the back end of things, because you don't need them there for the whole reception, especially if you're skipping cake cutting, bouquet toss, garter toss, grand exit, any those really big things, I mean, we're talking 2 hours on the dance floor in most situations, in most events. We don't need photography there for 2 hours to be doing that. So while you might argue, well, she's not having a ceremony, sure, absolutely. If we just kind of shift the hours of coverage that we have here and instead not cover later in the evening, which she might have already done as well, you will see a lower photography cost in general. It's the expectation and the hope that a photography and videography team would be there for 8 hours that really pushes the cost up to $2,000, $2,500 at minimum if you're working with someone who's been doing this for a little bit of time.

The DJ, that is $1,200, and he's bilingual, which is important cuz most of my family and the guests on my side speak English, but his family, they speak Spanish. We also decided to get a coffee truck, or it's like a drink truck really, but their main focus is on coffee. They quoted us $525, but I'm going with $600 just in case there's like more drinks per person. And that does not include alcohol, by the way. We are not going to be buying alcohol. My dad said he'll buy it, so we don't drink, so I'm not buying alcohol. If we add all of that up, it's a little bit over $10,000. And then there's still drinks otherwise, like aside from alcohol, dessert, decor, and then extras. The invites are going to be free. So I'm expecting for all of that to be another $1,000 or so. And so with the help of our families, I'm pretty positive we can still stick to our $10,000 budget. Any major updates I will share here.

But okay, so hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm gonna go back just a sec. So, um, she's including NABEV, so non-alcoholic beverages, dessert, decor, any extras for another $1,000 or so. So that means florals, iced tea, water, lemonade, which I typically did recommend in dispensers, especially if you get the powdered version. I know it's not bougie, I know it's not the cutest, but it's the most convenient to serve on your wedding day. Okay, I'm talking Country Time lemonade, I'm talking powdered iced tea. Again, not the classiest thing in the world, but it gives your guests a couple of options if you're cutting alcohol alcohol entirely and just offering non-alcoholic beverages, this is a really, really inexpensive way of doing that, including using disposable cups. But if we're cramming all of this into $1,000, that's where I go, okay, I mean, we can, we can, especially because we're not considering alcohol and dessert. We've seen in previous videos or previous iterations that you can get a very affordable cake for $50, $60, $100 to suit 100 people, no problem. Sam's Club, Costco, um, get varied desserts from Trader Joe's and have someone do a dessert table for you. Again, that require someone's time, sure, but you will be able to save the money in that area respectively. Florals and decor, you're gonna have to keep a pretty minimum. Extras, yeah, that's, that's cramming a lot into $1,000, especially when we're being really vague, like, I don't know, we'll just figure it out, we'll just throw it on the pile at that point. And then we have the, the big fat question mark of how much dad is paying for when it comes to the reception meal specifically. And this is also a really big ask. Most of the time when we do budget-style weddings, I try to avoid DIYing food as much as possible. We try to outsource as much as we can, which we'll get to in the budget in just a moment, but that gets a little bit more complicated. Either prepping it ahead of time and bringing it back up to temp and then serving it at the proper temp, or cooking it day of is really labor-intensive. So it's really sweet that her dad is offering this, but for the record, for the most part, I don't recommend DIYing your food, like the main course of this, if at all possible. Appetizers, sure. Desserts, absolutely. Salad bar to go along with your main dinner meal? Heck yeah! I love everything about it, but the main meal itself, I like to— I prefer to try to keep that as outsourced as possible if we can. Anyways, I mean, all things considered, this is pretty solid. She starts off with a really high venue. Food is again also really high, but we don't— we don't know guest count. If we called it 100 people, this would probably be on the higher end of the food budget that I would predict for a $10K wedding, um, but still not outside of the realm of possibility. And we're also assuming that the venue comes with tables and chairs and linens, I think, at this number, because otherwise people are just sitting on the floor. Anyways, that's a lot. That's a lot going on. So let's go ahead and take a look at a realistic $10,000 breakdown from an actual professional who has been helping couples plan budget weddings for the last decade. All right, so this is a screenshot from the master plan budgets worksheet that we have over there that's interactive, where you can kind of put in your numbers, where there's an option for monthly contribution, family, and savings contributions. For simplicity's sake, I've just put $10,000 from savings in here specifically. But if you're balling on a budget, if you're working with a budget that's under $15K, I highly recommend you take a look at your monthly budget and try to assess how much money you can eke out of that over time. Right? So if you're looking at your grocery expenses, rent, car, etc., other things like that, what do you have left over? What's some of that entertainment fun money that you could put towards an event like this? Or where can you get a little bit more crafty or creative to make this number work more effectively for you? And while that last gal obviously had a very generous dad who was willing to step in you may or may not have family contributions that you can add to that category. So we're just going to keep it simple and go based off of $10K as a lump sum if that's what you have, or if that's what you can kind of put, set aside, or make payments on as you go. So, uh, the cost breakdown right here, we've got 19% for the venue, which would put us at $1,900, coordinator at $500, catering at $1,500, drinks, desserts, both at $300 apiece, rentals at $500, uh, photo at $900, video at $900, florals at wine, DJ at $400, stationery at $300, apparel at $500, hair and makeup at $100, and miscellaneous at $1,000. As we do with all of our budget breakdowns, the miscellaneous category is there for a reason. It is there for, uh, I didn't know I had this cost coming up, I'm so glad I have money set aside, or I thought I was going to DIY this and now I don't want to so we're going to throw money at it, or I want to add more to this category of budget because I want a little bit more to work with, or we're really excited about this DJ, etc. So I highly recommend setting that aside unless you want to pull that from your monthly budget or you want to increase your overall wedding budget as well. Couple things you're not going to see on here. You're not going to see rings. Um, I don't usually help couples plan out the cost of their rings, so I can't really speak to the cost effectiveness of that necessarily. I can speak about my rings, right? But I don't help couples buy their rings, so I tend to not include those as a part of the wedding budget. An officiant's not in here. In fact, it's not typically in here. Most couples we work with don't hire a professional. They have a family member or friend do it. So if that's something that you want to accommodate or make room for, sure. Marriage license is not included in here unless you want to include it in that miscellaneous budget. When you join the master plan, there's a whole dropdown menu of what that miscellaneous budget can cover, and all of the things I mentioned are in there, right? So I also don't include hotel stays or anything like that, because again, that doesn't contribute to what we are calling the wedding. If you want the whole wedding weekend to be covered, then we're obviously working with a different subset set of things that we're gonna be spending money on. So venue, $1,900. At a $10,000 budget for your event, we are either going super public or super private. What does that mean? We are either going with a rec center, a senior center, or a public park through your local county or state, right? Or we're going private, we're going for Airbnb, which I know they don't allow for events, but if you message the host and you book outside of Airbnb— I don't know their policy on this, I just know that people are still doing it. So Don't come for me if it's illegal. Don't do it if it's illegal either. But I know a lot of couples are still talking about having an Airbnb wedding, um, and that's how they just happen to find the venue. Peer space is another great option for this. You had to get a little bit creative, a little bit crafty. We do want to make sure that you have a space for your ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception, right? Um, because if you don't, you'll obviously need to have those elsewhere. But if we're looking about just under $2,000 for a wedding space, we either need to go like rec center, public park, or private residence. It could also be your backyard. It could be a family member's backyard. It could be a friend's piece of property. There will be a lot more effort that goes into this. I'm not naive. I've been doing this for a long time. I'm fully aware that a $10,000 wedding takes a lot of sweat equity to pull off, but you can. Now bear in mind, if you are going the DIY backyard route, there are other things that you're going to want to be aware of and you might need to plan for, and a couple of unforeseen costs. So I'm gonna go ahead and include my most recent, like, Airbnb/backyard style wedding video up here for you to check out if that's a route that you're going. But we can definitely find a location for under $2,000 for 100 guests that ideally will accommodate all 3 of those event areas that we need to have. So for me right now, at least for the sake of this video, what I've been doing is I've been looking at the DFW area. I'm in Waco, Texas, so I just picked the biggest metropolitan area that's near us. It would be either Austin or Dallas, so I just randomly picked Dallas. And in some of the previous budget breakdown videos that I've done, I've shown a couple of peer space options. There are also a whole myriad of rec centers. They don't have their prices online, and I love you, but I'm not calling each and every single one of them. All I know is that I got married at a senior center, like literally a community center, for under $1,000 over 10 years ago. And I looked recently and their pricing is just barely over $1,000. So the pricing has not changed drastically. So using that as a frame of reference, and that was in Orange County, California, by the way, the one that they made the TV shows from, that one. Yeah, that's where I grew up, except for we didn't have the same money that the people of the TV shows did. So I'm here to tell you that even in one of the most expensive counties in California, we were able to do a $10,000 wedding and those numbers still hold true today. So there are a ton of public parks and rec centers in the Dallas area that I'm sure would come in under $2,000. I'm so sure would. Just don't really feel like making a bunch of phone calls right now. But to put my money where my mouth is, I also found locations on Peerspace that can hold 100 guests for under $2,000. First and foremost, we've got the Downtown Arlington Event Space with an outdoor patio. This one's got some colors to it, okay? It's a little more funky. It's a little more specific. It has 3,700 square feet. It can host 150 people. And the date that I selected for this was May 30th, 2023. $1,326 with a 9-hour rental window, which gives you about 2 hours to set up and 1 hour to tear down. If you need longer, you can of course adjust that. And I have this set for— oh, did I— I need to adjust this. Okay, I have to bump it a little bit. This number is gonna go— okay, it's gonna go a little higher. I had— it was like at $1,400. It's now $1,640.86 is the anticipated amount of what you pay here. What I like about this location is not the yellow chairs It's not. It's not the teal tile. What I like about this location is the outdoor space. I can't tell if these tables are— yeah, they've got to be movable. So there's outdoor space and indoor space. They are showing a massive charcuterie board in one of these photos that I am 100% about. That's fabulous. But you can have your ceremony in one location and your reception in another. And it looks like there's a decent amount of room to work with. They also have food trucks available in one of the photos. And one of the things I like about Pier Space specifically is that you can select the ability to bring in outside food and outside alcohol, which is, again, with that venue trap that we run into, a lot of times you sign up for a venue that doesn't allow that and then you have to use their bartender, or you're really limited by those sorts of things. So with a budget of $1,900 for 100 people that says they can host 150, I'm not sure how much we can fit in each space, but my guess is we could have ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception all throughout this space without needing to do a flip, which means transforming space from one activity to the next, which would typically be your ceremony, your guests go somewhere else for cocktail hour, and then during that time, during cocktail hour, is flipped into your reception space. That's, that's a lot. That's a lot to do, um, especially without professionals on board. Uh, but here's another one. Don't worry, there's more. This one is in Wills Point, Texas. If you are operating on a budget, please give yourself a broader range for finding your venue and for finding various vendors. Okay, anyone within an hour and a half, maybe even 2 hours, will very likely travel without any sort of travel fees at all whatsoever. So don't limit yourself just to your hometown. Don't limit yourself just to a 10-mile radius. If you have the ability to search further out, please do. It will provide you with a lot more opportunities when it comes to venues and vendors. So here's one that, uh, is literally— it's so stunning. It's so stunning. It's mostly outdoors and it looks like there's like a covered, um, what's the term that we would use for this, covered arena? Yeah, kind of thing, with tons of gorgeous trees on it. Again, May 30th, 2026, 2 to 11 PM, um, 5,000 square feet. I'm assuming that would be the open space right there. Allows outside food and beverages, allows outside alcohol for $1,635.90. $1,093. And last but most certainly not least, there's one that says unique event space with classic antiques and decatur— and decatur— decatur— decatur— I don't know. It's 3,000 square feet, so we're definitely looking at a smaller capacity, right? This is not as convenient for ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception space, although they do say something in the description about having an outdoor space. They just don't show it in the photos. All the same rules apply: 100 people, same hours, same date, $1,101.80. $184. 100 people, Central Texas, coming in well under budget. And this is kind of where you'll see that, that gap of like, oh, okay, well, we're not doing a professional venue. So if we're going with an Airbnb space or with a specific peer space or with a private residence or with a rec center, we're all of a sudden looking at venues that are $2,000 or less quite easily. Quite easily. Now before you come for me and you're like, well, that's Central Texas, it's more expensive. I literally did a video recently where I planned a $10K wedding in New New York City. $10,000 New York City, totally possible. I think I bumped the guest count down to like 70, maybe 75 for that one, but I went through all the same exact steps. I'm here to tell you it really truly doesn't matter where you're at. If you broaden your scope just a little bit and you think outside the box and you're not searching for wedding venues, then you're gonna set your wedding planning off on the right foot. Wedding coordinator, 5% of the budget would be $500. Let's do away with that. Anything under $20, maybe $15K, don't get a coordinator. Let's put that towards something else. Let's say you want to be like that first bride and you want to have a little bit more money invested into your reception space, you totally can, but we don't need that here. Catering, $1,500. My guess is your dad's not going to offer to cater this for you. $1,500 would be about, uh, $15 per person, which at first glance does not look like it'd be feasible. But the references that I've been using in every single video has been 3 different restaurants where you can either get drop catering or a food truck. Now I did my best to include national or semi-national brands as a point of preference. But of course, I do highly recommend that you look into your local mom-and-pop restaurant to see if they'd be willing to cater your event. Anytime you go grain-based or starch-based— pasta, beans and rice, lentils— anything that can really fill people up and keep protein at a minimum is going to be a lot more affordable. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a protein girly. I love making sure I hit my protein numbers. But when we are hosting 100 people and we're trying to be really wise with our finances, we don't necessarily need to be introducing a lot of variety here. We can still give guests options. We just want to make sure they're full and happy and contented with whatever food that they get. But if we can go for things that offer a carb base, then it will be a lot more filling at a lot more affordable rate. So the first restaurant that I have is Chipotle. Um, they have 3 different catering options. The date that I selected was February 28th. I think it wouldn't let me select any further in advance. Um, they have a single, double, or triple variety option, which I think is— I think it's specifically protein. It might be protein and sides, or protein and like starch that it goes with. Single is at $10.10 a person, double is $12.65 a person, and triple is at $15.20. So if we're looking at 100 guests, even if you go with the triple option— remember we talked about variety earlier— now the more variety you have, the more expensive it's going to be. Even if we go with their most expensive option, that is $1,520 to cater for 100 people, and obviously a lot less if you go for the lower variety. But Jamie, this doesn't include taxes and fees. I know, I know. Okay, give me grace. I'm not going that specific with the numbers. With a $10,000 budget, you're also definitely doing disposable flatware, plates, napkins, utensils, cups, etc. That will be a couple hundred bucks. So we'll need to account for that somewhere as well. But even without using that $500 budget from the coordinator towards catering, we could still pull off catering for around the $1,500 mark quite easily. Another option that I pulled up was the In-N-Out Cook Truck because I'm a Southern California girly at heart. Part. If you have them serve 100 meals in an hour and a half, burgers only, so you can do all the sides yourself, that would be $3,250, which is over double of what we're looking at. So might not be the best point of reference here, but we've done now multiple videos in this series where there have been couples who've hired food trucks for like $10 a person. And at this rate, we're looking more like $15 per person, again without all of the utensils and stuff that comes with it, unless you're sourcing those through your food truck, which they do offer as well. And then the final option would be Chick-fil-A. Again, if you don't like any of these food options, go with a local mom-and-pop or find a restaurant in your area. But they have the grilled chicken bundle that serves 10 people at $7.70 per person. There's the Chick-fil-A nuggets tray, there's chicken strips, they've got wraps, they've got subs, they've got the mac and cheese tray, they've got fruit plates, they've got salads. If you want to DIY the salads, you can get really creative with price, but they've got plenty of options at a price point that should work for the amount of guests that you have. With a little bit more wiggle room in the budget, I do recommend bringing in some service staff to help serve and set up your food if possible. Again, the one thing I don't really like to mess around with is food and food temperature, because if it goes out of temp, it's really hard to get it back to it if you don't actually have a cook space, a space with an oven, or a space with a fridge to cool your salad down. So I don't really love messing around with food temperature in general. So if you have the room to bring in 2 servers at $25 to $35 an hour for a 4-hour minimum, it could really offset a lot of this food setup and still give you a little bit more of that all-inclusive catering style experience. And they can help with bussing the tables. 2 people are not enough to do anything beyond that though, so don't let your ideas get too big for your britches, okay? Because they will not be available to help with DIY centerpieces or anything like that, especially if you only have 2 of them for a short short period of time. So just keep that in mind, two people can only do so much. But if you want to, this could be a category where you find yourself getting a little splurgy by using a party staffing company to bring someone like that in. Drinks, $300. Yes, definitely possible. Go for the powdered options that we've discussed so many times here on this channel. Um, and then as far as alcohol is concerned, I would pick a singular red, a singular white, and a singular type of beer. And we're not letting it be bougie, okay? If your crowd's more of a beer drinker, feel free to drop one of the wines. If it's during the wintertime, go red. If it's during the spring, go right. If you want to offer two different types of beer, that's great too. Um, be sure to purchase your alcohol from a location that will accept unopened bottles as a return if you really want to make sure and you really need to stick to that budget as closely as possible. We probably don't have room for a licensed bartender in this situation, so either it's letting people pour for themselves and then you'll need to budget a little bit more or add a little bit more on here because people don't know what a standard pour is, or have a family member or friend manage the bar for you. Dessert, $300. Yes, because we're not going with a pro with this category, so I would they get a cutting cake and a sheet cake from a local big box store. Sam's Club, Costco, Walmart, even desserts from Trader Joe's can be extremely affordable. H-E-B, H-E-B's got some fantastic dessert options in the Central Texas, actually all of Texas area. It would just require someone setting them up so it looks a little bit fancier, a little bit nicer. You can really kind of deceive the eye and come up with a lot more creative opportunities if you just have someone to do a little bit of light setup for you. It doesn't have to be complicated. You'll probably need to borrow cake stands. You'll need a table for this to go on. And in a situation like this, it might be worth adding on an extra hour to your rental time for wherever you're hosting your event, just to ensure that your family members and friends have more time for this setup. But it's all about eating with your eyes first. So if you can make Trader Joe's desserts look good— which, by the way, I have a whole video done with Amy from Twin Treats where we went to Trader Joe's and bought enough desserts for 75 people It was insane. And it turned out super cute. It's all about just having the right eye for setup to make it look nice so people will feast their eyes before they feast their faces. You know what I'm saying? Rentals, $500. That's not really, that's not really possible. I did get a quote together for tables and chairs and linens that go to the floor for 100 people for a rental company in the DFW metropolitan area that came out to $697 including setup but not including delivery and/or pickup. Pickup fees. So we're probably looking at— and this is the number I've used for a long time— about $10 per person for rentals. And it sounds like it holds pretty true. What we don't have here is catering tables or, um, cards and gift table or any sort of extraneous rentals like that. But we are getting the basics covered with where your guests are sitting and where they're eating. This will mean one set of chairs. You will need to move it from your ceremony space to your reception. We don't have room in the budget budget to add any additional chairs on or have a second set of chairs provided. So that's something that's worth keeping in mind. This will be a DIY element that you're either asking your wedding party to move them for you or your guests instead. It's still very, very feasible though, but this would probably be the perfect opportunity to like take that wedding coordinator budget and put it towards your rentals because you need a place for people to sit and eat, etc. Photo $900, video $900. Get rid of video, attach it to photo. We're going to trim down those hours. We're going to have 4 hours at a minimum. It gets really hard to run a wedding with a photographer that's there less than 4 hours. 4 hours at a minimum, 5, 6 is ideal. You could also get a local photography student from a college or university, or you could have a friend take the photos. It depends on where it falls on your list of priorities and list of importance. If it is of the utmost importance to you to get professional photos done for your event, then I would suggest going for a pro and just reducing their hours, maybe asking for it to be a single shooter instead of two. I love my second shooters, but if you don't have the money, you don't have the money. Florals at $900, that's way more than you'll be spending. Again, we talked about variety earlier. If you can ratchet that back, if you can really tone it down, if you can DIY your own bouquet and bridesmaid bouquets and boutonnieres— I spent $220 on my florals over 10 years ago at Costco. I could probably put together a very similar quote for a slightly larger number than that in this day and age, but I only had white roses, Israeli ruscus, and silver dollar eucalyptus, so my variety was nil. I mean, it was like next to nothing, okay? So we got real crafty with that. So I think I already mentioned this video, but if you want to do like Italian or Israeli ruscus or like a eucalyptus on the table with hurricanes that you get from Dollar General with candles or floating candles to kind of create the illusion and the feeling and the, the weight, the visual weight of a centerpiece without paying for florals. You can totally do that, but you should probably not be spending $900 on florals, or you shouldn't need to spend $900 on florals when you are working with a $10,000 budget. Instead, I recommend getting a little crafty, getting a little bit more creative with it, uh, cutting down the variety, and you should be able to to make this number work. Music or DJ at 4% of the budget, it's $400. You're not hiring a professional DJ at that number. You are getting speakers and a Spotify playlist that you can set on the mode where it like fades in between songs. If you're DIYing your music for your wedding, I highly recommend downloading our music guide. I have so many links in this one. Uh, my favorite— one of my favorite DJs in Southern California put together like an actual playlist for you guys to use free of charge. I think there's more than one playlist too, as well as like the great— the important songs for first dance, cake cutting, parent dances, etc. He not only gives you music for the entire night, but he gives you all the songs that you'll need to select. So it's not the same as working with a professional DJ, and they're my favorites, and I think the DJs are the unsung heroes of wedding days. But if you don't have the money— again, say with me, you don't have the money— so for $400, you could totally rent speakers, ideally a microphone as well. Stationery at $300— we are not spending that. Even with 100 guests, we're probably sending out what, 75, 60 invitations? That's a lot of money to spend on invites. We don't need to be doing that. We can either make them ourselves on Canva and get them printed through Kinko's, FedEx, through Canva itself, and then add things onto it if you want to. Add a little strip of ribbon that you can get from the discount section of Michaels or your local craft store. You can get a little bit creative with this so you can introduce your personality. Again, I don't want you feeling like you're sacrificing the look, the aesthetic, and the vibe of your event because you're operating on a smaller budget. There's a whole video that I did on like how to dress up your wedding invitations that I think we'll link up there or down below. There's a video I did forever ago about dressing up invitations and there was like the watercolor thing that you could do. There's so many different elements that you can add to these to make them really, really personalized that again will take time, right? And we'll assume that you have some sort of crafting materials on hand or, you know, find them for a really nominal, really small fee. B, but we shouldn't need to spend $300 on this. Apparel at $500 is difficult. It's hard. It's really, really, really hard, especially if you have a vision of what you want to wear and what you want to look like on your wedding day. Because right after this is hair and makeup for $100. We're not, we're not finding a professional that can do it for $100. So this is either where we take some of that miscellaneous budget and we bolster the hair and makeup and/or the apparel area to give us a little bit more room to accommodate what you're really looking for, or we get more creative with what we're looking at. We're talking off-the-rack, used, sample dresses. We're talking borrowing a dress. We're talking renting a dress. We're not talking going through the, the experience of going to all these different bridal salons and trying on dresses that are $1,000. That's 10% of your budget, and that's not even including alterations. So that one can be hard. That one can feel a little bit difficult to kind of emotionally process through. if you really have your heart set on something different. It is quite possible though to get a dress for $150-$200, get alterations done for another $150-$200, again depending on what kind of dress you get and how much work it needs. Please, please, please do not forget to leave room for alterations though, because you can quite easily take a $100 dress and make it look like a $1,000 dress if you get the right alterations done. Like, it's not going to change the quality of the fabric, but the quality of the fit— we do not want to skimp on that. Uh, if your fiancé is wearing a suit, renting one's going to be about $200 to $300, somewhere within that range. So if we're looking at a $500 budget, that is very, very, very tight. My husband ended up getting a custom suit done through our tailor who did all my alterations for my wedding dress. He went to the Fashion District in downtown Los Angeles, which again is not feasible for a whole lot of people, and he got a custom suit fitted to him for $200. So there are options out there, you just got to get a little bit creative. And then again with hair and makeup, if looking to have a professional do them, you can go to the professional. You can go to Drybar, you can go to your local stylist. It's, it's going to be a lot, right? The $100 is not going to get us very far in either one of those categories. But if you still want the professional experience, you can do that. If you're DIYing it or having a family member or friend do it for you, please be sure to practice. I say this because I had a licensed cosmetologist, one of my dearest friends in the world, do my hair and makeup, and we didn't do a trial. And I will tell you that I probably would have changed a couple things about my wedding look. Had we done a trial, had we had that opportunity to kind of play around, I wouldn't have been like, yeah, that's exactly what I wanted, because it was already my day of and I felt like I couldn't have a conversation about it. So if you are going DIY, please be sure to go practice that ahead of time if possible. And also with makeup, if you want to go to Ulta or Sephora or to the mall and have your makeup done, that's an option as well. But this $100 price point is going to be very much too much on the, the lean end when it comes to having any sort of professional. We're not paying for the luxury of having them come to us, but we are paying for the luxury of having a pro go do it. So we might need to bump that up just a little bit. So that's what we have for today's video, guys. Thank you so much for watching. If you haven't done so already, jump on down there, like the video if you like the video, and subscribe to this channel for more tips and tricks for the modern-day bride. And keep your eyes peeled because we have a $5,000 wedding budget— how to plan a $5,000 wedding in 2026— because I'm here to tell you guys, it is so possible. It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort, it takes being creative, it takes leaning on the community around you. It's not going to be as convenient or as easy as a $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 wedding, but it's gonna be just as meaningful and just as beautiful, I promise. And until next week, bye guys!