Ashleysbrideguide.com

One of the first questions we asked ourselves when we got engaged was how much we are going to spend for the wedding. I thought setting up a budget was quick and easy. It actually turned out to be a long process that requires a lot of research for both of us who knew so little about wedding budgets.

There are many elements in a wedding. Setting up a budget not only requires coming up with a single number, but several numbers for each element. How much of your total budget will go to food and beverage, flowers and decor, photography, entertainment, etc?

There are lot of wedding budget tools on and offline that can help. But there’s one important feature missing on most of these budget tools. They don’t factor in your priorities. I learned that setting your priorities is very important in coming up with a budget breakdown. While most tools recommend allotting around 30% to 50% of the total budget to reception, our reception (including venue fee) turned out to be almost 75% of our total budget. Crazy, isn’t it? Well, to us, good food and a beautiful venue that requires minimal decor (one way to save) top our priority list.

These are the steps I followed to create our wedding budget:

Read on…

We finally decided and booked our venue!  We’re getting married at Belle Mer in Newport, Rhode Island on May 22, 2010.

I have fallen in love with the place the first time I saw it online.  We knew that the place will cost more than we were willing to spend on a venue.  But when we came for a visit, John loved it and I fell more in love with it.  After a few months (yes, months) of thinking it over, we decided to book the place.  Now, our biggest task is yet to come - how to plan our wedding within our budget, when the venue and catering takes almost 75% of that budget and only 25% left for everything else.

The Chanler is located right by Easton’s beach so the view is just magnificent.  It is a quaint little mansion.  Wedding ceremonies are held in one of the two manicured lawns and receptions are held outside in the Terrace.  The Terrace is not that big so the venue allows only up to 80 guests.  If you have more than that, the reception can be extended into the dining room which means you will have to rent the whole place.  And that is way out of our budget.  We didn’t stay long as soon as we learned that we have to rent the whole place to accommodate our number of guests.

If you are having a party for 80 or less or you have a huge budget, I think the Chanler is a beautiful place for an intimate affair.  And it’s perfect for beach lovers as it is just a few steps away from the beach!

Info as of December 2008 for a 2010 event:

Ceremony site fee: $800
Reception site fee: none
Capacity: up to 80, more than 80 needs to rent the whole place
Minimum: $8,000 food and beverage
Catering: $135+/guest
Bar: $65/5hr/guest
Tax: 8%
Service charge: 20% added to the bill

*Accuracy of information above is not guaranteed. Contact the venue for a more accurate quote. For venue comparison, click here.

Other Venues:
Venue Saga #1: Wequassett Resort, Cape Cod
Venue Saga #2: Belle Mer, Newport
Venue Saga #3: Hyatt Harborside, Boston
Venue Saga #4: Palm House, Brooklyn

Venue Saga Sequel:
Venue Saga #5: Castle Hill Inn, Newport