When you were a little girl, did you dream of having a massive wedding with something like seven bridesmaids, groomsmen, and flower girls each? If you’ve started shopping around for bridesmaid and flower girl dresses you’ve probably already had a bit of a shock at the cost.
When you add the cost of other miscellaneous items, you’ve probably realized it’s not affordable to have a dozen attendants. Let’s look at the different costs involved, and whether any can be avoided.
Who’s Paying?
First things first – before you ask anyone to be part of your wedding party, it’s best for you to work out what you will pay for, and what you expect them to contribute. Some brides and grooms feel their bridesmaid’s and groomsmen should be coughing up for the complete cost of their involvement, but most people do not think this way.
In many cultures, it is considered appallingly bad manners to expect your wedding party to pay for their involvement, so it’s important to ponder this before making your decision. The last thing you want to do is alienate a good friend or cause infighting between family members who are offended by what they may well see as your miserly attitude!
The Basics
The cost of your wedding party’s outfits is really going to be determined by you. If you decide on designer dresses, suits and shoes, you will find the expenses will blow out quickly into the thousands.
A smart option is to look for cheap bridesmaid dresses, hire suits, and hunt down cheap mother of the bride dresses. Many brides make the mistaken assumption that because something is cheap, it will not look nice, but this is just not the case. You can save yourself thousands of dollars and keep your budget in check by merely keeping this one cost under control.
Location, Location
If you have opted to pay for the full cost of your wedding attendants being in your wedding party, you might want to consider the location of the wedding carefully. Choosing a destination wedding is fine if it’s just the bride, groom, and close family members, but for a full sized wedding party, this could get extremely expensive, quickly!
On the flipside, expecting people to pay to travel great distances to attend your wedding can often rub people the wrong way – especially if you expect them to pay for gifts as well!
Party Time!
If you want to do something special for your bachelorette and buck’s night’s, you might need to consider having to pay for it yourself. Many a friendship has been destroyed by ludicrous pre-wedding event expectations from the bride and groom such as weekends away in Vegas.
If you keep it simple, you should be able to get away with a budget of around one hundred dollars per person for drinks and food for the evening. If they want to indulge further – it’s up to them to pay for it.