Saving on Wedding Catering and Photography
Set your food budget
Wedding food is crazy expensive. Food is often the greatest cost in a wedding budget and can run north of $100 a person.
I was a little nervous that we wouldn’t be able to serve great food at our wedding for a reasonable price. With a $10,000 budget and a 110 person guest list, we needed to be way below $100 a person. Even $75 per person left little money in the budget for other expenses such as music and decorations. We decided to set our food budget at $7000.
When I gave our budget to some wedding venues, they offered me a menu of appetizers and said it was impossible to do a full sit down meal at this price. Stations and buffet were not an option at this price point either.
It seemed ridiculous for us to spend $7000 on just appetizers so I kept trying. One venue snootily responded that they “were a fine upscale dining establishment” and basically couldn’t work with our budget at all, even for appetizers.
It seemed impossible to get a full meal for 110 guests for $7000.
Find a venue that works with caterers
I started searching in the weddingbee boards for threads about lower cost wedding venues in the area we are having our wedding. I found a thread that discussed the cost savings of renting out an estate for the night and bringing in your own caterers.
Jackpot. In one of the posts, I heard about an old estate from the 1700s that was beautiful and apparently less expensive. When we visited the venue, we fell in love. It was charming, historic, and best of all – cheap – while looking elegant.
The venue requires that we use one of their preferred caterers. Most of the caterers start at over $100 per person but we heard from the venue coordinator there was one caterer that was willing to work with lower budgets.
Shave a little off the top of the quote
I reached out to the caterer and received a preliminary quote based on our budget. It came in at around $7500. I then worked with the caterers to shave off money by cutting out the little costs.
I kept asking if there was anything we could remove or change out that would bring us closer to our budget.
It turns out that eliminating the fresh fruit served with dessert cut out $1.75 per person. Replacing one seafood appetizer with something else eliminated another $1 per person. We ultimately got the price down to $7000. Score!
My family recently attended a tasting event for me hosted by the caterer and confirmed that their food is delicious. I’m so glad I kept digging and refused to give in to the ridiculous prices.
Get creative with photography
I was shocked to find out that wedding photography can cost thousands of dollars. If 70% of my budget was spent on food, then I barely had room in the budget for photography.
I started researching articles from couples who found their photographers on Craigslist, others who put ads on bulletin boards at local art schools, and even some who didn’t have photographers at all.
I was prepared to walk away and have no photographers at our wedding at all if we had to.
Our families would be disappointed but there was always something cheesy to me about spending two hours taking variations of the same photo. I really only need four photos, right? – just us, our wedding party, and one with each of our families.
We had accepted it.
Enter online contests
In the meantime, I had started to enter online contests to win wedding related things. There are so many companies that are waiting to get their hands on your email address and giveaway some pretty great things from honeymoons to photography packages in order to do so.
I must be a lucky girl because after entering a few of these contests, I won an 8 hour wedding photography and videography package!
When the company called to tell me I won, I thought it was a scam. I couldn’t believe it! I then checked my internet history from the day they said I entered the contest (yes, I asked because I’m paranoid) and it turns out that I was on that website on that day. It was real!
Winning this package did magic for our budget and was a major stress-reliever.
I still can’t believe I won!
Other posts in the Frugal Wedding Series:
How to Determine Your Wedding Budget
Choosing an Off Season Wedding
Minimizing Costs for Your Bridesmaids and Guests
How to Do Your Own Wedding Flowers and Bouquets
Our $15,000 Game of Thrones Winter Wedding
Readers, any tips for saving on wedding catering and photography? How did you save on the big day?
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How lucky to have a won a competetion for something you wanted 🙂
$7000 is a decent budget for food for 110 guests..it’s something I wouldn’t want to disappoint guests with.
Agreed! People want to eat! I love the menu that our caterers have put together.
The crazy expense I see now is videography. People want edited professional video of the wedding and reception and apparently routinely spend more than $3000 to do it.
I was shocked to see the prices for some of this stuff! Luckily we won 8 hrs of videography as part of the package. I wouldn’t have paid for it otherwise.
Wow that is so awesome you won the contest! It makes me wish I entered some instead of thinking, “What’s the point? I’ll never win.” haha -_- I was able to find a guy who just does photography part time (so doesn’t charge quite as much) so that helped a lot. The caterer is so expensive though, and it was tough because the venue we wanted had a list of caterers we could use… so we didn’t have a ton to work with!
I still can’t believe it! Never expected to win! That’s great you found a part time photographer. And catering is sooo expensive!! The demand must keep pushing up the prices.
Hi Julie!
Great post! I’m getting married in August and I have been struggling with a lot of the same budget challenges! I totally agree with the photographer situation! A couple of my best friends got married in the past two years, and it was so painful to take photos for 2 hours after the ceremony rather than to go straight to the reception like the rest of the guests! They only posted a couple of their favorite photos on Facebook and Instagram anyways!
I also dealt with the same problems with food for the reception! We are getting married on the beach in Costa Rica during low season on a Tuesday, so we thought the local restaurants would be fighting for our business. Boy were we wrong! Most of them were not interested in working with us when they found out we didn’t want to spend $80pp. Luckily we found the perfect spot that totally fits our budget and style 🙂
It’s crazy right? Glad you found the perfect spot! It’s such a relief to have the venue set. Then everything else can go from there.
I totally agree with photography being painful after the ceremony. We actually did all the photos before the ceremony, including family shots. We had a quick 20 minute ceremony and we’re partying right after that.
I think we’re doing that too.
Great job being resourceful Julie! Weddings are so expensive right now it is unbelievable. My friend is getting married and just between the place and food she was already at over 15k (granted she is not the best at finances) but I was still amazed by that cost just for those two cost. Congrats on winning that contest it is something I will keep in mind for the future! Best of luck with the continued preparations!
Thank you! The cost surprised me as well! The best way to get the cost down is to cut the guest list. We went as small as we could go and not completely dissappoint our families. We wanted smaller but that wasn’t going to happen.
Winning the contest is awesome! Photography is our second biggest line item, you will really save a lot by winning that. Just budget for the tax and ask them how much is it worth so you’re not surprised if you get some 1099 later next year. I’m glad you’re sticking to 10K budget. Good luck and have fun with the rest of the planning!
Oh no! Didn’t think of the taxes!!! Good point!
Hey Julie,
Congrats on hustling your way to savings.
We had a very small wedding, and we had it on a Friday, plus we weren’t going to pay for people’s alcohol (it was available at the bar though, if people wanted). So I think that brought it down to about $80 a person. But the food was fantastic and it had BIG portion sizes. One of the best meals we’ve ever had.
We managed to grab the photographer for around $600 for 8ish hours. She was good and we got what we wanted 🙂
Tristan
$600 is a steal for a photographer from what I found. Also, love the big portion sizes. My fiancé would love that. He gets upset when we go to a fancy restaurant and the portion sizes are small 🙂 hehe
Finding a venue that allows outside caterers is a great idea! When I was planning my wedding, I couldn’t believe how many venues had caterers that required $8,000 minimums. It’s crazy! We found an affordable venue that offered an all-inclusive package – it was about $7,000, but that price included the dinner, appetizers, alcohol, reception venue rental, decorations, cake, DJ, security, etc. It was by far one of the cheapest reception options in our area, and we loved it!
That’s a great deal! Good work! I bet it was an amazing wedding too!
Wow, awesome!
Pro photography IS expensive. I had no interest in wedding video though (can’t imagine how much that would’ve cost).
Thanks! Yes, I feel the same way about paying for video but I’m so excited now that it’s free!
I’m a wedding photographer in Cornwall, England and most of the photographs I take at weddings of couples, families and their friends are usually before the wedding too.
It seems like most people just want to celebrate and have fun after the ceremony.
But I do take a few sneaky snaps of people partying and eating afterwards, which they always seem to feel fond of!
Great advice to save money on a wedding. All the expenses can add up so quickly, and it can be hard to track it and easy to go over budget! Thanks for sharing!
Wow! You totally lucked out on that photographer! After patience and research, you can usually find what you’re looking for. It’s so great the caterer was willing to work with you.
They’ve been great to work with!
That’s so awesome that you won that photography contest! Weddings can be very expensive and those are some great tips on how to save some money!
Thanks! Yeah, I was freaking out when they called me! It’s crazy!
Julie, Not only a great reading also a post to save money on a wedding! It’s just awesome and helpful. I want to congratulate you on your brilliant success in that photography contest. Thanks and keep up the great work always, Julie!
Oh wow I would love to try out and join a contest too! My husband and I are planning for our wedding next year and we’re looking for all the ways so we could source more money for our wedding budget. I hope I’ll be as lucky as you got!