I was best man at a wedding recently, so that’s why you haven’t been reading much about me the last few days. Public speaking is not exactly my thing and giving a toast is doesn’t get more public than that.
The wedding itself was less than 25 people and kept to a budget of $1500 if I had to guess. It was actually the perfect day (except for yet another day of the rain in Boston.) I was quite jealous that my fiancee and I are going to have 175-200 people at a cost of 12-15 times that. We are getting some help from our parents, but we will still foot most of it by ourselves by the time we are done.
I’m amazed that you can have as many people as you’re planning for give or take $20k. My fiance and I are looking around the D.C. area, and we’re finding prices will be somewhere around $30k for 125-150 people. Then again, we’re looking for a very high quality hotel/food, etc… because of some of high-profile (politicos) and wealthy guests.
Well it’s bumping to around 22K, but the reason we are able to keep it cheap is that we are getting numerous discounts on almost everything. The location is state tax free as the military base is federal property.
Some of our guests are wealthy politicos, but there’s a large number of people who live paycheck to paycheck. Having been to a wedding at the base, it’s going to pretty beautiful. We are trying to trim as many corners as possible.