colleen, attorney and college professor & sam, Senior Director of Content at Spotify

Sum-up of the wedding vibe: A chill, queer, disco-tinged party with good music that also happened to be a wedding.

Planned budget: $15,000
Actual budget: $20,000
Number of guests: 110
LOCATION: Brooklyn, New York

Where we allocated the most funds:

Our photographer is a friend and generously offered us a discount, but the photos were was still our single biggest outlay of cash.

Where we allocated the least funds:

We did Paperless Post for invitations and save the dates. Colleen is normally sort of a card maven and has a whole box of cards at home (organized by theme) for various card-giving occasions. But when it came to the wedding neither of us had the energy to research paper invitations or the desire to spend much money on them. We had wedding decision fatigue!

What was totally worth it:

Hiring people from our community. Our DJ, photographer, day-of coordinator, hairstylist, makeup artist, and the designer for Colleen’s rings were all friends, or friends of friends. All of them also did this work professionally, so we knew we could totally rely on them to do an amazing job. It was a relief that we didn’t have to research who to hire (wedding decision fatigue was a really strong theme for us), and it felt awesome to pay our friends instead of strangers. Plus, some of them were able to offer us discounts, which was so generous and helpful.

What was totally not worth it:

Colleen ordered her gold dress online eighteen months before the wedding because she got excited about finding it on super sale. It turned out to be too big and needed a lot of expensive alterations; the tailoring ended up being way more than the cost of the dress itself. And because she bought it so early, it wasn’t really her style anymore by the time the wedding rolled around. She much preferred the $90 short caped dress she ordered two weeks before the wedding. Lessons learned: don’t buy too early, and a sale doesn’t always mean a good value.