Wedding Budget Blog

My friend spent $38,000 on her wedding last year. One hundred twenty guests. Open bar. Live band. Five-tier cake. It was beautiful. It was also a fina...

The Wedding I Planned for $15,000 That Cost $28,000 and Why I Do Not Regret It I sat at the kitchen table in our apartment in Portland, staring at a s...

Why My Outdoor Wedding Budget Went Up in Flames—Along with My Makeup Emily Carter I was standing in the garden of my wedding venue at 3 PM on a Saturd...

The cake was beautiful. Three tiers, buttercream frosting, hand-piped flowers that looked so real my grandmother tried to smell them. It was the cente...

Free does not mean low quality. It means someone else is paying for it.

I Thought $25,000 Was a Reasonable Wedding Budget. Then I Saw the Catering Quote. I thought $25,000 was a reasonable wedding budget. I really did. I'm...

Portland is not just roses and rain. It is also home to some of the most affordable wedding venues on the West Coast, if you know where to look.

Print this list. Tape it to your fridge. You will forget something. This list will remember.

$1,500 and $8,000. Same wedding. Same couple. Same venue. The difference is experience, deliverables, and marketing.

Lauren stood in her kitchen at 11 PM, flour on her cheek, a cooling rack full of lopsided layers. She was not a baker. She had practiced three times i...

Lisa sat across from me with two brochures. One said

Maya stood in her parents' backyard with a tape measure. Big lawn. Mature trees. A garden her mother had tended for twenty years. She looked at the sp...

Ryan signed a venue contract for $8,000. Then they hit him with the $1,200

Emma walked into my office with a canvas bag full of mason jars. She set them on my desk one by one. Twelve jars. Clean. No labels. She had already wa...

Dana's Pinterest board had 400 pins. Four hundred. I asked her to pick her top five. She could not. She was in love with everything. Her budget was $2...

Mark walked into a venue with a koi pond. He was a software engineer. He analyzed everything. He built spreadsheets for his grocery shopping. Then he ...

Nina sat across from me at a coffee shop on Hawthorne, her laptop open to a spreadsheet. She had been planning for six months. Her budget was $28,000....

Alex held three catering proposals in his hands. His fiancé Sam stood next to him, arms crossed, reading over his shoulder. One proposal said

Priya sat in my office with two venue quotes on her lap. Same space. Same month. Same number of guests. One said Saturday: $8,500. The other said Frid...

Jenna walked into my office with a list. Not a guest list. A list of kitchen appliances she already owned. Stand mixer. Blender. Coffee maker. Air fry...

Katie sat across from me with two brochures in her lap. One showed an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora. The other showed a cabin in Banff. She looked a...

Mia walked into my office with a backpack instead of a purse. She was 26. Her fiancé Jordan was 27. Both taught middle school in Portland. Combined in...

Walking into a florist's studio in March, I watched a bride's face fall. The quote was $3,800. Her budget for flowers was $800. She looked at the arra...

That number on the contract? It is not the price. It is the first offer.

You are engaged. Congratulations. Now someone asks you

My friend Sarah called me on a Tuesday night. She was crying. Not the quiet kind. The kind where you cannot catch your breath.

Same planner. Two weddings. Sixty-eight thousand dollars apart. One couple still talks about their day like it was a dream. The other couple divorced ...

You scroll past a video of a bride walking down an aisle made of rose petals. The caption says

The Saturday wedding premium is real. And it is robbery.

Three years ago, I stood at the base of Multnomah Falls with a $14,800 spreadsheet on my phone and a dress I bought off the rack at Nordstrom Rack for...