Forum Thread: What is the actual budget of a budget wedding?

The average wedding cost for couples that live in Santa Monica, CA is between $41,306 and $68,843. Couples that live in New York, NY spend between $19,888 and $33,147 on their wedding. This does not include cost for a honeymoon or engagement ring. 

Insane, right?

From the research I've done it seems that a low budget wedding is around $10,00 to $15,000.

I don't know how that figures into one's annual income. Especially because the parent's often help out.

We did ours for just under $20k in Newport Beach. (Two words: booze cruise.) Another thing that helped was that many of our relatives were very generous in gifts, and several gave money, which offset a lot of that cost.

I've seen budget range from our friend's potluck wedding (which kind of shocked me) to  a full-blown San Francisco sophisticated wedding worthy of a magazine spread. Months later, I'm still wondering how they did it.

I would think categorization as 'budget' would depend upon the % of income you spend.

Throwing a wedding outside LA, SF, London, NY must be far less expensive, than hosting the exact same party in the city.