This is the detail behind the headline piece on cost. Six line items, one at a time.
1. Venue
What you are buying is exclusive use for a block of hours, staff, and usually the tables, chairs and basic linen.
What you are frequently not buying: the flowers, the lighting, the sound, or the hours either side for set-up and breakdown. Ask what time your suppliers can get in. A venue that hands over at two in the afternoon for a six o'clock ceremony is a different proposition from one that gives you the morning.
Negotiable? On the date, yes. A Thursday in early May and a Saturday in late June are different conversations. On the format, no.
2. Food and drink
The largest per-head line and usually the largest line overall above sixty guests.
Three things move it: the number of courses, whether drinks are a package or on consumption, and whether you need parallel kitchens. Halal and vegetarian lines running properly in parallel, which is the only way to do them well, cost more than a modified main menu, and at a multi-day celebration they are frequently what half the room eats.
Negotiable? The menu, yes, endlessly. The per-head structure, no.
Underestimated? Drinks. Consistently. A drinks package looks expensive on paper and is almost always cheaper than consumption across a wedding that runs eight hours.
3. Photography and film
Fixed, regardless of guest count, and the item couples most often try to save on and most often regret.
The reason is simple: it is the only supplier whose output you still consult in ten years. The flowers are gone by Monday and the food is a memory by Tuesday.
Negotiable? Hours, yes. Quality, not sensibly.
4. Flowers and styling
The widest range of any line, because it depends entirely on the venue.
A stone courtyard with olive trees needs almost nothing and adding to it makes it worse. A hotel ballroom or a bare beach deck is a blank sheet and everything arrives on a truck.
We say which yours is in the first proposal, because it changes this line more than any choice you will make about flower varieties.
Negotiable? Enormously. This is where a good planner earns their fee, by telling you what not to buy.
5. Music
A DJ with sound and lighting is one number. A live band is another, and it is roughly what most couples expect a whole evening's entertainment to cost, which is why bands are the most common upgrade to be cut.
The variable nobody thinks about: the curfew. A venue that stops at midnight and a venue with no curfew at all buy you different amounts of music for the same fee. The rules and why they differ.
6. Logistics
Airport transfers, the shuttle loop on the day, room block coordination, and the guest concierge if you have one.
Per-head, and higher than couples expect for a scattered guest list. A wedding where everybody sleeps in one hotel has almost no logistics line. A wedding across three hotels on the Bodrum peninsula has a substantial one.
Underestimated? Yes, badly, and it is the argument for choosing a region that can house your guest list in one building. That is the whole case for Belek above a hundred and fifty guests.
The item that is not on the list
Coordination. Ours is inside the package rather than added at the end, and we say so because the alternative is common: a quote that looks competitive until a percentage lands on the final invoice.
Whatever the quote says on the day you approve it is the number. If you add something during planning it appears as a new named line and you approve it before it is booked.
How to read a quote from anyone
Four questions that separate a real quote from an optimistic one:
- Is every line named, or is there a "styling and production" bucket? Buckets hide things.
- What are the set-up and breakdown hours? If they are not stated, they are not booked.
- What is the wet-weather plan and does it cost extra? A marquee that appears in the rain is a line item somewhere.
- Is coordination inside or on top? Ask directly.
Paying across a border
How payment actually works across a border, and the honest comparison with a wedding at home.
