Wedding Planning Series- A Low-Key Wizarding World Wedding in New Port Richey, Florida
As the first part of a (hopefully) amazing series of wedding plans to inspire you to plan your wedding, I want to give a shout out to Stephanie who (within minutes of my asking) sent me a request to plan a Low-Key Wizarding World Wedding.
What I asked for was location, budget, style preferences and guest count to get started on the plan. I used EventSlayer and Google as my references to finding the information I will provide you below.
Please keep in mind, all these plans are made hypothetically and actual costs may vary. However, if you were to plan exactly as I have done in real life, you’ll probably find it’s not too far off from reality. The idea of this series is to give you an idea of how a professional wedding planner would go about planning weddings and tips, tricks and basic wedding industry insights along the way!
So, without further ado…
Here is the wedding planning information I was provided:
1) Location (City/State) – New Port Richey, Florida
2) Budget (Total amount of $ you would like to spend) $6000
3) Any style preferences (color scheme, theme, etc.) Burgundy and gold (a low-key WIzarding World/Fantastic Beasts wedding)
4) Guest Count 50
I knew straight away the hardest part of this wedding would be the budget. The average wedding costs about $26,000. Of course, the average is taken from the most extravagant weddings of $100,000+ and the courthouse weddings of a couple hundred bucks but still, $6,000 is tough to plan for, especially with a guest count of 50.
So first things first, I had to figure out what the budget breaks down into. Thankfully, EventSlayer has a really awesome budget tool that does this for you and takes only seconds.
Here is the budget breakdown:
Budget: Total $6000
Catering: $1080
Venue: $1080
Florist: $600
Music and Entertainment: $600
Photo/video: $600
Attire: $480
Dessert: $300
Stationary: $100
Misc.: $80
Officiant: $180
Bar: $120
Decor: $120
Hair/Makeup: $120
Hotel: $120
Transportation: $120
Then Figure Out Your Priorities
Figuring out your priorities is super important when planning your wedding. Depending on what your priorities are could change how you plan your wedding. For this wedding, my one and only priority is budget. I’ll be planning from a budget perspective.
After I figured out the budget and priorities, I went to find a venue.
I looked at a couple different venue options that I found on EventSlayer including The Barn at Crescent Lake, Peace Hall, Zoo Tampa at Lowry Park, and Event Center Pasco.
The Barn at Crescent Lake has a special place in my heart since this is where my cousin got married. The same cousin and same wedding that inspired me to be an event planner, so I definitely was hoping that their prices would be in range. Unfortunately, for a $6,000 budget, it just would not have been possible and include everything else that I wanted to include.
So, I decided that Peace Hall would be the perfect fit! It has a $500 full day rental for the venue and plenty of space for all 50 guests. It comes with 4 6 foot tables and 60 chairs. You can also get Sims Park Gazebo added onto the rental free of charge if no one else has booked the space. This is perfect since it allows us to have a separate space for both ceremony and reception.
The tough part about the rental is that it only lasts until 10 pm, so everyone and everything needs to be out by 10pm and it only allows wine and beer. Since we’re focusing on keeping in budget, this isn’t too much of a problem. Between the venue rental, taxes and fees I estimate this to cost about $570 total.
Total: $570
Next, I looked into Catering.
Catering for 50 guests can get costly. It’s also tough to find a caterer on budget since many caterers only advertise their per person costs and not the fees and gratuities that also go into the cost of catering.
The catering options I looked into were Affordable Catering and KD’s Catering. I’ve actually worked with both caterers before and Affordable Catering used to be one of my preferred vendors back when I lived in Tampa. Unfortunately, KD’s Catering website was down, so I wasn’t able to figure out their pricing.
So I checked out Affordable Catering’s prices and felt that they could actually be a good option for this wedding. They were reasonably priced and offered everything that a wedding would want. using the money left over from the venue, our new Catering price would be $1590.
Here’s what the costs broke into:
For the Chef’s Preferred Wedding Menu it would be $25.95 per person or $1297.50. Then add on the servers of $180, Gratuities of $130, Tax at $90 and Delivery of $75 and you end up with a total of $1,772.50. Obviously this is over budget by about $200 so I decided to put it on the back burner until I found other vendors to see if I might be able to work with this budget. This option also provides us with dinner plates, buffet tables, linens for buffet tables and servers.
Total: $1,772.50
After Catering, I figured out the timeline and layout.
I decided before moving forward with more vendors, I needed to get a better grasp of what I was planning. To do this, I created a basic Timeline (coming soon to EventSlayer!) and made a layout of the venue setup with AllSeated.
Here’s the timeline I created:
Timeline:
1:00 pm- Everyone Ready
2:30 pm- Travel to Venue
3:00 pm- Arrive at Venue
3:30 pm- Hide away/ guests arrive
4:00 pm- Ceremony
4:30 pm- Cocktail Hour- Family Photos, Wedding Party Photos
5:30 pm- Reception- guests seated
5:35 pm- Introductions
5:45 pm- First Dance
5:50 pm- Toasts
6:00 pm- Dinner
7:00 pm- Cake Cutting
7:10 pm- Parent Dances
7:15 pm- Open Dancing
8:15 pm- Bouquet Toss
8:20 pm- Garter Toss
8:30 pm- Open Dancing
9:00 pm- Event Ends- Sparkler Exit
10:00 pm- Everyone Out
Originally, I thought about having getting ready photos and a first look, however, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that doing those would not be in budget. As it is, it will be very difficult to get a photographer for any amount of time for $600.
Based on the Timeline, I was able to figure out that I would need a photographer for about 5 hours and a DJ for 5 hours. If I had decided to have a first look or getting ready photos, I would have needed the photographer for at least 7 hours. However, I’d estimate that most photographers cost anywhere from $200-$800 per hour, so reducing the number of hours for photography was definitely necessary for a total budget of $6,000.
Here’s the layout:
I designed it using AllSeated (my favorite event layout design program).
For the Layout, I decided to go with long banquet tables because of the Wizarding World feel we were going with. I think they fill out the space pretty nicely and make a good overall feel of the space with a buffet for the food. However, I definitely could have gone with round tables and it would work out about the same.
To figure out the number of tables needed, you just divide your guest count by 8. Typically for any 60” round table or 8 ft table you can fit 8-10 guests.
In the layout I also made sure to include tables for bar, DJ, gifts, guest book, and buffet. Having a pretty fleshed out layout early on can help when you are trying to figure out design and what you’ll need from your florist and/or designer.
After figuring out the timeline and layout, I went ahead and figured out the design and items of the wedding. Based on Stephanie’s input of Burgundy and Gold, Low-key wizarding world, I knew I needed to add in some Wizarding World aspects to the wedding design.
By the way, I absolutely LOVE Harry Potter and everything in the wizarding world, which made this planning request way more fun for me! I was actually the founder and president of my University’s Quidditch Athletic Club and in my wedding we also included low-key Harry Potter References.
Anyways, back to the design. I decided I wanted to keep the design pretty simple. We’re on a budget, we don’t have too much extra to use towards design.
Here are the items I felt filled out the look with the least amount of money possible:
Linens: Connie Duglin Linens- if caterer provides this might be cheaper to go through them…
50 napkins- burgundy (0.58)= $30
6 90×156” Ivory: $13= $78
3 90×132” Burgundy: $14= $42 ← this may be included with Affordable Catering
1 108” Round Burgundy: $10
Total Linens: $160 **Be sure to pick up not delivery!**
Cake topper: $15
Clear Vase for Bouquets(6): $10
Gold Mercury votives: (36): $45
Guest book: $30
Table Numbers: $16
Table number holders: $20
Cupcake Stand: $15
One thing I thought would be cool was to use Wizarding world books as your table numbers and assign your seats based on the books or in parts of design around the venue. Also, on top of mercury votives, a couple larger candles would be fantastic on the large tables, very hogwarts-esk.
The total for the design came out to $311, which is definitely over our $120 allotted design budget. It’s possible some of this could be found cheaper through searching Goodwill or used items, which if I were planning this wedding, I would definitely look into!
Please keep in mind that I would NOT buy these items until much later in the planning process, for ease of reading I included it here. I would however, start a list of items that I would like to have based on my initial design so that if I were to come across a good deal I could get it.
Total: $311
After figuring out the design, I went in search of the remaining vendors.
Cake:
Sticking with the Wizarding world theme, I thought cupcakes would be best and most affordable option for the look. [for the Harry Potter fans out there, I’m thinking Chamber of Secrets when Crabbe and Goyle eat the cupcakes with a sleeping draft in them] I also personally love cupcakes because you don’t have to worry about who will cut your cake for your guests and the guests can grab as they please.
I chose to reach out to Mmmmm… Delicious Cupcakes because based on the pricing I found online, they would be the closest to what we needed for budgeting purposes.
Total: $215
Flowers:
For flowers the most important thing to know is that pretty much every florist can do any design or style you are looking for. Their pricing depends upon the flower choices you make, their base cost pricing and how big you want the arrangements to be (aka the more flowers the more expensive). When looking at florists, you need to know what your budget is and then see what the florists can do for you in that budget range. Then you compare what you’re offered to see who gives you the best quote.
Items like delivery and set up fees are typically your most wide range items you’ll see.
I decided to reach out to For Better For Less Wedding Flowers for a quote. I chose them because based on their initial pricing, they looked like they would be around what I was looking for.
For the flowers, I did not have a specific style or type of flower in mind. This can actually help you save money in the long term. I did specify I was looking for burgundy and gold options and the types of arrangements I needed. These arrangements are:
- 6 bridesmaids bouquets, that we can use for centerpieces as well
- 1 Bride Bouquet
- 6 Groomsmen boutonnieres
- 1 Groom’s boutonniere
- Cake Flowers
I also included the budget of $600 when sending my request. For florists, they’ll know right away if they’re able to accommodate a request or not based on basic information such as style, arrangement type and date. Then they’ll give you a better idea of the flowers that you can use to accomplish your goals.
Florists also love getting photos of your flower inspiration like bouquets you like, centerpieces and boutonniere’s so that they can get an idea of what you are looking for. However, don’t be too picky! Florists are artists, they’re the best when given inspiration but not necessities.
Total: $638
Officiant:
While I love promoting local businesses and love professional officiants when trying to save money, go for a family friend or someone special to you to be your officiant. In the state of Florida, they allow anyone ordained or a notary to perform wedding ceremonies. Each state does vary, so be sure to check with your specific state in what they allow.
The pros of having a professional officiant are that they know the laws and regulations for your state, are tried and tested under pressure from other weddings, and typically have a layout of wedding scripts that you can compare to and will write your ceremony script specific to you.
If you go for a family friend, most likely you will have to write the script and make sure that all components of the ceremony are included. This can be difficult for anyone who has never been married or really listened to a ceremony before. There are specific sections in ceremony scripts that are legally necessary and the wording can’t vary. For those specific section be sure to check with your state’s marriage requirements.
In conclusion of the officiant for this wedding, don’t buy one. Save your $180 and put it towards something else.
Total: $0
Transportation:
Same deal. Don’t buy transportation for this wedding, save your $120 and put it towards something else. Take an uber or drive yourself and uber back or have a designated driver take you. Whatever you do, don’t drive drunk on your wedding day (or ever).
Getting a professional driver is a great time saver and makes your day less stressful in general since you don’t have to worry about getting to and from places. Plus it’s just a ton of fun to hang out with your closest friends and family getting chauffeured around. However, when trying to save money, it’s not always in your best interest.
Transportation is super important if you have multiple places to be in one day. For instance if you were to get married at your church and then had a reception kinda far away. Then definitely get transportation, it’ll keep you on time and will be less hassle than trying to figure it out on day of. Plus, if you’re wearing a ballroom wedding dress fitting into normal vehicles can be challenging.
Total: $0
Hair and Makeup:
While doing your own hair and makeup would save you money, please don’t. It’s your special day, spend some money on pampering yourself and get a professional artist. I say this for two reasons.
First is because you have a limited amount of time on your wedding day so you can’t spend forever if your hair or makeup just isn’t working right. A professional artist makes sure that they have every tool and item that they need to make sure that the job is done right.
Second, is that most professional artists know how to make sure that their work actually lasts the amount of time necessary for photos. This is especially important in the Florida weather. The hot and humid weather is a disaster for everything hair and makeup related. Do yourself the favor and get a pro.
For this wedding, I decided to check out Beautiful You Hair and Makeup since their online pricing was close to what we needed for the budget in mind. Please note that for a $6,000 wedding, you won’t be able to afford to pay for your bridesmaids hair and makeup too. Decide whether you want to make your girls get theirs done professionally or let them do it themselves.
From a custom / manners perspective, if you can’t afford to buy them hair and makeup services, let them have the option to do it themselves.
Total for bridal hair and makeup onsite: $130
Bar:
Thankfully, the venue actually limits us on what we can do for bar. With Beer and Wine restriction and only $120 to be able to go towards it. I’d say that it should probably be a pour your own beverage option. The problem with that is that more people will drink more than they should, which is why having a professional bartender is so important.
If possible, I’d try to add more money towards the bar in order to afford a professional bartender. However, since this is a case study and I only have $6,000 to work with, I won’t.
For a party of 50 guests, who I am assuming are all legal drinking age and average drinkers, for a 4 hour event you need about 5 cases (24 pack) beer, 14 bottles of red wine and 10 bottles of white wine. I estimate those costs to be about $354.
Since that is over our allotted amount of $120, I’d suggest having a “stock the bar” party. It’s a great way to request your guests to buy their own alcohol for your event. They’re happier because they get to drink things that they actually like to drink and your happier because they actually paid for their share of booze. Then use the $120 and whatever else we can scrounge up to get a real bartender for 4 hours.
Since it’s beer and wine only, you just need to think about how you plan on cooling the beverages. I suggest metal bins with ice.
Total: $400
Let’s go back to Catering
Ok, so right now in planning we’re up to $4,036.50 spent with photography, DJ, Attire, Hotel and Stationary still left to figure out. As you can tell, the little things start to add up. Which makes me want to reconsider the items that are over budget, specifically catering.
Our catering quote was about $700 over budget for what we had planned on spending. However, with our venue being about $500 under budget I thought we might be able to make up that cost. Thankfully, I decided to put it on the backburner instead of proceeding with them. I then went ahead and planned some of the lower cost items so that I could get a feel of where we were at with our budget and planning goals.
With less than $2,000 left for a dress, tux, invites, photographer and DJ, I definitely think it would be in our best interest to re-evaluate our catering options. When I think cheap options for wedding food there are two main options that come to mind: Barbeque and Food Trucks.
For BBQ options nearby, my favorite is Smokin’ Out BBQ. For $15 per person you get onsite catering with 3 meat options, 2 sides and rolls. With salad at $42 for 25 people and serving/delivery of $300. We’re looking at a total of $1,214. Which puts us back in line with the original catering budget.
Other options would be food trucks and I looked into these options:
- All Pro– $20/pp ← this one is my favorite since it comes in the normal catering bins if desired and they’ll serve! But it will probably be a bit higher than the BBQ Quote.
- Impasto– $12/pp
- Kings Bistro– $15/pp
The problem I have with these non-traditional catering options is that they’re served on ugly disposable plates with plain disposable silverware. Not really something I think of as nice for weddings, although it definitely will work. If I had a bit more money, I’d go for the traditional caterer over these options because it would class my event up a bit.
Total $1,214
By lowering our catering costs, we’re now to $3,478, leaving us $2,522 for Attire, Stationary, Photography, Hotel and DJ.
Hotel:
When at all possible, I always suggest having a nearby hotel or Airbnb for the night before and night of your wedding. Or at the very least night of wedding. It’s a special day, make it a special night. Even if you have to go over your budget.
However, if budget is super important (which, for this example I’m making it super important) and you live nearby, get ready at home and go back home on your wedding night.
Total: $0
Stationary:
For this, Save the Dates have to be electronic. Sorry, we just need to put as much money into Photographer and DJ at this point in time. For stationary, I’d suggest going with Vistaprint. They have great deals every now and then and they have good designs that you can choose from, or make your own!
Minted or local stationary artists are fantastic and beautiful but unfortunately, for a budget of $6,000, they’re going to be a bit out of your price range.
The important thing to note about stationary costs is that not only do you have to figure in the actual invitation but you have to think about the envelopes, postage costs and how they are going to RSVP to your wedding. To save money on RSVP’s I suggest using a wedding website and putting it on your invitation.
Another important thing about stationery is that you don’t purchase the amount of invitations for your guest count but instead for the number of different addresses used. For a wedding of 50, I’d assume that about half of that are the actual addresses and the other half are the plus ones. So I’d get about 30.
You’ll need to create a spreadsheet of everyone that you are inviting and their addresses. I definitely suggest doing this as a way to figure out your guest count at the very beginning before you even think about venue or budget.
For 30 invites from Vistaprint: $35. For 30 Envelopes: $13. For 30 stamps: $17
Total Stationary: $65
Attire:
For this wedding, there is absolutely no way to me to accurately find a wedding dress and tux for the wedding, only to make suggestions on how to keep costs in range.
Let’s start with the dress. For the dress, I’d try to find one that is $150 or less. This is because you need to factor in alterations. It’s a good idea to get alterations to your dress so that you look as fantastic as possible. The trick to all the fashionistas and well dressed people in this world is that their clothes actually fit them properly. Put about $150 into alterations. Whatever extra money you have can go into jewelry or undergarments for your dress.
For the tux, estimate about $200. Although for this wedding, I’d actually suggest not doing that and just going for the pants, tie and nice shirt look. It’s Florida, it could be hot!
Total: $480
DJ and Photographer
I saved these two for last because I knew that besides catering and venue they were going to be one of my more costly vendors. I chose to wait on them because I want to put as much money into their categories as possible. The photographer captures memories that you will have forever and the DJ makes the party run smoothly and will be your entertainment for the night.
They are important categories and deserve tons of time, attention and as much money as possible LOL!
DJ
For the DJ, I reached out to my tried and true vendors: Grant Hemond and Associates and Fast BReak Entertainment, whom I was super excited to see on EventSlayer. I used to use these guys back when I was a wedding planner in the Tampa Bay region. I also checked out ML Productions, whom I also found on EventSlayer.
We’re looking at around $850 for 5 hours of DJ services with a set up for ceremony and reception.
When looking for a DJ, make sure that they come with great Emcee capabilities (check reviews). We can definitely find cheap DJs in the $500 area, however, their emcee abilities could be questionable. For my wedding, I let my husband deal with the DJ (per his request). I told him I wanted to spend at least $800 on the DJ. He disagreed with my input saying he refused to pay more than $500 for the DJ. He won the argument because music was not in our priorities list, however, I will never forget how much I regretted allowing him to win. My DJ said he could do everything that I requested like cutting the introduction songs short for each couple and that he would make announcements.
That was NOT true. Instead, we got solo dance routines from 5 different couples. I’ll never forget how my little sister and best friend danced by themselves for the entire “Baby’s Got Back” song by Sir-Mix-A-Lot (it’s like 5 minutes long!). It’s now a great memory and I cried laughing at their routine but it’s not what I had anticipated based on our meetings with our DJ.
Total: $850
Photographer
That leaves us with $1,127 leftover for photographer for 5 hours.
For photographer, I looked into quite a few options including:
Photography by Manuele
I’m still waiting on quotes since most don’t show their prices on their website. However, based on what I know so far, I could probably afford Rick Redman Photography the best since his starting price is $100 per hour for special events. For 5 hours, that would be about $500 plus taxes and travel. Even if I were to get quoted double his starting price, we should still be in budget. If he does come back at $500 or so for photography (and you decide to book him), I’d definitely put the extra money we saved back into the catering and get affordable catering!
Total: $1,000
Final Overview of Wedding Plan
As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts in wedding planning and I’m sorry for such a long blog but I wanted to give you as much information as possible.
For this wedding, I would suggest a date in February. February in Florida tends to be the most comfortable outdoors temperature wise and tends to be dryer. Since I am not 100% positive that the venue has air conditioning, and because we’re planning on having the actual ceremony portion of the wedding outdoors, I think that choosing a date that is more likely to be nice than not is in your best interest.
We were able to (hypothetically) plan a wedding for $6,000 and while we weren’t able to have everything we wanted (Officiant, Hotel, Transportation) we were able to do the necessities and I think it would turn out pretty nice!
When planning, it’s super important to get quotes for your biggest vendors prior to booking any. I’d book the venue first and then decide on your other major vendors such as caterer, photographer and DJ once you get enough quotes so that you can wiggle their pricing as you see fit.
Hope that helps you guys! Be sure to let me know if you have a wedding planning request by emailing me at info@event-slayer.com with your location, budget, guest count, styling preferences and any tricky planning requirements!