Recap: 55-person NYC brunch winter wedding (feat. budget breakdown and pics!)

I know how helpful recaps were for me, so I hope this can provide folks with some insight! It's a particular challenge to handle a wedding in NYC/any HCOL area with a budget that isn't bordering on six figures, so I figured I'd share the way we went about it for our big day.

Blurb: We (late-twenties, both originally from the Northeast, met on the internet) held an intimate ceremony and brunch reception at a restaurant in NYC. The theme was a mix between “no stress” and “whatever the professionals think is best,” with a focus on food, drink, and more of a classy-brunch-party-where-we-happened-to-get-married feel than a traditional wedding.

But first, what you're actually here for (Detail-focused!)

Guests: 54 attended; 58 invited, 58 RSVPed yes (all on time!); grandparents couldn’t make it due to health concerns last minute, and one couple got stuck in the Midwest due to bad weather. Almost an exact 50/50 split of guests that had to travel and didn’t.

BUDGET BREAKDOWN (glad to send vendors via PM!)

Budget: $36,000

Actual: $39,639.73

Venue and Food: $19,930.04 - Pre-ceremony champagne, ceremony space, reception space, 6 passed canapes, drinks on consumption, family-style brunch reception with 2 starters, 3 mains, 3 sides, 1 dessert, included gratuity.

Photographer: $3,572.50 - This included an engagement session, 6.5 hours of coverage, single shooter. Includes gratuity. She is deeply talented and we got so many compliments on her ability to be unobtrusive during the day.

Florals: $968.16 - Bouquet, 4 bouts for the boys, 2 corsages for the moms, and 25ish vases with blooms in each for the tables (all donated to a nursing home the next day).

Décor: $143.00 - Table numbers, card box, frames, letter board, light curtain

Paper Goods: $343.06 - Invitations, STDs, RSVP cards, and postage

Bride's Attire: $3,790.00 – Dress and alterations; shoes were a birthday gift and earrings a Christmas gift. Way more than I’d planned on, and worth every penny – the dress stole the show, and the alterations were impeccable.

Groom's Attire: $3,258.98 - Bespoke suit and shirt, tie, pocket square, and shoes. Also way more than we’d expected, but we’re both really extra when it comes to attire, and we both killed it.

Hair: $500.00 - Trial, bride style, plus one style for my MIL, and gratuity. I was able to use my usual stylist, and she’s an angel.

Makeup: $515.00 - Trial, bride makeup, and makeup day-of for both moms

Band: $1,100.00 - New Orleans jazz trio that plays covers of 80s pop music; includes gratuity. They CRUSHED it, and even though we initially planned on Spotify for music, this ended up being perfect entertainment with the lack of dancing. They also lent us their microphone for speeches, which was clutch.

Hotel: $2,781.44 - This was the spot where we blew our budget, and it was worth it. I'd initially planned on sticking with a normal NYC-sized hotel room, but realized that fitting 4-8 people in 300 sq ft would cause more than a little stress, so we splurged, and I covered the cost difference personally to stay in the hotel's penthouse both nights. Husband stayed in a separate room the night before, mostly for getting-ready logistics.

DOC: $850.00 – More on this below, but my DOC is a rockstar and I would never have survived the day without her. Includes gratuity.

Cake: $260.30 - 6" red velvet cutting cake, 120 mini cupcakes in red velvet, vanilla, chocolate blackout, and carrot from our favorite bakery in the city.

Favors: $20.92 – We did a couple chocolates in boxes that doubled as place cards for each guest. Paid for the boxes off of Amazon, and my MIL works at a chocolate shop, so she got the chocolate for free.

Misc: $198.49 - Ring box, getting ready shirt, cards for family/vendors, wrapping paper and boxes for gifts, paper for letters, ceremony binder, license fee

Rings: $635.84 - Purchased during a 20% off sale. We both went with plain platinum bands and are loving them so far.

Night Before: $692.00 - This covered ridiculously good pizza, apps, salad, beer, and lots of wine for 22 people - not a rehearsal dinner, but more just a way to hang with the cousins and friends in from out of town. The "adults" (aunts and uncles, parents, etc.) had a separate dinner that they handled themselves

Morning After: $82.00 - Bagels, babka, rugelach, coffee, and juice for ~30 folks staying at the hotel to have a bite before they headed home

EXCLUDED COSTS

Engagement ring: My engagement ring was my grandmother’s, so no cost there.

Gifts: Not included in the budget, but I purchased a few small gifts for each parent (a dram of booze, glassware, frames as an IOU for a wedding album) and also hand embroidered handkerchiefs for each of them, as well as my husband. Also bought the husband a snazzy new watch, some collar stays, and an album from a boudoir photoshoot I did in advance of the wedding. We're big gift-givers, so I get that this is a LOT, but I figure I'm only meant to do this once, so might as well go for it.

Honeymoon(s): We are also big on travel, so we did 5 nights in Mexico immediately following the wedding to decompress, and we’re headed to Africa for 3 weeks in May to do a self-drive safari.

THE GREAT

The ceremony: I spent about six months drafting and refining our ceremony script and my vows. This was the best use of my time and I’m so glad I slaved over this. Our officiant was my husband’s best friend and my good friend, and we had about 4 hour-long practice sessions to work out the logistics, blocking, timing, etc. So many of our guests have told us that they loved how personal and “us” the ceremony was, which meant a lot to me, given the time investment on it. There were maybe 4 dry eyes after my vows, and then zero left by the time my husband did his, so we crushed it.

Restaurant brunch: The theme of the wedding was no stress, and that meant finding a venue that I didn’t have to decorate or rent anything. Because we were on the smaller side, holding it at a restaurant was the ideal move, and it worked out precisely as I’d hoped (some issues with the hospitality group, more below).

No dancing: I was deeply concerned about this, especially after attending a couple cousin weddings in the fall where the dancing was a huge hit, but it worked out really well with the vibe we ended up having. No one complained about not having dancing, loved the band, and it really helped to set the more laid-back tone we wanted.

The details: I know everyone tells you to not worry about the details, that no one notices them, but I gotta say, so much of the positive feedback we got was centered around those details – the pre-ceremony playlist with songs from our favorite movies, the chocolates-as-placecards, the program with a quiz and a bunch of fun facts, the letterboard sign, the hand embroidered handkerchiefs, the ~8000 words I hand wrote for letters to my husband and all the parents and our officiant, all of it was completely worth it for us.

THE LESS GREAT

A non-wedding venue: The on-the-ground staff (manager, service staff, bartenders) were spectacular, but the hospitality group that owns the restaurant was my biggest source of woe. The coordinator role had a disastrous attrition rate, and we cycled through 4 different ones before the wedding, 2 of which turned over with less than 20 days to the wedding. They clearly were used to running less intense events (rehearsal dinners, holiday parties), so they dropped the ball on the amount of detail required to keep a type-A bride feeling like the event was under control.

Know your guests i/r/t booze: Our people DRANK. We had all drinks on consumption, and we ended up doubling what I was expecting our bar spend to be. We were over budget by a bit (this irks me, as I was SO prepared to be right at budget and very proud of myself), and this definitely contributed to it. Even with a daytime wedding, they drank their faces off, so be prepared for that if that’s the kind of group you’re dealing with.

TAKEAWAYS

Do what is best for you as a couple: Despite a lot of concern in the months leading up, we did what we wanted – a religion-free ceremony with personal vows, then brunch, in NYC, with no dancing, no bridal party, and very few traditions. We keep saying it was about as perfect a day as we could’ve hoped for, and the feedback from guests has been overwhelmingly positive, with most of it focusing on how much they liked that our wedding was very “us.”

Splurge where you want, save where you want: For us, this meant getting the penthouse for two nights, allowing us to have a space to take pictures and hang out with a bunch of people; going ham on our attire and dressing to the nines; setting up a tripod and an iPhone in the back to record the ceremony (which was literally perfect); going as minimal as possible on florals (while still having them!); not taking on any of the costs for us/our friends of having a bridal party; letting everyone drink whatever and as much as they wanted.

Get a DOC: I could NOT have had the day go this well without a DOC. She was extremely well priced for the HCOL area, was always available to offer opinions or answer questions, helped deal with the last minute nonsense the venue threw at us, and allowed the day-of to run precisely on time (a big deal for me) and, from our perspective, looked literally seamless. She handled set up, take down, got everyone where they needed to be, found me a bathroom behind the scenes while I waited to walk down the aisle, and was just generally the calm, dependable voice of reason the entire day.