As a frequent wedding guest over the last 10 years, I kept in mind the things I enjoyed as a guest at my friends’ weddings and focused on what we felt had a lasting impact. That being food, entertainment, and memorabilia. Following on from my previous post of Top 5 Ways We Saved on Our Wedding, this is a post of the 3 things we deemed worthy to splurge on.

Venue
Venue was the very first thing we locked in for our wedding, and it’s probably the single most important factor governing your spend (and usually your biggest wedding cost!). We started to look for a venue almost immediately after getting engagement, even though we didn’t really have a date in mind. Venues tend to be booked out a year in advance, so we had to move fast to get our ideal dates (warmer weather and trying to avoid the rainy season). By booking earlier, venues also offer early-bird specials and throw in some extras (ours included a DJ, among other things). We were quite selective with our venue: we wanted somewhere that was iconic to Sydney, had good food, and felt exclusive and intimate. We did get what we wanted, but the cost accounted for almost a quarter our budget.

Photographer
Long after the vows have been said, the cake was cut, and celebrations have wound down, you will still have gorgeous photos to look back on. We knew we wanted all our moments captured in the best way possible and we were very specific on style. Like the theme of our wedding, we wanted our photos to be natural, elegant, light and dreamy. We opted for the top package our photographer (previously Yulia Photography, now Bellizzi Studios) offered, which covered unlimited hours on the day and we got over a thousand professionally edited images by the end. All the images were gorgeous and each time we looked back on them, it was like reliving the moments again.

Videographer
The wedding day goes by in the blink of an eye and as the couple in the midst of the chaos, we were bound to miss seeing a lot of things. We also wanted to be able to share our happy day with overseas relatives who couldn’t attend and would have loved to be there. You can never have too many photos or videos of your wedding, so we opted for a videographer as well. They’re not a cheap service, but well worth the money if you can spare it. Not only did we get a full day’s coverage, we also received a trailer, a short video and all the raw footage of the day.

What were the biggest splurges for your wedding?
Did you think they were worth it?
What would you spend on if you were to do it over?