00:00We just got married a couple months ago, and a lot of you guys asked me to do a wedding cost breakdown of our Nobu wedding.
00:06We just did a Business Insider interview about wedding cost transparency,
00:10so I thought I'd go over a little bit more into detail in this video.
00:14I feel like at the beginning of the wedding planning process, I just had no idea how much things cost.
00:18And people were asking me like, what's your budget for a wedding photographer?
00:21And I'm like, how can I know what the budget is for a wedding photographer if I don't know how much like flowers cost?
00:27I just wanted to share the information and create some transparency in case you are planning your own wedding and find this info useful.
00:33Last time I did this, there were so many people who were so upset about how much someone spent on their own wedding.
00:39This is for the brides. If you are not planning a wedding, scroll on.
00:43And I'll probably do a deeper dive on some of the categories, like for example, for florals, like what exactly I had.
00:49So if that's something you're interested in, give me a follow.
00:52Here's a little background of our wedding so you know what the prices of our wedding were based off of.
00:56We had 75 people, it was a Tuesday wedding, and these are 2023 prices.
01:01Starting off with the venue fee, the venue fee was actually waived because at Nobu, if you have over 80% of the guests staying at the hotel, it's actually waived.
01:09This was very clutch because some of the LA venues that we were touring was like literally $40,000 just in venue fee to have your wedding there.
01:17As with most weddings, a lot of our costs went to food and drinks.
01:20We spent $14,000 on food, again for 75 people, and the food included appetizers during cocktail hour and a three-course meal during reception.
01:30We of course had an open bar as well, that was a non-negotiable.
01:33We had it during cocktail hour and reception for a total of 6 hours, and this was $15,000.
01:38I'm Japanese and my husband is Persian, so it meant a lot to us to do a traditional Persian wedding at a Japanese resort.
01:45Here are some of the wedding vendors that I had.
01:48You guys already know how much I love my wedding planner, my content creator, photographer, and DJ.
01:54I'd say these are all very reasonable prices and definitely best bang for your buck.
01:59If you're planning a wedding, you know how crazy some of these vendor prices can get,
02:02but I am of the opinion that you really don't need to be spending tens of thousands of dollars to get good quality.
02:09These people were all local except for the content creator.
02:11The total I spent on florals was $4,600.
02:14I could do a whole separate video on this to kind of show you guys like all the florals that I had and then how much I spent on each.
02:20I had a traditional Persian ceremony, so we kind of rented out the table, the bench, the big mirror, and the two large candles.
02:28All the candles in the front.
02:29The rentals for those were $275.
02:32Everything else on the actual sofa I brought myself.
02:35I did pay for the hair and makeup for the bridesmaids, moms, and grandmas, but I just put what I paid for my own.
02:41Hair and makeup for the wedding day was $310.
02:44Moving on to the shop wall, this is $1,440 for the actual wall and the drink stirrers.
02:50The extra flowers here were done by my amazing wedding planners.
02:53My actual wedding bar stand with the bar back was $300.
02:58The dance floor was $3,300 and the fairy lights were $2,800, which honestly like shocked me.
03:03Like I had to have the fairy lights for this venue, otherwise it'd be pitch black and it'd be weird not to have a dance floor.
03:10But someone tell me why a dance floor costs over $3,000.
03:13The dining tables were $1,500 and the chairs were $1,700.
03:17I actually used the same chairs during the ceremony and just had them move it to the reception area.
03:22I think the relocation fee was like $250.
03:24And then the charger plates, the napkins, the runner, the candles were $2,170 total.
03:31Glasses and the utensils, I used Nobu's.
03:33And all the wedding signage is like the table number or the menu, I DIY'd.
03:38Finally, we have the fireworks, which was the best part of our wedding.
03:42These were $2,800 a minute and the champagne towers were $300, which I know is crazy.
03:48We really wanted to do something unique and entertaining for our guests since they traveled all the way to Kabul and spent three days at Nobu.
03:55And we were under budget, so we were like, ah, screw it.
03:58We had an audio guestbook, which was $400 to rent and we spent $700 on the welcome boxes.
04:04And these adorable wedding newspaper that I gave out to each guest was about $138 for 70 copies.
04:10And a lot of you guys asked me about my wedding newspaper template.
04:13So I actually opened up an Etsy shop and it's linked on my Linktree.
04:18If you guys want to know what I thought was worth it versus not or how we came up with the budget or anything else, please let me know.
04:25And I hope you found this useful.
