Techie Jun Hao Knowledge Chief

Did ours recently, so real numbers-ish. The big buckets: banquet (usually the biggest, hotel vs restaurant vs void deck changes everything), gown/suit rental + photography, actual-day photo/video, makeup, rings, and misc (invites, favours). A hotel banquet drives most of the cost because it's per-table and you're feeding a big guest list. How we kept it sane: 1) trimmed the guest list ruthlessly, every table is real money, 2) did a restaurant banquet instead of a 5-star hotel, food still great, cost far less, 3) rented gown/suit instead of buying, 4) the ang bao/red packet from guests offsets a big chunk of the banquet, we came out roughly break-even on the dinner. Set your budget by deciding guest count and venue tier FIRST, those two decide 70% of the total. Don't let vendors upsell you on things guests forget by next week.