Ask a vendor what a wedding costs and you'll usually get some version of "it depends." Which is true — and also completely useless when you're trying to build a budget. So here's the conversation most of the industry avoids: real numbers, line by line, and our honest take on which ones are worth it.
One caveat before we start. These are ranges, not quotes. Vancouver has forty-person forest elopements and four-hundred-person ballroom weddings, and they do not cost the same thing. But if you're planning a fairly classic day — ceremony, dinner, dancing, 80 to 120 guests — this is the landscape you're walking into.
The number nobody wants to say out loud
Most current estimates put the average Vancouver wedding around $38,000, with plenty of full-service downtown weddings clearing $50,000 without anyone feeling extravagant. The Canadian average sits lower, but Vancouver venues, Vancouver catering, and Vancouver everything pull the number up the same way Vancouver rent does.
If that number made your stomach drop, keep reading — because the total matters less than where it goes.
And if it made you consider eloping instead: fair. A full-service Vancouver elopement — celebrant, permits, dinner for ten, photography — routinely comes in under $10,000, which is why we photograph so many of them. But for this post, we're assuming you want the party. The goal isn't to talk you out of a wedding; it's to make sure you walk into one with your eyes open.
Where the money actually goes
Venue: $5,000–$20,000. The widest range on the list. A community hall or restaurant buyout sits at the low end; a downtown hotel ballroom or waterfront estate sits at the top. Venue is also the line item that quietly drives every other one — a blank-canvas space means renting chairs, linens, and lighting that a full-service venue already includes.
Catering: $90–$150 per person. Multiply by your guest count and watch it become your biggest number. At 100 guests with bar service, food and drink lands between $12,000 and $18,000. This is why the guest list — not the venue, not the dress — is the single biggest lever in your budget.
Photography: $3,500–$6,000. Full-day coverage from an established Vancouver studio. Video adds $2,500–$5,000 more if you book it separately, which is part of why we bundle photo and content creation into one team.
Florals: $2,500–$5,000. The line item that surprises people most. Flowers are perishable, labour-intensive, and installed at 6 a.m. by professionals. A full ceremony arch alone can run $1,500.
Everything else: attire ($2,000–$5,000 combined), music ($1,500–$4,000), planner or coordinator ($2,000–$8,000), cake and stationery ($1,000–$2,500), plus the small stuff — permits, transport, tips — that reliably adds another couple thousand.
Where we'd actually cut
Here's the contrarian part. The wedding industry will tell you every line item is essential. It isn't.
Cut the guest list before you cut anything else. Every name you remove saves you $100–$180 once you count the plate, the drinks, the chair, and the slice of cake. Twenty fewer guests can fund your entire photography budget.
Consider a Friday or a Sunday. Off-peak dates and off-season months (November through March) can shave 20–40% off venue costs, and the photos look exactly the same. Better, sometimes — nobody's squinting into July sun.
Skip the favours and the ice sculpture tier of décor. Nobody has ever remembered a favour. People remember how the room felt, and candlelight is cheap.
Where we wouldn't
Don't cheap out on the things that outlive the day. The food and the flowers are gone by midnight. The photographs are what your kids will hold. That's not a sales pitch — it's the one consistent piece of feedback couples give a year later, and it's the reason "I wish we'd spent less on photos" is a sentence we have never once heard.
The same logic applies to a day-of coordinator. It's the difference between you enjoying your wedding and you running it.
The budget-boutique middle
There's a stubborn idea that you either spend $60,000 or you compromise. We built SimplyWed on the belief that the middle exists: a beautiful, well-documented, genuinely fun wedding in the $25,000–$35,000 range, made possible by ruthless prioritizing — a tighter guest list, an off-peak date, and money moved toward the things that last.
A wedding budget isn't a test of how much you love each other. It's a list of decisions, and you're allowed to make them on purpose.
Planning a Vancouver wedding?
SimplyWed Studio is a Vancouver-based wedding and elopement photography studio. If you're building your budget and wondering where photography fits, reach out — we'll give you straight answers there too.
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