Wedding vendors say as living costs rise post-pandemic, Kiwi celebrations are shrinking – from the guest lists to the number of bridesmaids and the volume of flowers lining the aisles.
Two Bay of Plenty brides, however, decided they wanted to keep their big day, well, big.
But at what cost?
The weddings came to about $70,000 and $80,000 – well over the original budgets.
Leah Plasterer from Canada met her husband Kayne Middleton in New Zealand and budgeted about $40,000 for their original 2021 Bay of Plenty wedding.
Then Covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions hit and they had to reschedule twice, finally saying “I do” in February this year.
While the postponements gave them more time to save, the final $70,000 cost meant they still had to sacrifice their honeymoon and go straight back to work when they returned to Canada.
Plasterer, who had a baby in the time waiting for the wedding to roll around, had to cut her planned maternity leave five months short.
She said she first noticed prices increasing after lockdown. The couple asked their 90 guests to donate money for their honeymoon fund instead of buying gifts.
“[But] we ended up paying the donations straight into the funds for the wedding.”
Another Tauranga bride-to-be had not expected to pay more than $30,000 for her dream wedding but her costs were heading towards $80,000.
The bride, who shared her story on the condition she was not named, said she was working six days a week to fund her big day for 110 guests coming up in February.
She also swapped the month-long honeymoon in Europe for a week in Melbourne with her family.
“I just didn’t anticipate for it to be this expensive,” she said.
“I understand why everyone is asking for more but my wages have stayed the same.”
The financial burden was “not a nice feeling” in what “was supposed to be a really happy time”.
However, she had family support and would only have to pay $30,000 towards her wedding.
She had scaled back costs where she could but was determined to keep her guest list at 110.
“I’m doing this once and I want who I want to be there. I would rather skimp out on my dress, for example, than people.”
Wedding planner of both ceremonies Alina Johnston, from Wild & Whim, said she had noticed many changes to weddings with the rising cost of living.
“If you Google the average wedding cost for 100 people in New Zealand, it says $30,000 but I don’t think that’s realistic anymore.”
Johnston’s rule is to budget $450-$500 per person, meaning a 100-guest wedding would be $45,000 to $50,000.
“If they say they want 150 guests for $30,000, that’s not going to work because catering alone for that is going to be close to $20,000 because everything’s gone up.”
Some couples were postponing weddings and elopements and micro weddings with 10-30 guests were on the rise, with Johnston noticing priorities shifting to couples buying a first home with parent support.
“They can’t afford the massive, expensive weddings anymore.”
The Bay of Plenty Times spoke to the brides and a range of Kiwi wedding vendors about what goes into a wedding budget.
Both brides booked the same Bay of Plenty venue for their weddings but paid different prices.
When Plasterer booked for her 2020 wedding, the price was $6250 for exclusive use from 11am to midnight. This increased to $9600 for February 2023.
The bride-to-be was charged $10,800 for the venue for early next year.
Virginia Mackay is the general manager for two Auckland wedding venues, Tui Hills and Abel Estate, and said people “don’t realise the cost that goes into hiring a wedding venue”.
“You are effectively hiring private staff that are working just for you.”
Labour costs for three to four private chefs not only factored in the day of the event but about 15 hours of preparation for 60-70 guests.
For 100 guests, Mackay said five front-of-house staff and a duty manager were needed.
Mackay said many venues were “late to the game” with lifting prices, and some had to increase about 23 per cent after three years of inflation.
Another venue operator told NZME they put their prices up $500 in the past few years to cover workers’ wage increases.
They noticed couples preferring simple ceremonies over full-format events.
“After the pandemic and so many weddings being cancelled, people started to ask, does it have to be a lavish event or is it about committing to each other with the nearest and dearest?”
“The cost of flowers was absolutely mental,” Plasterer said.
Her floral bill more than doubled post-Covid from $4000 to $8441, even after dialling back her order.
Next year’s bride said “absolutely not” when quoted $6000 for her flowers.
“I had to scale it back because it was just getting out of control,” she said.
Everbloom Floral Studio owner Mel Taylor was not involved in either of the Bay weddings featured in this article but told NZME floral prices “pretty much doubled after Covid-19”.
She attributed this to growers “mowing down” crops they could not sell and having to start from scratch.
Wedding flowers were expected to be the ”highest quality” and blemish-free, which also affected the price.
Brigette Gardner, owner of Our Flowers, which was also not involved in either wedding, said clients had been cutting back as guest lists and wedding party sizes shrank, for example from six bridesmaids to two.
Wedding planner Alina Johnston said her clients paid about $3000 on average.
“But I’m on the high end because not everyone needs a wedding planner.
“People don’t realise the labour both the florists and the growers put into bouquets, especially when they are big archways.”
Plasterer did not notice food prices rising much after the pandemic, but the bride getting married in February did.
The original plan to go with her venue’s nicest food option was axed when the price hit $120 a head.
They went with the buffet, which was up 11 per cent from $77 to $86 per person. For her 110 guests, that pushed the meal cost from $8470 to $9460.
Food prices increased 8 per cent in the 12 months to September, according to Stats NZ, led by fruit and vegetables, which rose 22 per cent.
Lemongrass Catering owner Belinda Lombard, also not involved in either wedding, noticed many couples wanting to take on the catering themselves to avoid the soaring food prices.
Lombard said she was blessed her business has been running for 15 years and had a good reputation, because if that wasn’t the case she would not be able to keep up with costs such as “a carton of eggs going from $60 to $90 overnight”.
“There were many things that closer to the date, I was like ‘axe that’,” Plasterer said.
There was no cake and florists used “scrap flowers in tiny vases” for the table arrangements.
The bouquets shrank and the arch became “two flower pillars that were moved throughout the day” for photo opportunities.
The bride-to-be “really wanted nice decorations like neon signs but had to strip it back”.
She wrote her bridesmaids letters instead of buying them gifts.
Johnston said options to cut costs depended on what couples wanted.
Many couples trimmed their guest lists and some hosted elopement parties instead of a full wedding. .
“You can have a high-end and a low-end extreme on many different elements.”
According to Russell Burnard, Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, the number of weddings and the total number of registry weddings has decreased.
Harriet Laughton is a multi-media journalist based in the Bay of Plenty.
