This weekend one of my best friend’s from high school got married and I was one of her bridesmaids.

It was an amazing event. She had possibly the most perfect wedding I have ever attended. She was absolutely stunning and glowing with love all day. The venue was gorgeous. The weather was perfect. Seriously, it flat out set the bar for the wedding.

And I was so honored to be a part of it. It’s funny when you’re standing next to someone on a day like that and thinking back to how you met (we were high school band geeks together) and how you’ve gotten to where you are. It sounds so hokey, but it’s really an astonishingly precious thing.

Being the dorky personal finance blogger that I am (side note: I totally used being a personal finance blogger as a pickup line at this wedding and offered to help a guy with his budget… and it worked surprisingly well), I also took a moment to reflect on how easy it was to be a bridesmaid in this wedding all due to my bridesmaid budget.

Being asked to be a bridesmaid is a big honor, but there’s a small part of you that cries inside when you think of what it’s about to do to your wallet. The dress, the additional events, the traveling, the gifts, the hotels… it adds up real quick.

The BFF got engaged about 16 months before the big event. I thought for a minute abut the average expenses related to being a bridesmaid and my current financial state and set a $1,000 budget for the entire thing.

WeddingChannel.com figured the average cost of being a bridesmaid as $1,695, which doesn’t sound far off to me, but as we all know, I don’t make a lot and I have a lot of savings priorities and I felt like $1,000 was a reasonable amount.

My plan was to see if this could cover all bridesmaid related expenses and then whatever was left over would go into a check as a gift to the bride and groom. I was also well aware this could fail miserably, since the WeddingChannel and all were telling me this wouldn’t be enough.

I prioritized that savings account and had it fully funded by early 2016.

Here’s how the spending broke down:

• Bridesmaid Dress: $99.99 (the bride gave me her $20 coupon – little did she know that was to her advantage ;o)
• Bridal Shower Contribution: $65 (food, decorations and gift)
• Hotel: $136.85
• Bachelorette Party: $130.50 (2 nights in a hotel in Ocean City, pole dancing class, dinner – I used a Macy’s gift certificate I had to get her gift)
• Wedding Hair: $90
• Shoes: $62

That left me with a grand total of $320.71 for their wedding gift.

That BFF also reads this blog sometimes and asked about how I managed my bridesmaid budget. I told her about my experiment and since she was cool with being the guinea pig, that’s literally what I wrote out her check as.

I also put that sucker in a Barclay’s savings account and made $4.57. I love Barclay’s savings accounts.

There were a few small things that I forgot to deduct because I paid for them either in cash or by Venmoing someone else – like $20 in cover charges at her bachelorette party, a wedding card, and the Uber to get around at the bachelorette party. All in all, the total was probably off by about $30-40.

I also felt like there were some things that shouldn’t come out of that total. For instance, the bachelorette party – I felt that anything I had to pay for should come out of it, but anything I chose to pay for shouldn’t. So that means the day we did a big, fancy dinner and then just split the check evenly despite whatever we all ordered came out of that total. The lunch I grabbed for $5 on the Boardwalk and any drinks I drank out at the bars did not.

I also wanted to get them a little something extra to go with the check for their wedding, so I got them a personalized Christmas ornament from Etsy for like $30, that I felt shouldn’t come out of that total, so I didn’t deduct that from the account.

Overall, I was really happy with the result and felt like this budget is going to be my go to system. The BFF picked a lot of really reasonably priced things for us to have to buy and do and she sort of got to reap a reward for that. If another friend wants us to shell out for fancier stuff, then I think I’d still feel comfortable with this system and their wedding check being a little less.

The one exception I think would be if I have to fly to a wedding, I think I would then budget the flight cost on top of that $1,000 and then work the system like usual.

Of course, this is a just a method that worked for me, and there have totally been times in my life when I’ve been a bridesmaid and footing a $1,000 just would not have been possible. Happily, early 30’s Mel is doing alright.

The bridemaid budget will get another test run over the next year as I gear up for my favorite cousin’s wedding, so I’ll update you all again in the summer about whether it was a success the second time around too.

How much do you guys usually spend when you’re a bridesmaid? What do you think is a good wedding gift amount?