SWEAT EQUITY

By DINA ELBOGHDADY

home weddings

The cost of a wedding averaged about $22,000 in 2008.

WASHINGTON — Julie McLaughlin singled out her brother’s suburban house, with its two-tiered deck and garden gazebo, as the ideal spot for her wedding.

And the price was right.

“I couldn’t swallow spending $3,000 to $5,000 to rent a location,” McLaughlin said. “We didn’t want to pay. Our total wedding budget was $5,000.”

The reasons for having a wedding at home range from the financial to the sentimental. But many couples are taken aback by the sweat equity needed to pull off such an event and how quickly the costs mount when you have to rent everything from the tent to the silverware and portable restrooms.

The cost of a wedding averaged about $22,000 in 2008, according to Wedding Report, a wedding market research firm. Of course, averages don’t say much when one couple opts for a quickie justice-of-the-peace ceremony and a dinner at home for 10 while another throws a $100,000 soiree for 200 people under a tent fit for a White House state dinner.

But whatever the national average is, many wedding consultants insist that the cost climbs even higher at a home wedding.

“I’ve never told a client not to have a wedding at their home. But I do tell them that it costs anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent more,” said Katie Martin, a wedding planner at Elegance & Simplicity in Bethesda, Md. “They have to bring in all sorts of vendors to make it a reality.”

Add to that the pressure and angst people feel when they’re hosting a large group of guests in their home and — cha-ching!

“You feel that everything about your home has to be immaculate because so many people will see it,” Martin said. “Before you know it, you’re spending money to have someone clean up the home, to landscape and even to buy new furniture.”

McLaughlin’s relatives took on many of these tasks themselves. But hosting 60 guests wasn’t as easy as the bride expected.

Three tree stumps had to be removed to make room for the buffet tables; ultimately, the caterer had to use a different space because the ground was too muddy after days of rain.

“That took three weeks of digging and hauling these things out so we could have a nice, flat area,” said Melissa McLaughlin, the bride’s sister-in-law.

Friends and family helped plant bulbs and bushes, then surrounded them with truckloads of free mulch from a nearby recycling center so the couple could exchange vows in the gazebo surrounded by blooming flowerbeds and neatly arranged hydrangeas.

Rose petals, bought in bulk online, were strewn around the deck. Candles were hung in the trees and bushes. Tulle and flower arrangements draped the gazebo entrance, and white Christmas lights twinkled in surrounding trees.

“It was informal, comfortable and beautiful,” McLaughlin said. “But it was also way more involved than we had planned.” And more expensive. The couple still busted their budget by about $3,000, even though they skipped the more lavish trappings often associated with at-home weddings.

No tent. (The weather cooperated.)

No band. (Just a harpist and an iPod.)

No fancy restroom trailers. (Two indoor bathrooms sufficed.)

No valet parking. (But a few cars ripped up the lawn.)

If you pony up money for all those frills, not only does the price tag rise substantially but also the potential for mishaps.

“The longer the guest list gets, the more nitty-gritty things you have to worry about,” said Laura Weatherly, a wedding planner at Engaging Affairs in Alexandria, Va.

“You’re not only having to rent tables and chairs and linens, but oftentimes you’re bringing in a tent, lights and power generators. It’s not always possible to run power from the house for the live band, or even for the caterer’s coffee machine, without blowing a circuit.”

There are safety issues, too. If it’s an outdoor wedding, for instance, you have to think about people trudging through your yard from the tent to the house and back, Weatherly said. “Will there be enough light so they don’t kill themselves? It’s easy to trip with variations in the lawn.”

Always plan for the worst-case scenario, said Davis Richardson, president of Sugarplum Tent in Maryland. “The best thing from the standpoint of the wedding planners and the families and the rental companies is to plan well in advance and have a contingency plan.”

In areas where the weather is unpredictable, don’t wait until the rainy wedding day to ask for siding or sturdier floors for your tent, Richardson said. “In muddy conditions, it’s very difficult to save the event after the fact.”

Don’t set your heart on a particular look for the event until you’ve spoken to a professional, Richardson said. Couples intent on setting up a tent over the home’s beautiful deck are bound to be disappointed. “Tents are very regular in shape, normally rectangular, and rectangular shapes are difficult to match with angular decks,” he said.

McLaughlin said that in hindsight, she feels lucky in having exactly the wedding she wanted. Rainy weather cleared up just in time for the big day, and the couple’s finances did not take too much of a hit. Six months later, they had enough money for a down payment on a house. “We couldn’t have been able to do that if we put a lot of money into the wedding,” she said.

But there were a few moments when she wished she’d hired a wedding coordinator to handle last-minute details, like when she peeked out her window and her groom was already at the altar.

“I didn’t even have my dress on,” McLaughlin said. “There was craziness that happened that day, but realistically, no one other than me knew there were any problems.”

The potential to stray off schedule is common during at-home weddings, especially if no one is tasked with keeping everything on track, said Charli Penn, managing editor at WeddingChannel.com, a wedding and gift registry Web site.

“That can really cost you because it may mean paying extra fees for the vendors or the band,” Penn said.

Poor time management can also create headaches with local noise ordinances, Penn said. “If you haven’t gotten to your toast and it’s time to pull the plug, that can be very disappointing.”

If you let that sort of thing bother you.

When Shelley Hilber and her husband hosted their daughter’s wedding in the back yard of their suburban home a few years ago, their 140 guests enjoyed what she described as “the most perfect evening we had ever been a part of, in terms of a party.”

But, toward the end, the police showed up. The Hilbers had notified immediate neighbors about the event, but not the folks who lived beyond the woods that backed onto their property. Those neighbors complained about the noise. The band turned down the volume as the wedding planner coped with the police, who were intent on shutting down the party.

“She kept talking to officers, and we kept going,” Hilber said. “At the end of the day, it was just a good story to tell.”