Average Cost of a Kosher Wedding

One of the first tasks I did when planning my kosher wedding was to establish a realistic wedding budget.  Did I mention I planned my wedding during the 2009 Recession?  Cost was an issue, and in order to throw the wedding of my dreams I had to know what I was dealing with and how to cut costs.  While the internet unlocks the door to the world of wedding budget calculators, I did not find one specific to the Orthodox Jewish Wedding audience.  That being said, here is one way for you to establish your kosher wedding budget:

What is the average cost of a kosher wedding?
The average cost of a kosher wedding varies depending on location.  The following link provides a quick way to get estimates for a non-kosher wedding based on zip code:    http://www.costofwedding.com/
For New York City, the average cost of a (non-kosher) wedding is between $22,832 and $38,053.  But what does this mean to the kosher bride and groom, who typically invite significantly more guests than the number of guests invited to the average secular wedding, and who must pay almost twice as much for kosher food than the average cost of non-kosher food provided at a wedding?

It means that those wedding averages must increase significantly to get a realistic kosher wedding budget.  The easiest way to do this is to know which wedding items impact budget costs the most.  The wedding budget percentage breakdown shows that the Reception makes up 48% of the wedding budget, and "reception" is defined as the cost of the venue and catering.  So, a non-kosher wedding in New York that costs $25,000 means that half of that, or approximately $12,500 was spent on the Reception.  Kosher weddings require kosher food, which can cost double the amount paid for non-kosher catering.  So, for this example, a kosher wedding budget needs to add another $12,500 to the $25,000 making the cost of the kosher wedding $37,500 by factoring in the significant price difference in Reception costs.  There are additional Jewish related items in the budget that can also impact the average cost of a kosher wedding such as the average size of an “Orthodox Jewish” wedding. While the national average size of a wedding based on a survey conducted by The Knot in 2009 is 149 guests, the average size of an Orthodox Jewish wedding can be significantly larger. I did not find an available survey to reflect the average size of an Orthodox Jewish wedding, so for the purpose of this blog I will not factor average size differences between the national average and the Orthodox Jewish average.  Therefore, for those of you interested in what the average cost of a kosher wedding is, I took the non-kosher wedding cost averages and doubled the Reception cost to come up with:

• Average Cost of a Kosher Wedding in New York*:  between $33,791 and $56,318
• Average Cost of a Kosher Wedding in the US*:  between $21,735 and $36,224

* These averages do not factor in size of the average Orthodox Jewish Wedding, which can be significantly larger than the national average size of a wedding.