How Much Does a Wedding Cost in New York? A 2026 NYC and Statewide Guide
We photograph and film weddings across New York, from Manhattan rooftops to Hudson Valley barns and Long Island catering halls, and most first calls open the same way. Someone read a number online, built a spreadsheet around it, then got a catering quote with a service charge and sales tax stacked on top that broke the whole thing. The published numbers for New York are not wrong. They measure different weddings, and almost none of them state their guest count on the page you are reading. This guide separates them, shows what each one counts, and gives you arithmetic that survives a venue tour.
Quick Answer:
Couples who married in New York City spent an average of $75,005, with Manhattan at $87,700 and the outer boroughs at $62,310, against a New York State average of $49,000 and a US average of $34,200. At an average of 124 guests the city figure works out to about $605 per person. In New York City the venue line and the catering line are usually the same money, because most city venues sell a food and beverage minimum, and a 20% to 25% service charge plus 8.875% sales tax lands on top of that minimum.
In this article
- What is the average wedding cost in New York in 2026?
- Why do published New York averages disagree by $60,000?
- What do New York wedding venues actually cost?
- How much does each guest add to a New York wedding?
- Where the rest of the money goes: New York costs by category
- How much do photography and videography cost in New York?
- How does the cost change across New York State?
- What does it legally cost to get married in New York?
- What costs do New York couples forget to budget for?
- Where can you cut a New York budget without it showing?
- How we cover New York weddings
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average wedding cost in New York in 2026?
The defensible figure for New York City is $75,005, published by The Knot for NYC at an average of 124 guests, with a typical range of $32,380 to $101,190. Statewide the same publisher reports $49,000. The US average is $34,200, drawn from The Knot’s 2026 Real Weddings Study of 10,474 couples married in 2025.
Four numbers describe New York, and they sit far apart because they count four different weddings.
The Knot splits the city geographically: Manhattan averages $87,700 and the outer boroughs $62,310. Zola models a full-service 150-guest city wedding and gets $99,452, or $663 per person. The Knot’s statewide average of $49,000 covers everything from a Buffalo VFW hall to a Hamptons estate. And The Wedding Report estimates $45,173 to $55,211 for a 75-guest Long Island wedding in 2026.
| Source | Figure | Guest count | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Knot, New York City | $75,005 | 124 | Reported city-wide spend, range $32,380 to $101,190 |
| The Knot, Manhattan | $87,700 | 124 | Same dataset, Manhattan only |
| The Knot, outer boroughs | $62,310 | 124 | Same dataset, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island |
| Zola, NYC guide | $99,452 | 150 | Modeled full-service city wedding |
| The Knot 2026 study, New York State | $49,000 | not stated | Statewide survey figure |
| The Knot 2026 study, US national | $34,200 | 117 | National benchmark |
Read across that table and the honest headline is a range with a condition attached. A city wedding of 120 to 150 guests with full vendor coverage lands between $75,000 and $100,000. The same wedding two hours up the Hudson lands between $45,000 and $70,000. Half of New York weddings cost less than any of these numbers.
Why do published New York averages disagree by $60,000?
Three reasons, and each one is worth knowing before you budget against the wrong figure. Guest count is baked into every model and rarely printed beside it. Surveys and models count different things. And the same publisher can run two datasets that answer to different national baselines.
Guest count is the largest distortion. Normalize every source to a per-person figure and the disagreement mostly evaporates. The Knot’s NYC data works out to $605 per guest. Zola’s model gives $663. The Wedding Report’s Long Island estimate gives about $669. National sits at $292. The city sources land within 10% of each other. They differ on totals because they differ on how many people are at the party, and a 26-guest gap between 124 and 150 is worth roughly $16,000 in New York.
Surveys and models count different weddings. The Knot asks couples what they paid. That sample includes the 40-guest restaurant buyout in Carroll Gardens and the 220-guest Plaza wedding, averaged into one number that describes neither. Zola builds a wedding out of category assumptions, and a model never forgets to hire a florist. Real couples skip categories all the time.
The same brand can publish two national baselines. The Knot’s NYC page calls the city about 56% more expensive than the US average. Set $75,005 against the $34,200 that the same publisher reports nationally and the gap is 119%. City pages and the national Real Weddings Study draw on different collections, so a percentage quoted on one page will not reconcile with a dollar figure on another. Use the dollar figures and do the division yourself.
Category weighting inside models is the fourth trap. The Wedding Report’s Long Island estimate puts 19.1% of the budget on jewelry, between $8,626 and $10,542, which is more than it allocates to photography and video combined. In our years of shooting New York weddings we have never met a couple who spent ten thousand dollars on rings inside a fifty thousand dollar budget. That is statistical fill, and it inflates the total while under-representing what actually eats the money.
One more useful test. Run The Wedding Report’s own calculator for “New York, NY” with different inputs and it returns anything from $29,447 to $169,963. Same city, same year, same tool. Any average quoted without its guest count and its service level is close to meaningless.
What do New York wedding venues actually cost?
Published starting prices for New York City venues run from $10,000 in a Manhattan bookstore to $55,000 at a Midtown hotel, with Brooklyn spaces clustering between $10,000 and $25,000. The Knot puts the NYC venue average at $27,500 and catering at $18,680. At most city venues those two lines are the same money, and adding them produces a total nobody pays.
This is the single most misread thing about New York pricing. Manhattan and Brooklyn venues typically sell a food and beverage minimum. You commit to spending a certain amount on catering and bar, and once you clear it the room comes with it. A venue quoting a $40,000 minimum for a Saturday in October is quoting your catering budget, and there is no separate rental line to add. Raw spaces work the opposite way: you pay rent for an empty room, then bring in a caterer, rentals, staff, and often the bar, which adds $3,000 to $8,000 in rentals alone before anyone eats.
Here is what New York venues publish, taken from their own marketplace listings.
| Venue | Area | Published starting price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| JW Marriott Essex House | Central Park South, Manhattan | $55,000 | Large formal weddings where the hotel handles catering, rooms and staffing |
| Pier Sixty | Chelsea Piers, Manhattan | $25,000 | 200-plus guest lists that need water views and a single loading plan |
| The Skylark | Garment District, Manhattan | $20,000 | Rooftop skyline shots without a full estate budget |
| 620 Loft & Garden | Rockefeller Center, Manhattan | $20,000 | Small ceremonies with a St. Patrick's Cathedral backdrop, tight capacity |
| Housing Works Bookstore | SoHo, Manhattan | $10,000 | The lowest published Manhattan entry point, and the fee supports a charity |
| Wythe Hotel | Williamsburg, Brooklyn | $25,000 | Couples who want guests to sleep upstairs and skip the shuttle |
| 99 Scott | East Williamsburg, Brooklyn | $12,000 | Raw industrial space for couples who will build the room themselves |
| Dobbin St | Greenpoint, Brooklyn | $10,150 | 100 to 150 guests, daylight interiors, Manhattan skyline on the roof |
| City Winery Hudson Valley | Montgomery, NY | $40,000 | Full-service country weddings that keep a city standard of food |
| The Roundhouse | Beacon, NY | $32,400 | Weekend weddings on the Metro-North line, waterfall and rooms on site |
| Land's End | Sayville, Long Island | $23,000 | Waterfront South Shore weddings with a traditional catering-hall service model |
| The Mansion at Timber Point | Great River, Long Island | $10,000 | Large Long Island guest lists at the lowest published entry in this table |
The venues couples search for by name are usually the ones that publish nothing. The Pierre, The Plaza, Cipriani, Gotham Hall, Guastavino’s and the Frick Collection quote by date and headcount, and so do the botanic gardens. Brooklyn Botanic Garden publishes the capacity of the Palm House at 250 and names its exclusive caterer, with no fee anywhere on the page. That silence is a pricing model, and it means the only way to compare two marquee rooms is to get both minimums in writing for the same date.
When you do, run this arithmetic on each one before you compare them:
Minimum, plus service charge, plus tax. A $40,000 food and beverage minimum with a 22% service charge and 8.875% sales tax is $53,000 before flowers. Two venues quoting the same minimum with a 20% and a 25% service charge are $2,000 apart on the same wedding.
What the minimum includes. Some Manhattan venues count only food toward the minimum and bill the bar separately. Some count rentals. Ask which line items apply.
Saturday against everything else. Peak Saturdays from May through October carry the highest minimum of the year at almost every New York venue, and the same room in February can be a different number entirely.
How much does each guest add to a New York wedding?
Every additional guest at a New York City wedding costs roughly $320 to $390 once food, bar, the service charge, sales tax, rentals and staffing are counted. Cutting twenty names saves $6,400 to $7,800 without touching a single vendor contract. No other decision in wedding planning has that leverage.
The arithmetic is straightforward and you can run it on any quote you receive. The Knot puts NYC catering at $18,680, about $151 per head at the 124-guest city average, and $20,130 in Manhattan, about $162. Zola prices bar service at $14,031 for 150 guests, roughly $94 per person. Food and bar together sit near $245. Apply a 22% service charge and 8.875% sales tax and you are at $325 before a single rental. Add chairs, linens, cake, stationery and the staffing that a plated dinner needs, and $320 to $390 is the honest planning band.
That per-guest figure is the engine of the whole budget. Here is what it produces once you add the costs that stay flat regardless of headcount.
| Guest count | Food, bar, service charge and tax | Typical all-in city total | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | about $16,250 | $40,000 to $60,000 | Couples who want a Manhattan address and will trade the guest list for it |
| 100 | about $32,500 | $60,000 to $85,000 | The most common city structure: close family, real friends, full vendor coverage |
| 150 | about $48,750 | $85,000 to $110,000 | Two large families, or a list that has to include work |
| 200+ | about $65,000 and up | $105,000 to $140,000 | Cultural and community weddings where the list is fixed, usually better priced outside Manhattan |
Two published figures land inside these bands, which is a reasonable sign the model holds. The Knot’s city average of $75,005 at 124 guests sits between the 100 and 150 rows. Zola’s modeled $99,452 at 150 guests sits inside the 150 row.
Note that the cost per guest falls as the count rises, because photography, film, planning, music and flowers spread across more people. Couples use this to justify inviting more, and it is arithmetically true and financially backwards. The total is what you pay.
Where the rest of the money goes: New York costs by category
Venue, catering and bar take roughly 55% to 65% of a New York City wedding, which the two sections above cover in detail. This section is about the other third, where the city premium is steeper than most couples expect and far less evenly distributed than a flat multiplier suggests.
New York City figures below come from The Knot where it breaks the category out for the city, and from Zola’s 150-guest city model where The Knot does not. National figures come from The Knot’s 2026 Real Weddings Study.
| Category | New York City | US average | NYC premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reception venue | $27,500 | $12,900 | +113% |
| Catering, per person | $151 | $80 | +89% |
| Photographer | $4,475 | $3,000 | +49% |
| Videographer | $6,064 (Zola, 150 guests) | $2,300 | see the photo and video section |
| Live band | $9,530 | $4,500 | +112% |
| DJ | $2,925 | $1,800 | +63% |
| Florist | $10,729 (Zola, 150 guests) | $2,800 | +283% |
| Wedding planner | $7,930 (Zola, 150 guests) | $2,100 | +278% |
| Cake and desserts | $1,399 (Zola, 150 guests) | $540 | +159% |
| Hair and makeup | $722 for the couple (Zola) | $150 per person | roughly comparable |
Florals
Zola models New York florals at $10,729, the third largest line in a city budget after venue and catering. The gap against the $2,800 national average is real. City receptions happen in rooms that are either blank or already so decorated that flowers have to compete, and both conditions cost money. Reusable installations are where the savings live: ceremony arrangements moved to the reception, aisle pieces repurposed as table markers, one statement piece doing the work of forty centerpieces. A good New York florist proposes this without being asked.
Music
A live band averages $9,530 in the city against $4,500 nationally, the steepest premium in the vendor stack after the venue. Bands need stage space, power, a longer load-in through a freight elevator that the building may only release at certain hours, and a meal per musician. A DJ at $2,925 avoids most of that. Compare the second-order costs before you compare the two headline numbers.
Planner
Zola models $7,930 for a New York planner, and that figure blends month-of coordination with full-service planning that starts around $10,000 in the city. Month-of coordination is the best value in the New York vendor stack. Someone who knows which Brooklyn building releases the freight elevator at 3pm, and which caterer always arrives late, is worth more on the day than another $2,000 of flowers.
Attire and beauty
The national dress average is $2,100 and hair and makeup runs about $150 per person. New York sits above both, and the line couples forget is the artist’s travel and early call time. A 6am start in Brooklyn for a Manhattan ceremony is billed, and a second artist becomes necessary once the party passes six people.
How much do photography and videography cost in New York?
Plan on $4,800 to $9,000 for full-day photography in New York City and a comparable range for film, or $9,000 to $15,000 combined when one team covers both. The Knot’s NYC photographer average of $4,475 describes partial-day coverage more than a full wedding day, and quoting it as a full-day rate is the most common budgeting error we see.
The published numbers, side by side. The Knot puts the NYC photographer average at $4,475, with a range of $2,030 to $6,020, Manhattan at $4,870 and the outer boroughs at $4,080. Zola’s 150-guest city model allocates $6,717 to photography and $6,064 to videography, $12,781 for the two together. The national averages are $3,000 and $2,300. The spread between $4,475 and $6,717 is a coverage gap: the lower figure includes four-hour and six-hour bookings, second shooters counted as add-ons, and couples who booked eighteen months out at last year’s rate.
Three things move the price, and hours matter more in New York than in any market we work in.
Hours, and the winter sunset. A December wedding in New York loses the sun at about 4:30 in the afternoon. A June wedding holds usable light past 8:30. The same eight-hour package buys a completely different day in those two months, and a December timeline needs a first look scheduled before the ceremony or the couple’s portraits happen in the dark. We plan New York timelines backwards from sunset on your specific date at your specific venue.
Team size. One photographer cannot cover two getting-ready rooms in two different buildings, and cannot shoot the aisle and your mother’s face at the same moment. Two shooters is the standard above eight hours in this market.
Booking photo and film together. Our own combined coverage prices about 5% under the same two packages bought separately, and the operational gain is larger than the discount. Two teams from two companies negotiate the same six feet of aisle during the vows, and one of them loses.
For reference against the market data above, our New York coverage runs $6,800 for six hours of photo and film, $9,120 for eight, and $11,190 for ten hours with two photographers, two filmmakers, drone, Super 8 and medium format film included. That ten-hour figure sits about $1,600 below the $12,781 Zola models for photography and videography at a 150-guest New York wedding. Photography alone runs $3,500, $4,800 and $5,890 across the same three tiers, and film matches it. Full detail is on our wedding pricing and packages
How does the cost change across New York State?
The same wedding costs roughly 40% more in Manhattan than in the outer boroughs and 60% to 80% more than two hours up the Hudson. The gap is venue and catering. Everything else moves far less, and some of it moves against you when you leave the city.
Manhattan, $87,700 average. The highest venue minimums in the state, and the surrounding costs compound. Building rules govern the day more than the contract does: freight elevator windows, certificates of insurance naming the building, loading dock hours, and a curfew on amplified sound in residential zones. Photo and film note: Manhattan interiors run dark and ceilings are often low and warm-lit, so we bring our own lighting instead of pushing ISO and handing you noise.
Brooklyn and Queens, $62,310 average. Published venue starting prices run $10,000 to $25,000, and the raw-space model dominates. A $12,000 industrial room with $18,000 of catering, rentals and staffing behind it costs the same as a $30,000 all-inclusive, with more of your weekends spent coordinating it. Photo and film note: Greenpoint and Williamsburg roofs give you the Manhattan skyline at blue hour, which is a ten-minute window we schedule rather than hope for.
Long Island. The Wedding Report estimates $45,173 to $55,211 for 75 guests in 2026, and published venue starts run $7,000 to $23,000. The catering-hall model here is genuinely different from the city: per-person packages that include the room, the food, the bar, the cake and often the flowers, priced from about $150 per head. That bundling makes comparison easy and makes substitution hard. Photo and film note: South Shore waterfront ceremonies carry wind, and wind is an audio problem, so we take a feed from the venue’s sound board for the vows.
Hudson Valley and Westchester. Published starts run $18,800 to $40,000, and the venues that photograph best are often the ones with the fewest built-in services. The costs that catch couples are guest accommodation, a shuttle from the nearest town, and vendor travel fees. Photo and film note: golden hour is longer at New York’s latitude than in the western markets we also shoot, and the valley gives you a real one against the ridgelines, so a late portrait window is worth protecting in the timeline.
Upstate. The statewide average of $49,000 is pulled down substantially by upstate weddings, where full-service venues run well below city minimums and the local vendor pool has not priced in a Manhattan address. Ask every city-based vendor about travel and overnight fees before you compare quotes.
What does it legally cost to get married in New York?
The legal side of a New York wedding costs under $100. A marriage license in New York City is $35 and a ceremony at the Office of the City Clerk is $25. Outside the city the license is $40, which includes the Certificate of Marriage Registration. The rest of the money in this article is the party.
Four rules govern the timing, and all four are set by state law.
The 24-hour waiting period. The ceremony may not take place within 24 hours of the exact time the license was issued. A judge or justice of the New York State Supreme Court, or the county judge where either of you lives, can waive it.
Sixty days. The license is valid for 60 calendar days beginning the day after it is issued, extended to 180 days for active US military.
One witness. At least one witness must be present. New York State sets no minimum age for a witness, though the state’s own guidance suggests choosing someone who could testify competently if the marriage were ever questioned.
No residency or blood test requirement. A license issued anywhere in New York State is valid anywhere in the state, with the exception that a license issued in New York City must be used within the state.
Park ceremonies carry their own fees, and they are small compared to what people assume. Central Park’s Conservatory Garden charges $400 for a wedding ceremony permit and $100 for a photography permit, with a hard cap of 25 people, no chairs, no tents, no amplified music and no drones. Acoustic string instruments are allowed. The public keeps access to the garden throughout. Where a portrait location needs a shoot permit we file it in advance, and the city fee is billed to you at cost, separately from your package.
A City Hall wedding with two people and a photographer is the cheapest real wedding in New York: $60 in fees, a couple of hours, and coverage. Couples who do this and then throw a restaurant dinner for thirty usually land between $8,000 and $15,000 all in.
What costs do New York couples forget to budget for?
The service charge and sales tax add roughly 30% to 36% on top of every food and beverage number you have been quoted. On a $40,000 minimum that is $12,000 to $14,500 that appears nowhere in the comparison you built between two venues.
Service charge, 20% to 25%. Charged on food and beverage. It is not a tip, and at most New York venues the gratuity is a separate question. Ask explicitly, in writing.
Sales tax, 8.875% in New York City. That is 4% state, 4.5% city and a 0.375% Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District surcharge, applied to food, beverage and rentals, and in most cases to the service charge as well.
Coat check. A New York cost that no other market has in the same way. Between November and March a 150-guest wedding needs staffed coat check, and venues either bill it per guest or require you to hire it.
Loading and building fees. Freight elevator overtime, dock supervision, and a certificate of insurance naming the building and the managing agent. Manhattan buildings charge for hours outside a set window, and vendors pass it through.
Vendor meals. One per working vendor, typically $50 to $85 each at New York venues. A photo and film team of four, a DJ, a planner and two assistants is eight meals.
Overtime. $400 to $700 per hour per vendor is the New York norm. Receptions run long. Budget for one extra hour. Timelines rarely hold it, budgets can.
Guest transport. Any wedding where the ceremony and reception sit in different boroughs needs a plan. Shuttles run $1,500 to $3,000, and the alternative is 150 guests calling cars at the same moment.
Liability insurance. $150 to $350, and most New York venues require it before they release the loading dock.
Alterations, $300 to $900, and tips, which are optional and widely expected at $50 to $200 per vendor and more for a planner or band.
Where can you cut a New York budget without it showing?
Move the date, cut the list, and change the borough. Those three levers together take 25% to 40% off a New York wedding with no visible drop in quality. Everything else is trimming at the edges. The order matters, because the date is free to change while you are still choosing one and expensive to change afterward.
Date. January through March is the deepest discount window in New York, and venues that hold firm on a Saturday minimum in October will negotiate hard in February. Friday and Sunday save 15% to 25% against Saturday at most city venues, and the vendor pool is far more available, so you get first choice.
Guest list. $320 to $390 per name in the city. Twenty fewer guests is $6,400 to $7,800, and it is the only cut nobody at the wedding can see.
Borough. The published gap between Manhattan and the outer boroughs is $25,390 on the average wedding. A Greenpoint or Long Island City room with a Manhattan skyline in the window photographs better than most Midtown ballrooms and prices at half.
Bar structure. Beer, wine and one signature cocktail against a full open bar saves $20 to $35 per person in New York. Venues that let you supply your own alcohol with a licensed bartender save considerably more, and they are more common in Brooklyn and upstate than in Manhattan.
Stationery. Digital save-the-dates and RSVPs. Nobody keeps them. Put the paper budget into the invitation itself if it matters to you.
Where cutting shows: coverage hours, team size, and food. A six-hour photo and film package on a timeline that runs eleven hours means the last two hours of your wedding do not exist afterward. Undercatering is the one thing guests notice and remember. And a single shooter at a 150-guest wedding will miss either the vows or the faces watching them, because nobody can hold both positions at once.
How we cover New York weddings
We work as one team across photography and film, which matters more in practice than it sounds on a website. One timeline, one set of positions in the room, one conversation with your planner.
Team size depends on what you book. A six-hour photo and film package is the two of us, Andrew on stills and Roma on film, with nobody else on the call sheet. Eight and ten-hour photo and film packages put four people on your wedding, and the second photographer and second videographer come from a small group we have worked with for years. On a photography-only package at eight or ten hours, the second photographer is the other owner of the studio.
Audio comes from two independent sources: a feed from the venue’s sound board or the DJ’s mixer for the ceremony and the speeches, and a directional microphone on camera. Lavalier microphones are available on request. For the dark, low-ceilinged rooms where most New York receptions actually happen, we bring our own lighting.
Drone coverage is included in every package. Ten-hour coverage includes Super 8 film cut into the digital edit and Hasselblad 503 medium format scans delivered alongside the digital gallery, and both are available on six and eight-hour coverage for $900. Full speeches edits are included from eight hours and full ceremony edits from ten. You receive 400 or more finished frames at six hours, 550 or more at eight, and 700 or more at ten.
Delivery: the full photo gallery within 30 days and the film within six months, with gallery access for six months, unlimited high-resolution downloads, full print rights and no watermarks. A 50% non-refundable retainer reserves your date.
Andrew is an award-winning film director, with Best Short Documentary at Venezia Shorts Italy, Best Editing at the New York Indie Shorts Awards and a Grand Jury Winner at the FFTG Awards. Roma danced with the Bolshoi Ballet for ten years, then moved into film, and produced the shorts those awards belong to. Between weddings we shoot commercial work for Adidas, Nutella and Mercedes. Both of us are on your wedding.
If you are comparing coverage lengths,
lays out what each tier includes, and our
New York wedding photography page
shows the work itself.
Talk to us
If you are building a New York budget right now and want to know what full-day photo and film coverage costs for your date, your venue and your guest count, We will tell you what fits and what does not, including when a shorter package is the right call.
Frequently Asked Questions
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$75,005 for a New York City wedding at an average of 124 guests, with a typical range of $32,380 to $101,190. Manhattan averages $87,700 and the outer boroughs $62,310. New York State as a whole averages $49,000, and the US average is $34,200. The city figure works out to roughly $605 per guest.
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Between $60,000 and $85,000 for full vendor coverage. Food, bar, service charge and tax alone run about $32,500 at 100 guests in the city. The spread depends almost entirely on venue type. An all-inclusive Manhattan hotel pushes the top of that range, while a Brooklyn raw space with a good caterer can land near $60,000 with the same vendor quality.
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Yes, with two conditions. Keep the guest list near 60 to 80, and get out of Manhattan for the reception. At 70 guests, food and bar with service charge and tax runs about $23,000, which leaves roughly $27,000 for photography, film, flowers, music and attire. A Saturday in October at a Manhattan venue with 140 guests will not fit in $50,000.
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$60 in government fees: $35 for the marriage license and $25 for the ceremony at the Office of the City Clerk. The ceremony may not happen within 24 hours of the license being issued, and you need at least one witness. Couples who add a photographer and a restaurant dinner for thirty guests afterward typically land between $8,000 and $15,000.
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$320 to $390 per guest in New York City, covering food, bar, the service charge, sales tax, rentals and staffing. Outside the city, Long Island catering-hall packages start near $150 per head, and Hudson Valley venues sit between the two. Published per-guest totals, which include the fixed costs, run $605 in the city and about $669 on Long Island.
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The published NYC average is $4,475, with a range of $2,030 to $6,020 and Manhattan at $4,870. That average describes partial-day coverage. Full-day New York photography with two shooters runs $4,800 to $9,000, and Zola’s 150-guest city model allocates $6,717. Ask any quote how many hours and how many photographers it covers before comparing it to an average.
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January through March. New York venues that hold firm on peak-season Saturday minimums will negotiate in the first quarter, and the vendor pool is wide open. The trade is daylight: a January ceremony loses the sun before 5pm, so the timeline has to move earlier and a first look stops being optional.
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The service charge is contractual and mandatory, typically 20% to 25% of food and beverage in New York. It is not a gratuity, and asking whether any of it reaches the staff is a fair question to put to the venue in writing. Tips for individual vendors are separate, optional and widely expected, usually $50 to $200 each.
