Those prices seem outrageously out of line to me! In early 2010, TOTAL cost for ours, including the actual working vent was less than $2500. Here is a picture of my kitchen where you can see the hood. My custom cabinet maker charged me $800 to make the custom range hood cover out of clear coated mahogany. (I JUST looked up his invoice to make absolutely sure that I was remembering the price correctly.) He designed and built the cover so it would fit over this stainless steel vent hood that we purchased from Sears for about $1500 on sale. The purchased vent rests on a couple of very small ledges inside the custom cover and fits so that bottom edge of the stainless steel hood sits about about 1 inch higher than the lower edge of the curved section on the front face of my vent cover. That way the purchased vent is completely hidden by the vent cover but the controls are easily accessible. In the shot below, (taken from underneath) you can see how the purchased vent fits inside the custom cover and you can see one of the "ledges" at the side of the vent. BTW, I just looked and Sears currently has the exact same stainless steel hood we used on sale for $1626. Here is a link to it: http://www.sears.com/vent-a-hood-euroline-series-model-wall-mount/p-SPM7417651910?prdNo=13&blockNo=13&blockType=G13 Or for even less money, Sears also NOW sells a 27" Broan range vent that is designed specifically to be installed in a custom enclosure for less than $600. See the link below. When we were building, I couldn't find ANY vent hoods that were designed to be installed inside a custom cabinet. (They may have been available but I could not find them for sale to consumers anywhere and I'm usually pretty good at finding things.) Thus we paid extra for the fancy Modern Euro "finish" on ours and then paid to have a custom cabinet cover made to give it the old-fashioned look we like! So, even if cabinet builders are now charging twice what we paid 3 years ago to have our vent cover made, it still looks to me like you should still be able to get the look you want for under $2500. You might need to pay a bit more if a very high powered vent fan is important to you...but the cover alone SHOULD NOT run you anywhere close to $4000. Sounds to me like maybe your cabinet maker probably ONLY knows how to make cabinets (boxes) and drawers and then probably purchases pre-made doors to go on those. He's probably doesn't know HOW to make a vent cover and the mere idea of making one scares him. Thus, he quoted you that utterly ridiculous price in order to scare you off from ordering a vent cover while still hanging on to the rest of your cabinet business. If it were me, I'd talk to another cabinet builder or two. And if by any chance, you're in my neck of the woods (central Texas), I'd be delighted to give you my custom cabinet builder's name. He was absolutely terrific! Here is a link that might be useful: vent designed for installation in a custom mantle style hood.

I had cove lighting in my last kitchen. I never used it. For us, cove lighting was just mood lighting, serving no practical purpose. For my family, most of the time we are in the kitchen to cook, not to set a mood. But that's just us. For our current kitchen, we did not install cove lighting and never miss it. We use the xenon undercabinet lights constantly though. I wouldn't skimp on those. If you do want mood lighting, you can dim the xenons pretty low and achieve a soft mood, with a nice soft reflection on the counter. As to the recessed cans, it's true that 6" cans are not as up-to-date as 5" cans, but they are still used widely. What look are you going for in your kitchen? Are you getting the latest, high-end appliances? Is it a contemporary-look kitchen? If you answered "yes" to those two questions, 5" cans would be more suitable. Also, Alzak baffles are great, but plain old white baffles will save a lot of money.

FWIW, here are my tips for working travertine, which should also work for marble: to prevent cracking when you cut your tile, stick masking tape on the tile where you propose to cut it, mark your cut line, and cut the tile with the tape in place. Pull the tape off afterward. Also helps prevent cracking if you need to drill a tile. It's trading a lot of time to save some money, but if you have the time and need to save the money, you can do bevelling yourself: start with a belt sander and a rough grit sanding belt. Rough in the shape of your bevel. Follow the rough sanding with a medium grit belt, then move to an orbital sander with fine grit (180 or 220) and then a super-fine grit: 440 if you can find it, 320 if you can't. Finish by buffing/polishing with stone enhancer/sealer. For DIY bevelling on 3x6" tiles, I'd suggest you use a vise to hold the sanders in place upside-down. That way you can hold the tile to the sanding surface (much lighter) rather than the other way around. You can make an assembly-line type of operation out of it by roughing all your 3x6's in one pass, then the medium grit sanding, then the fine and so on. Do NOT try this with a hard stone like granite, however: you'll be there for months! Good luck!

It is an important day for sure, but Auntjen made some great points. Here's some stuff we did for my daughter's wedding and it was a beautiful ceremony and great fun at the reception. - Dress on sale--that should be a given. Daughter made her own veil with a ring of flowers from Michael's and tulle. - Bridesmaids (only 2) dresses were made by groom's grandmother at minimum cost. - Kept guest list to mainly family (86 people). - Found a florist--a young girl with an impressive album of her work that did the chapel and reception (not in the same place) for practically nothing. It was beautiful. - Wedding was at 1 p.m. followed by the reception, so we had a couple of canapes (including some really good crab somethings) followed by finger sandwiches, beautiful strawberries dipped in chocolate, veg. platters and other finger food. Too early for a big dinner. - We served beer, wine, sodas, water and coffee. Mixed drinks were available, however. - The reception was held at a hotel on the water and the reception room had french doors leading out to a deck where they set up the bar. Nice water view. The hotel was new and they were looking for repeat business or hoping for new business from the guests. - No band. They didn't want one since they don't dance. There was music, just no band or DJ. - No favors. Don't know how that custom got started, but I don't buy it. - Splurged on the cake. Man, it was good! People are still talking about that cake today. There wasn't a single piece left and it was a big three layer. The whole thing was way under $2500. Granted it was 14 years ago, but it was inexpensive even for then. Whatever you decide, I hope you have a wonderful wedding and life. Enjoy!