You may like my cost, but not my answer ...
I started doing this ten years ago. Because this was a middle school concert and I was volunteering my time and equipment, I bought the cheapest mics and stands I could find and figured I would start there and replace as things broke or proved to produce inferior sound ... fortunately I never had to upgrade.
I bought the cheap tripod stands from either Guitar Center or Musicians Friend for $10 each (10-pak for $100). My rationale was that as they break they are a dime a dozen to replace ... however in all these years none have broken (granted I use them only a few times a year).
The stands are very lightweight though, won't hold a heavy mic. So my first mic
purchase was the Behringer C2 at $50/pair ... these things are incredibly light and sound surprisingly decent for school choir. I also purchased some Samson C02 pencil mics (~$100/pr) which I use in the percussion section of the band (I think they have a slightly crisper pickup and better
cardioid rejection) ... but the Behringer C2s I use for overall choir,
orchestra, and jazz band area mics. Again no problems in years of light use.
The kicker is my cabling ... because I didn't have enough input channels to
cover the individual choir mics (on my DL1608) ... I decided to try a no-no and
Y-cable the inputs, connecting a pair of C2s to each input
channel, with
phantom power on each input
channel. Surprisingly, no issues whatsoever ... perfectly
clear sound, no balance or
frequency response issues that I or my video collaborator (who does the post-production editing for the school videos using my 24-bit WAV recordings) can discern.
So ... my total cost for a four choir mic configuration is $100 for mics, $40 for stands, $20 for two 2F-1M Y cables, and I use only 2 input channels on my board.
Should I be using better mics? I'm sure they would help ... I have other much more expensive mics that I'm sure will sound better, but they are much heavier and will require higher end (and more expensive) stands. So I am staying with the minimalist approach and moving up only if necessary.
-- John