Budgeting for your big day can be a little stressful, but staying organized and prioritizing your wedding day expenses can help you stay within your budget.
Create an Overall Budget
What is your wedding budget? This question can be tricky. You may be paying for your own wedding, or perhaps have a parent contributing. Have an honest conversation with your partner and parents. You need to establish an overall budget for everything that goes into your wedding day. This overarching number is the amount you absolutely cannot exceed. Without a specific number, you will be unable to properly breakdown your budget into categories.
Ranking Importance
The next step is evaluating what is most important to you and your fiancé. Are you foodies who appreciate the quality and artistry of food and its presentation? Do you want to celebrate with a dance party that goes on all night until the sun comes up? Have you dreamed of reminiscing over your professional and creative photography and videography so that you can constantly relive the memories of your favorite day?
By ranking what is most important to you both, you can decide which vendors and amenities are worth spending the most money on. Budgeting is essential in planning a wedding, but you must be realistic throughout the process. Spend more money on vendors that provide the services, décor, or items that are the most important to you, and balance out the costs in items less important.
Guest Count
The dreaded question: How many guests you will have at your wedding? Less guests means less food, fewer tables, linens, chairs, utensils, glassware, plates and centerpieces. Although many factors will be unaffected by guest count, such as your entertainment and photography, guest count has the ability to drastically alter how your budget is broken down.
For example, you cannot feed 200 guests a plated dual entree for $5,000. The service and food cost alone would easily double that price. If you have 50 guests, however, that is extremely doable.
Once you’ve evaluated these factors, you are ready to research the price of services per vendor, or ask a wedding coordinator for budget analysis assistance, which is typically included in a partial planning package.
