How to Create a Budget for Your Wedding
Budgets: the word that everyone hates! Budgets rule the world in every sector of our lives. You have to budget monthly for your groceries, going out nights, and sometimes you budget for a big investment – a WEDDING. Let’s talk about how to create a budget for your wedding:
Just for the record I’m not a financial planner, I’m a wedding planner and have planned so many weddings on so many different budgets.
Where do you start in creating a budget for your wedding? Start by thinking about your budget! The biggest thing I can stress here is to NOT start planning your wedding or booking vendors until you have set up the budget.
Now that you’re thinking about the budget, here is where you can really start: Guest count. Guest count is really the first thing you need to pay close attention to! The more guests you have, the more everything costs. The catering, florals, tables, chairs and linens – and don’t forget about the booze!
Once you have a guest count then you can start asking the big questions. What have you been saving, who is helping you with funds how the heck are you going to pay for a wedding?! Talk to your family about the investment. Are they planning to help out with funding? Figure out how much you can afford to set aside, and use that to help create your budget.
Maybe you’re wondering how much to even expect to spend on a wedding! If it’s your first time you might have no clue whether weddings cost $5,000 or $500,000! We’ve created a Budget Calculator for you, to help you get a feel for what you can expect to spend on vendors at different budget levels. Download the calculator here:
So to start, your next step is to start getting bids from all the vendors you wish to use for your wedding day! The budget that we created for you is a guide. If it looks like your budget will be $40,000, plug that in at the top and it will show you what you should roughly be spending on parts of your wedding. Again this is a guide! You might care way more about photos than about the cake, or maybe you’re borrowing your dress – these expenses can be moved around when you spend less on one category or another!
I want to stress to take some time before diving into the budget process. You don’t need to start the day after you get engaged but you do need to start a conversation with family if you are not going to be able to pay for your wedding yourself!
Finally, WED West Slope is here to help you find local vendors in Western Colorado to make research easy. You’re Welcome!
(Featured image by Joe Hendricks Photography)
