Setting the Wedding Budget

Congratulations – You’re engaged! Now it’s time to start planning your dream wedding. So first things first – how much can you afford to spend on your wedding?

Setting your wedding budget is THE most crucial aspect of your wedding planning journey. It is essential that you know how much you can spend and get an idea of how much all those important elements are going to cost. If you don’t, then things can spiral out of control and your wedding budget can soon get eaten up by unforeseen costs. Whether you budget is £500 or £50,000 – without setting and controlling your budget, rest assured it’s likely that your budget won’t cover everything.

Discuss and Prioritise: Firstly, sit down with your partner and discuss how you both wish your wedding to look and feel and get an understanding of what is important to both of you. This is a real opportunity to make sure you are including everything within the budget at a later stage and begin to prioritise what you want your wedding to include. Don’t forget that although it is the bride’s day your partner will have ideas on what they would like include – after all it is their day too.

How Many Guests: Set rough estimates on the number of guests you are likely to want to invite. Consider who you really want to be there. It’s likely that the number of your wedding guests will soon creep up so think about whether work colleagues will be included, extended family, will you include children. Be ruthless, at the end of the day this is one of the most important days of your life and you want to share it with people who really mean a lot to both of you.

Add Detail: To help you get a feel for costs consider all aspects of what you need to budget for including venue, attire, and entertainment to name but a few – you’ll be amazed how many aspects need to be considered. You don’t need to come up with this list on your own. Use Budget Savvy Brides wedding budget checklist to help you get an idea of what elements to budget for and also give you an estimation of what they are likely to cost.

Agree your Wedding Fund: Next you should discuss how much money you can afford to spend. It’s important that you both agree on this and that what ever the wedding budget comes out at is a reasonable figure for both of you. Importantly – be realistic – there is no point in allocating a budget that you just cannot afford (will you really save every month!). Think about who will be paying – are you going solo on this or do you have family contributing to your wedding. Remember that it’s no longer the tradition that the brides parents pay for everything so think about whether your partner’s parents will also contribute to costs of your wedding.

Get Quotes Early: So you’ve got a dream location in mind, picked out the dress already? Well – get quotes early – you really need to know how much the real key items are going to cost. This will help you include or remove from your wedding budget early on and aid you in making key decisions on the timings of your wedding. It will also make your budget much more realistic and give you a chance to look for alternatives early on if you have to.

Add a Little Extra: It’s important to include some contingency into your budget – extras do and will crop up. Adding about 10% to cover the costs of any potential items you didn’t think about or perhaps discounted is recommended.

Think About Savings: Consider setting up a wedding savings fund where you can both save money for any wedding costs and use this to pay for any wedding related items. This will help you keep control of what you are spending. Try and avoid using credit to fund your wedding otherwise you’ll be looking at paying for the wedding way beyond it. This can lead to stress.

Stick to It: Finally, stick to your budget. It’s too easy to be seduced by all that you will be offered by wedding vendors and glossy magazines when you are in the throws of planning. Unless your budget is a no limits affair then great but this is unusual. Don’t worry – your wedding can still be a magical wonderful affair without having to break the bank. Refer back to your budget when making decisions and if you really have to have that one thing – think about the impact on the rest of the budget.