OK, so your engaged to the man of your dreams, pop the Champagne! Had your celebratory drink? Yes? Good, ok now down to the most important but boring and annoying part of planning a wedding, your wedding budget. Eek!
Below i will out line the steps you need to take to plan our wedding budget, save some money and more importantly stick to it... or atleast try :)
1. Decide on your wedding date - is your wedding going to be in peak season (spring summer) or low season (winter)?
2. How many people do you want to invite? Do you want a big wedding or a nice and small intimate affair with just close family and friends? Remember for every distant cousin youve never met or friend from primary school you never talk to anymore that you dont invite you save on average $100. This could be better spent else where in the wedding or to reduce your wedding budget.
3. What is your wedding theme? An outside garden wedding theme where you wont have to worry about venue hire fees? Or a grand hotel elegant wedding? Any theme can be tweeked to suit any budget, theyll be just a few things you may have to do a bit differently but as long as the essentials are there then it will still work.
4. What parts of the wedding are the most important to you and your fiance? Maybe he wants a awesome car to drive him to the wedding? Maybe you booth arent really into the big tradtional wedding cake, but love a cheese cake from the cheese cake shop for $35 instead? Or no cake at all. List these down so you can see what has to stay and what you can afford to let go of while also thinking about your wedding theme.
5. Grab a wedding magazine of planning book from your local newsagency that lists all of the wedding services you are likely to use while planning your wedding (or print one off the internet). There, you can allocate an amount to each item (what is needed in each area to achieve the theme you want) and cross some off that you wont be using becasue of step 4 (above). Add the amounts up, and this is your desired wedding budget. For example lets say the total was $10,000
6. Grab that 'desired wedding budget' and add 50%. Thats right increase it by 50%, because when anything is 'wedding' related the price goes up. So using our example $15,000.
7. How long have you got till the wedding to save? What savings do you already have that could go towards the wedding savings? How much do you have to save each week to achieve your budget? (keeping in mind that most services will need to be paid outright about a month before your wedding).
8. Can you really afford it? REALLY? Dont over stretch yourself, you'll be going out a lot between now and then, celebrating being engaged, enjoying your last days as an unmarried woman.
9. DONT FORGET THE HONEYMOON! Many couples drop the honeymoon as an easy way to save cash on the wedding. But thats a real shame. At the end of your wedding day, after months and months of planning, stress, budgeting, outting on weight, loosing weight, problems, youll be ready to jump on any plane to go anywhere just to get away from it all. And spending some alone time with your new husband as man and wife is so much fun, and probably one of the really happy memories youll both have for years and years to come. Not to mention all the free things you get when you let your hotel/restaurant know your honeymooners! (free champagne and chocolates are the norm)
10. Ok so you've set yourself a resonable budget, adjusted your expenditure on each service and maybe tweeked your wedding theme to accomodate. Now the hard part, sticking to it! Take your budget in your purse everywhere you go. If your visiting a photographer, look at your budget, lets say it says $1500 for photos, and walk in to your meeting knowing thats your limit and dont move on it no matter what! A great thing to do is take that amount with you in cash and leave your bank cards at home, that way theres no way of paying more :D If you save money on one element you can move those savings into another service.
I hope this has helped you and your partner to set a budget for your wedding and stick to it. My next post will be how to have thousands on your wedding day, so stay tuned!
Natalie Briggs - Luxury Handmade Garters
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