Wedding Wednesday: Budgeting for your Wedding

Happy Wednesday!

I will be posting wedding tips and tricks on Wednesdays (at least for as long as I have things to share).

When I began wedding planning 2 years ago, the first thing I started with was a budget.  Throughout planning this was the one thing that remained constant in my mind.  I HIGHLY recommend that all brides-to-be start their wedding planning here.  It will drive EVERY decision you make.

I graduated from college with a B.S. in Finance, so budgeting and spreadsheets were no stranger to me.  For those who haven't had as much opportunity for this type of exposure, the budget can be a very daunting and tedious task.  If proper budgeting is not achieved up front, it is VERY easy to snowball out of control.  Suddenly you wake up one day and you are thousands of dollars over what you had initially planned to spend, and that's not the way anyone wants to start a marriage!

Dresses, and Venues and Flowers, Oh MY!

With today's media, we are inundated with wedding planning ideas long before most of us ever get engaged. All of these ideas make your head spin at the start of planning, but where do you begin?

One word, BUDGET

1. Start with an ideal budget number that you can realistically achieve.

Mr. Bear and I were fortunate enough to get some money from each of our parents toward our wedding.  We were very grateful and understood that many couples are not afforded such a luxury.  We hadn't been expecting money from our parents, so our ideal budget number when we began took into account the length of time we wanted to be engaged vs. the amount we could comfortably store away per month.

We wanted to be engaged for 18 months and figured that we could put away about $x per month into wedding savings while still having enough money to pay all our bills, essentials (food, etc) and put additional money into another savings account.

1a. This is important: Make sure you aren't putting ALL your savings toward the wedding.  You want to have money leftover at the end of the day, and you also want to have money available during the planning for emergencies (like your car needing new brakes).
We still wanted to have money for a down payment for a house once we got married, so it was essential to tighten the purse strings and really be conscious about how we spent our money during those 18 months.

Once our parents indicated they would be giving us money toward the wedding, we calculated that our max budget would then be $x+$y (money from our parents).  This was the absolute maximum including taxes, gratuities, etc. that we were allowed to spend on the wedding.  Our desired budget number was about 15-20% less than that number so that we would have wiggle room for taxes, delivery fees, gratuities, etc.

2. Investigate the average cost of things in your area.
Once you have set your ideal budget number, start investigating the average cost of things in your area.  This will set realistic expectations for you and what your budget will allow.  I recommend looking at average costs for 3-4 vendors in each area.

For instance, once we had our desired budget number, I started investigating venues, food, bands, etc. in my area.  This was just preliminary investigation mostly done via looking at online pricing guides or by sending quick emails to the various vendors for their average pricing structure.  By doing this, I found out that the venue I had my heart set on was about $6000 above the average price range of the other similar places.  In order to go with that venue, I would have to cut $6000 from other portions of our budget, which was not realistic.

Once you get an average price range, you can start pulling together your spreadsheet

3. Create a spreadsheet.
You are then going to want to create a detailed spreadsheet.  I preferred to set it up in Microsoft Excel, but OpenOffice also has a spreadsheet tool as does Google Docs if you do not have Excel.

In this spreadsheet you are going to want to break out everything into buckets.
My budget spreadsheet had buckets for each of the following:

(We had our ceremony and reception in the same location.  The location also charged a corkage fee for alcohol since you were able to bring it in independently from a different vendor)

Once I had my buckets, I filled in things that were not dependent upon guest count (i.e. Wedding Dress, Groom's attire, Photography, Band/DJ, Flowers, etc.).

This is where you then need to make a determination about your guest list.  I'll tackle creating your guest list in another post, but you will then plug in your TOTAL guest count into things that are often priced per person or per couple(not just those you think will attend, you will want to account for 100% attendance...we only had a few people decline).

Once you have filled in your expected/budgeted costs for each of these categories, add up the total and make sure it is 15-20% within your budget (don't forget about tax, delivery charges and gratuities).  If it isn't, figure out what you can cut from.

Remember that Food and Alcohol are typically where the largest majority of your budget needs to go.  The easiest way to cut your budget is to cut the guest count!

4. Keep track of your budget (This may be the hardest part)
Now that you've gone to ALL of that effort to create a budget, keep track of your expenditures!  Log all wedding purchases into the spreadsheet.  I kept mine on the computer and every time I had a receipt or knew the total cost, I would log that amount in a column to the right of my expected numbers called "Actual spent".  If I went over budget in one area, I subtracted that amount from another area's expected cost.
For instance, I went over my original budget for my dress by $500.  I knew that it was the perfect dress though so I decided to hand-make all my stationary from paper and supplies from a paper wholesaler near me.  It was a lot of work, but I ended up saving almost $200 on stationary alone.  I also reduced my veil/shoes/jewelry budget because I had found that you can find some awesome custom-made veils for great prices on Etsy.  Bridal veils in my local bridal boutiques were averaging $200 I found one on Etsy that was identical to the one I tried on at the boutique for $40.

Likewise, we hadn't intended to get a videographer initially, but after coming in way under budget on flowers,  I allocated the remaining flower budget toward a videographer for our ceremony only.

Final Tips

• Some people like to print out their budget and keep it in a binder with all their wedding things so that when they go to visit vendors, they always have it handy.  I didn't do this because I frequently visited vendors when I was coming from work and didn't want to have to lug around a binder.  I saved my budget in a Dropbox folder so I could access it from anywhere.\

• Save all your receipts for things purchased for the wedding.  There were numerous times I ran to Michael's or Hobby Lobby for some glue.  Remember that the small purchases eventually add up, so just keep track of them to begin with.

• Many vendors take payments in installments, so I also used my spreadsheet to indicate dates and amounts due to each vendor.  Without the budget spreadsheet, I wouldn't have been able to be so organized!

The only way you will stay on budget is if you are constantly aware of how much you intended to spend on the individual item, how much the item actually is and how much of your overall budget has already been spent!

Above all, if you spend the time up front putting together a realistic budget, it won't be difficult to make your payments, and you won't have to stress about it at the end of planning.

-Danielle