How to Start on your Wedding Budget

Ah you are engaged!! As it is such an exciting time in your life, it can be very easy to go down a Pinterest spiral, planning your perfect wedding day and jumping ahead to all of the small details. Before that happens, you first need to figure out your wedding budget. Talking about money can be a stressful topic for a lot of people, but it doesn’t have to be, especially when wedding planning can already be a stressor! Here are some tips on how to start determining your overall wedding budget.

#1: Determine who, if anyone, is contributing to your wedding.

In the past, tradition was that the brides parents pay for the wedding, but this is not how things are today. Most often, the couples pay for the wedding and each set of parents contribute what they can. This is a conversation that needs to happen before you even start the planning process for you to know how much you as a couple will be responsible for. Sometime parents will offer to pay for a specific vendor, such as the flowers, and give a price range for that.

#2 Ideally, how much do you want to spend?

Once you know if you will have any outside contributors, do the math to figure out how much that leaves for you as a couple to cover based on the amount you ideally want to spend. If you have a ballpark number of what your overall wedding budget is, this will help with determining and selecting vendors. Having this number in mind is critical to staying on track with your wedding budget.

#3 Look into your cash flow.

After you have determined how much you most likely will be paying for the wedding, how much savings do you have and how much will you need to save each month leading up to the wedding day? Most vendors require a check for payment of the deposit instead of paying with a credit card so keep this in mind that you will need a significant amount of cash up front.

#4 Rank vendors in importance

How important is the food versus the décor and flowers? Rank how important each vendor is based on your preference and aesthetic. Doing this will help with determining how much to spend on each vendor and will help you with the initial planning process.

If you want more insight into how to start your wedding planning budget, I created a free workbook for you to download! Here, there are questions about each vendor to help you determine what is necessary when planning such as how many hours will you need your photographer, are you paying for your bridesmaids hair and make up, what about lighting? To get your copy, click here to enter your email address!