Get the Most Out of Your Wedding Budget | Wedding Budget Breakdown | Calculate Your Wedding Budget
Hello and welcome to my blog. Today we are talking about the wedding budget. By the end of this blog you will know exactly how much you can spend on your wedding, and how to break out that total budget into the different categories.
A lot of couples tend to ignore their budget. Because maybe they're worried about how much they're going to spend, or they don't think they have enough to spend, so they're just kind of ignoring it and hoping it works out. That makes it so much more stressful than just sitting down and figuring out how much you actually have to spend.
So let's dive right in!
STEP1 How to Get to Your Total Budget
The first question to ask yourself when talking about your wedding budget is how much do we want to spend, NOT how much should we spend or how much is a good amount. That has nothing to do with you. You need to figure out actually how much you feel comfortable spending on your wedding day.
The average wedding in the UK cost £16,005. That is a lot of money to spend on one day. So if you're not comfortable with that, that is totally ok.
Don't feel pressured to spend more than you feel comfortable with.
Because then the rest of your process is going to be stressful.
You're going to want to make a list like this one.
CLICK HERE OR PICTURE to download your free wedding budget worksheet STEP1.
The first number that you need to figure out is how much you and your fiance are going to put in. There is a huge catch on having your family contribute to your wedding budget, so BE SURE that you read this:
Whoever contributes to your wedding budget is going to feel like they have a say in your wedding day.
If they're paying for most of your wedding day, they might want to have a say in what it looks like, they might want to have a say in the guest list (usually they want to say in the guest list). They might want just to be very hands-on in the planning process.
Before you accept any contributions to your wedding budget be sure that you lay out the expectations that come along with accepting any money.
So sit down with your family members whoever you think will want to contribute, tell them how much you're contributing how much your goal budget is, and then ask them how much they would feel comfortable contributing and what their expectations would be around their involvement in the planning process if they do contribute.
If that total number is a little bit lower than you are wanting, then it's obviously going to fall on you and your fiance to contribute more money to your budget.
I highly suggest to NOT get into a ton of debt for your wedding day. The divorce rate in this country is extremely high, and the top reason for divorce is finances.
So I think starting your marriage out in a bunch of debt, that you don't feel totally comfortable with, is not a great start to the rest of your life.
There's definitely other ways you can earn money. One option for saving up a little bit extra is maybe to push your wedding day out, so that you have a little bit longer to save. It's totally up to your decide. If it's more important to you to get married sooner and spend less or maybe push your date out, and so that you can spend more.
STEP2 Allocate Specific Amounts
Once you have your total wedding budget then you need to break it down and allocate specific amounts to each category. What I suggest doing is going through with your budget and writing out the pounds amount for each category, and then going back through and adjusting based on things that are more important to you.
CLICK HERE OR PICTURE to download your free wedding budget worksheet STEP2, so that you can go through and actually put your specific numbers in there, and figure out what your breakdowns are. You can go through and look at the pounds figures, and decide if you want to make any adjustments.
On the worksheet I gave you actually has two pages. First page of the budget allocation is kind of like just a place for you to work out your number, so you can make it really messy, and then I gave you a second page once you get it all figured out to write out your final budget. So you have a pretty copy of this to actually work from.
STEP3 Track & Adjust As You Go
Right now you don't need to go through and break down your budget into every little specific thing, that can be totally overwhelming. But it is important that you break it down into each category now, so that you can figure out how much you have to spend.
CLICK HERE OR PICTURE to download your free wedding budget worksheet STEP2+STEP3.
When it comes time to work on that category to book the vendor or start shopping for dresses or whatever, then you can go through and break down each category into specific expenses.
Writing your budget out this one time and then completely ignoring it for the rest of your process is not going to help you. You need to look back at this budget every single time you're going to spend the things in your plan.
Be sure that you are checking back on this budget seeing how much you've spent and seeing how much you have left to spend.
A secret little tip that I have for you on staying in your budget for each vendor, is when you are going to meet with the vendor tell them that your budget is ten percent less than it actually is.
If you give them a little bit lower of a number that gives you some wiggle room and you'll probably end up at your actual budget. This goes for any of your vendor. there ends up being so many little extra fees, service fees and tips and stuff like that, that get added in after the fact and it ends up blowing your budget out of the water if you don't account for these upfront.
At last, don't forget to buy yourself a beautiful WEDDING VEIL / HAIRPIECE at Wendy's Boutique;) If you have any questions at all, please comment below and I would LOVE to help. Happy wedding!