One of the toughest, age-old questions is how do you set and keep your wedding budget. Setting and keeping to your wedding budget can be rather difficult if you don’t plan ahead and know where to devote your money accordingly.

Your First Step to Setting a Budget: Research

What typically happens is that couples set a wedding budget in one of their first steps of planning without knowing the average costs in their area for vendors. What also happens is couples will look at photos on Pinterest and get inspiration without knowing the heavy costs those photos can have. This means what is best to do before setting and sticking to a budget is to learn about what things cost. Couples more recently are starting to look around at vendors they like and gather information before really diving in to planning. This is a good way to survey for average costs and know what you're gearing up for! You’ll also be able to set a more realistic budget instead of just picking a number that sounds ideal.

Figure Out what is Included in your Wedding Budget

Thankfully, this step can be made easy by looking at wedding budget spreadsheets or wedding budget breakdown graphics on Pinterest. I also provide all of my couples a budget spreadsheet that can be adjusted if you book with me! Most of these breakdowns will have the basics as far as vendors and decorations, but you may want to consider bach party outfits, gratuities, and other smaller expenses into this budget. This will also usually come with a breakdown of how much you should approximately spend in each category or on each vendor which is helpful to tell your vendors the specific percentage for the vendor as your budget.

Planning for Deposits

You also should take into account when you are booking vendors, you'll have to put down some pretty hefty deposits in the early stages and the end stages of your planning. Most vendors require some sort of deposit or retainer that will essentially reserve your wedding date with them, and it usually is about 50% of the total bill when you sign the contract and book them. This means you’ll likely want some space in between booking your vendors just so you don’t have to drop $30,000 in the span of a few months. I would also recommend asking vendors if you can make monthly payments earlier than their due dates to be able to spread things out in a more tangible manner. This also shows you more clearly how much of your monthly "wedding expenses" you'll be setting aside.

Figure out Your Saved Budget

Often when planning a wedding, your family will be able to help you with some of your spending for your wedding day. It’s especially important to sit down and have conversations with them about how much they are willing and able to contribute, and the expectations on what they will be able to have opinions on for giving you money. You also should look at your own savings accounts and know how much you are willing to take from that and devote to your wedding budget.

Figure Out your Monthly Expenses Budget

After you know how much you have to work with from your families and your own savings accounts, you can also look at your monthly income to see what percentage of that you would be willing and able to use for your wedding expenses. If you have a portion of your monthly income that is usually dedicated to “wants”, it might be a good idea to use this for smaller items or vendors, such as outfits, photo booths, or seating charts. Make sure when you decide on the monthly wedding budget of your monthly income that you factor that into the total budget. You can figure this out by knowing how much you plan on taking out per month and then see approximately how many months until you plan to get married. Of course this may not be exact if you haven’t decided on a wedding date yet, but it’s likely you’ll be able to figure out a general range.

Add it all Together

Once you do all of these steps, you can add everything together and have a good, realistic idea of a wedding budget. Hopefully you will be in a better spot and decide on a more realistic budget instead of what just "sounds good" and then blowing it. If you are feeling satisfied about what you have to work with, then you of course can reach back out to vendors and start the process of finding vendors that fit your needs, wants, and priorities.

Setting a wedding budget proves to be one of the most stressful steps of wedding planning. When you can look at a realistic plan for the vendors you might be interested in and the deposit timing, surveying your savings, checking with anyone who might contribute funds to you, and seeing your monthly income budget, you’ll likely get a number for your wedding budget that is much more accurate. Many people first pick a number that sounds good without really knowing the cost of things, and it’s frustrating when you blow your budget. If you follow these steps, you will likely be more accurate in your spending and know nearly exactly how much money you can anticipate spending.

If you need some help figuring out a realistic wedding budget, I can help you find out more about your local vendors! Reach out to me here to know if your wedding budget and your wedding vision are a good match together.