How To Set A Wedding Budget

How To Set A Wedding Budget

If only it were a simple as going to the bank of Monopoly. Setting a budget for your wedding is one of the first things you should do, it’s also one of the hardest.

With that in mind, here’s my top tips to help you budget for your big day.

Decide your budget first before you set your date

I discuss why this is important HERE, but in short, setting your overall budget first before setting your date allows you to make a more educated and realistic decision with out stress or compromise

Prioritise your spending by deciding which aspects of the wedding are most important to you

It’s a good idea to write down a list of areas that your hard earned money is going to be spent on. For starters, here are the most popular and common areas to consider:

Venue

Florist

Wedding Planner / Co-ordinator

Videographer

Catering

Venue dresser

Transport

Hair Stylist

Make Up Artist

Musician / Band / DJ

Chair / Table Hire

Mobile Bar

Entertainment

Photographer

Contingency

As you can see. that’s quite a list and it’s not exhaustive (for starters there’s no mention of suits or dresses). Once you have your list together you can begin to prioritise where you want your money to go. For example, you might want to spend 10% of your budget on Flowers and only 3% on your Hair Stylist.

Remember this list isn’t set in stone and can be changed/altered as you see fit. It’s just a great starting point and will allow you both to understand key area’s that you identify as being important.

Get Quotes

Now that you have your list ready, it’s time to get a few quotes together so that you can begin to understand how much your total spend is going to be. Most suppliers should be willing to give you a rough cost, even if you’re not 100% sure on your exact requirements yet. If you’re unsure, ask what an average spend would be. Or ask friends and family on their experiences.

Adding It All Up

Now that you have rough prices, you can revisit your list and begin to adjust your percentages. Let’s say that your Venue was £8,000 and was marked as 50% of your budget. That gives you a rough budget of £16,000 for your wedding. Based on that figure, how long will it take you to save £16,000 - That’s where you’ll be wanting to book your date.

Let’s work through an example below:

Venue - 50% - £8,000

Florist - 10% - £1,600

Wedding Planner / Co-ordinator - Included in Venue

Videographer - 5% - £800

Catering - Included in Venue cost

Venue dresser - 5% - £800

Transport - Not Required

Hair Stylist - 3% - £480

Make Up Artist - 2% - £320

Musician / Band / DJ - 15% - £2400

Chair / Table Hire - Included in Venue

Mobile Bar - Included in Venue

Entertainment - Not Wanted

Photographer - 8% - £1,280

Contingency - 2% - £320

Total = £16,000

Looking at the example above, (which is purely an example only as there are a lot of things missing and things to consider) you can begin to see a rough idea on how much you may be willing to spend on each supplier. You can also then adjust as you being to get quotes. Let’s say for example, the Band you want are £1,200. That means you can then allocate the other £1,200 elsewhere.

and so on.

You may find the more quotes you being to get, the more not only will your percentages shift, but so might your overall budget. Perhaps you realise that £800 on a Videographer isn’t going to get you what you wanted at all. So you revisit your plan, you push out your date. It’s ok to do this.

If you can’t or you really don’t want to, what can you do?…

Consider Ways To Save Make Money

I’m going to go against the grain on this one. Whilst most people would ask you to look into your spending habits and asses where you can make cuts to save. I’m going to suggest you look into ways that you can make money. Whilst this may involve more of your time and a little patience, the benefit is that you don’t have to feel like you’re giving anything up. Besides, you’ll have a lot of fun along the way.

When you look at saving money, there’s limit into how far down you can go. Ultimately you can only save a certain amount. When you flip that and look into how much you can make... its limitless.

Don’t Skip The Wedding Insurance

I understand that this is another expense, but honestly, whilst I really hope and pray it’s something you never have to call on, you’ll be extremely thankful if you did.

Timing Is Everything

It should come as no surprise that one of (if not your biggest) cost is going to be your venue. Remember a lot of these venues book out quite far in advance and their is something called a ‘peak season’. With that bring peak prices. If you’re really looking to save some money here, look into Jan/Feb/March weddings during the week. It’s not unheard of to save circa 50%+ off the price.

Just don’t try to negotiate if you’re choosing a peak date - Saturday in Summer

Should I really budget 8% on my Photographer?

No, the above was purely an example, the decision is to be based on what you both value and that alone. You may well decide that Photographs are the most important thing to you and will happily place 50% of your budget on them and only 30% on the venue.

There’s a lot of silly information on the internet, especially when it comes to percentages of how much should be spent and where.

Put it this way, if you read somewhere that you should spend 10% of your overall budget on Photography and it turns out your total budget is £8,000 would you really be wanting to limit your spend on your photographs to £800 because of a statistic?

The choice really is yours.

Ready to start planning, click HERE to see the top 6 Causes if Arguments over Wedding Planning so you can avoid any nasty surprised.