You’re engaged!!! Congratulations! Some of you may already have had your wedding all planned out since you were 5 and some of you probably never gave it a second thought. Regardless, you have a lot to do from this point on. Beginning with one of the most if not the most important part of your wedding planning – the wedding budget.
Whether you are having a simple intimate wedding for 30 or an extravagant lavish wedding for 300, the first thing to do before any pinning on Pinterest, is to determine your wedding budget.
Determining and agreeing to a wedding budget will save you and your fiancé lots of heartache and stress throughout your wedding planning journey and also keep you focus on what is more of a priority for both of you. So how do you figure out your wedding budget?
Ask yourself these questions:
- How much can we save on a weekly basis from now until 2 weeks prior to the wedding?
- Is anyone else contributing to assist with the wedding cost? If so, ask them if they wouldn’t mind letting you know what the amount will be so that you can accurately budget for your wedding.
Once you determine what the total wedding budget number is going to be, know that half of that budget will most likely go into your venue space and catering.
Let’s use $15,000 as an example budget for your entire wedding. A minimum of $7,500 will automatically need to be allocated for your venue and catering. If you have 100 guests, that is a total of $75 per person. Know that your venue and food budget has to include gratuities, tax, etc.
The other $7,500 will need to be divided among everything else (invitations, wedding attire, DJ, cake, flowers, photographer, etc.). Now that you have a basic idea what the rest of the budget will go towards, you need to decide what is more important to you and your fiancé. Maybe it’s a $2,000 wedding attire or maybe it’s beautiful flowers. Whatever is most important to both of you determines how you spend the rest of your wedding budget. Just remember that if you spend too much on one thing, you will probably have to sacrifice on another.
Well, that’s the quick and dirty version on budgeting for your wedding. Just remember that planning your wedding should be a fun and stress-free journey to the rest of your wonderful life’s journey. Whatever your budget is, use it as a guideline. Know that it can always run a little over and if you are lucky, a little under. The point is, don’t make yourself too crazy. Best of luck in your wedding planning journey!
Romantic at heart, Jolie Colon is the owner of i do events and party rentals. Also owner of Le Fluer Atelier of i do events...
Published, award winning and innovative planning and floral studio was founded in 2007 and is based in Central Florida.
Globally recognized for providing luxury wedding planning, floral for weddings and events. Weddings are our passion - quality is our trait.