I’ve been getting a lot of questions on how I started to plan my wedding & tips for budgeting a wedding. For a really detailed explanation you can read THIS blog post I wrote about our wedding with photos…but I know how hard and stressful it can be to be in those beginning planning stages so I wanted to share my biggest tip for how to begin planning a wedding & that is….
….to set a BUDGET!
This will not only keep you start saving for your wedding but it will also help you not get too lavish in your ideas and go into debt for your wedding! Please keep in mind your wedding budget is going to look completely different from mine or anyone else who has ever planned a wedding! Why? Because this is YOUR wedding day and everyone will have different priorities when it comes to their budget.
The first step in creating a wedding budget is to prioritize what is important to you. There are a ton of things you will be investing in & you need to decide what is most important to YOU and your FIANCE.
My tip is to grab a scratch piece of paper and in no particular order write down everything you will need to buy for your wedding. Once you have that done go through and find the three things you do not want to skimp on money wise and highlight or bold them. I then want you to number them in importance. What I mean by that is what do you really care about and want to spend extra on & what could you care less about & don’t mind buying lower quality for a better price. Here is an example.
1. Photographer
2. Wedding Dress
3. Flowers
4. Band/DJ
5. Head table decorations
6. Invitations
7. Guest table decorations
8. Guest book
Now that you know what is MOST important money-wise to you you will be able to fill in numbers. I was willing to spend my very prettiest penny on the photographer because I knew how much I would cherish those memories. That was the most important to me & it also was the most expensive.
So I started with that. I found out what the wedding package was going to cost us with our photographer and wrote it down. Then found out how much my wedding dress was, and wrote it down. Then figured out what I wanted for my flowers, and although expensive, it was a top priority so I wrote it down.
All the other items on our “To Buy” list were less important to us & so we were willing to spend less money or go a cheaper route on those items. Please remember your list may look 100% different than our list and that is OKAY!
Take a realistic look at your finances and start saving TODAY! I started saving for my wedding photographer before I even had a boyfriend (I’m totally serious and totally embarrassed I just shared that with you)!! But I knew that was important to me and I knew if the time ever came I wanted to be confident in booking who I wanted and being able to afford them. So I started saving $25 bucks every paycheck. Then once I got in a serious relationship I started saving a little more and once we were engaged a lot more! But when the time came to book the #1 most expensive thing on my list – I didn’t sweat it, because my budget & saving skills prepared me for it. 100% worth it.
You can do this for all of your wedding savings. There are a lot of external saving accounts that can help you save money for multiple things. I personally use Capital One Banking, which allows me to have up to 8 savings accounts. I had one for wedding photographer, one for wedding venues/catering, and one for decorations. I split the amount of money I could afford to save each month into those three accounts and by the time payday for our venues came around we were confident in paying for them & staying (mostly) debt free!!
I hope this helps someone out there struggling with the first steps of planning their wedding! I am always looking for new blog content to help you out, so if you have an idea make sure to contact me and let me know what you would like to hear!
Big hugs, my friends and happy planning!
Mary
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