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Creating a budget can, arguably, be one of the most important processes in planning a wedding. That being said, it also is unarguably the most stressful and intimidating to-do on your list. How do you even begin? What are possible things you might forget to build a budget for? What platform should I use?
Let’s talk about how to create a budget for planning your wedding weekend and vendors you don’t want to forget to set a budget for!
Creating a budget will look different for everyone! Using excel can be a huge help and even do the math for you, but excel can be overwhelming! Maybe using a blank google doc is what works best for you! Go ahead and give yourself, first, an overall wedding budget! What you don’t want to exceed for the entire weekend! After, add each vendor you want/need to hire and give yourself a budget for each of them. Make sure in the end your smaller vendor budgets don’t exceed your total budget!
Vendors you might forget to budget for can differ! Since it will be one of the first steps you attack when planning a wedding, you don’t even know what the day will look like yet! The ones we see left out of the budget the most are:
Rehearsal Dinner/Welcome Party
Getting Ready Space/Hotel Rooms
Wedding Day Transportation
Stationary
Rentals
Some of these items, you might not need! Once you create your wedding day timeline you will be able to spot the holes on someone/something you might need to hire/rent!
Example: how is the wedding party getting to the photo locations? Answer: Hiring transportation!
It always seems easiest to go with the first company you have reached out to, but you have probably never hired these specific vendors before! You probably don’t know the pricing rate on catering for 100 people! Always reach out to more than one vendor! This helps you get an idea of the rate you can expect and lets you compare prices to Help Your Budget!
Once you have confirmed and signed a contract with a vendor for your event, go into your budget and change your estimated amount for each vendor to what you will actually be spending (also, adding the dates the next sum is due can be incredibly helpful)! When all your vendors are hired it will be simple to go through and change your estimated total budget amount to your actual dollars spent!
Creating a budget can feel overwhelming, terrifying, and at some points, shocking! But once you see, in the end, that you were able to spend exactly what you set out to (or maybe even less), that peace of mind is always priceless.
Wondering if you need a Wedding Planner?