The 5 Biggest Budget Mistakes Couples Make (And How to Avoid Them)

Photo: Noelle Adams

It’s no secret that planning a Chicago wedding is expensive, but making expensive mistakes in your planning process makes it even more expensive! In this week’s post, we’ll break down the 5 biggest budget mistakes couples make (and how to avoid them)!

Mistake 1: Starting planning “venue poor” - Even though it’s not likely to be your largest line item, your venue selection has the potential to be the most expensive decision you make in your planning process. Choosing the wrong venue for your goals and/or budget can quickly deplete your wedding budget. Whether it’s a bar package that’s per person cost breaks the damn, vendor policies (think commissions, limited/closed catering list, additional expenses (think rentals, mandatory security fees, nickel and dime “extras”), or just a venue choice that doesn’t make sense for your goals/vision for your wedding that results in unnecessary extra costs, all have the potential to sit on your budget like a parasite, sucking any funds to do anything remotely meaningful with.

That’s why making an informed venue choice - which includes taking the costs of any bar packages, add-ons, and mandatory vendor choices into account before signing a contract.

Mistake 2: Underestimating guest count impact - Your bar package, catering costs, rentals, centerpieces, paper products, stamps, transportation costs, and any extras like favors or hotel welcome bags are all impacted by your guest count. If you take a comparative look at our case studies from last week, Case Study 2 did far less with more or nearly equal spending as Case Studies 1 and 3, simply because their guest counted nearly doubled the other two. And in working with all three of these clients, personally, I can tell you that Case Study 2 made many more difficult choices throughout the planning process, simply due to their large guest count.

To test your target budget against your guest count, we recommend taking your total budget and dividing it by your total guest count to get a per person cost. As we mentioned in our post last week, most of our clients start at about $500pp and increase from there. We’ve found anything less than $400pp is tough to work in the Chicago market.

Mistake 3: Trying to do everything - Trying to do everything the internet, your friends, or your aunt says is a “must” is a quick way to break your budget. The wedding industry, like any other, has a million services + products, and any good salesperson is going to convince you or someone you know that their product/service it is a need and not knowing what you actually need to accomplish your goals, will have you buying everything and getting to the end of planning wondering where all of your money went.

Mistake 4: Hundred Dollar-ing yourself to death - This year I had a family who well out ran their budget by tens of thousands of dollars. The whole way through the process, I did my job in pointing them back to their budget with every idea that was brought up, but doing my due diligence in getting quotes for their ideas so they had knowledge to make an informed decision. Every single time, the answer was, “oh! It’s only a few hundred dollars.” x 6 or 7 unplanned expenses equaled a busted budget and a stressed out family once all those final invoices came due.

Mistake 5: Forgetting hidden costs - Now, I don’t believe that most “hidden costs” in the world of weddings are actually hidden. I think they’re more unexpected or unobvious to the untrained eye. We’ll cover more about this in a post in a few weeks, but things like permit costs, administrative fees, security deposits, and more can creep up on families causing the stress of unexpected expenses from “hidden costs,” especially if you’re not reading your contracts thoroughly at booking.

I know budgeting for a wedding is stressful, but hopefully with some real-time local examples (see last week’s case study post) and some warnings on the pitfalls of wedding budgeting, you can feel empowered to set a budget and stick to it! For more personalized tips, schedule a free wedding planning strategy call!