Help!

FireGirl824 · May 2011

I don't know how to budget my wedding.. just wondering how other's are creating their budget. I understand everyones will be different but I'm at a standstill as to how to even start ( TK budgetor did not help me at all IMO).

bmetz34 · May 2011

I googled a couple different budgeters online, until I found one I liked, then started adjusting them as I got some estimates from vendors. For example, I knew my photography would be more, and that my flowers would be less, so I took money from one and put it toward the other. I have to say it has been nice to have those couple of sheets in the front of my planner to consult every now and then. We've booked a bunch of our major vendors and we're only estimated to be less than $1,000 over budget right now. Talk to FI and come up with the absolute max amount you can spend and plug that number into the budgeter. Then you know you have to make it work with those numbers. You may have to skimp somewhere to get something else you really want, but just pick the two or three things that are really important to you (mine was photography and food/drink), and then find ways to get the other things cheaper. Maybe you can DIY some of the stuff or wait for sales, or bargain hunt. The bargain board has been a great resouce for me for ideas. Hope this helps!

sasha213sw · May 2011

Honestly, since we are paying for 95% of the wedding ourselves, we decided to figure out the max amount of money we could save per week times the number of weeks we had left to our wedding. We then factored in the money that the parents offered us, and that created our budget.
I talked to some friends who recently got married and asked about how much they spent on different things too. It gave me a good idea of how much I can expect to spend on some local vendors. Only problem with that was that each couple has different ideas of what's important - photographer may be important for some, but some may want to spend more on food - that sort of thing.

Hopefully that helps some - good luck with it! I know it was a big eye opening pain for us LOL LOL

FireGirl824 · May 2011

Thank you guys. This is giving me a good starting point. I felt a bit overwhelmed at first but do agree that choosing what's more important to us should be a big factor in creating the budget. Hopefully I will have tackeled this by next weekend! Fingers crossed!

gymbugmj2k · May 2011

I consulted at least 5 different 'budgeter' lists and things. Then my FI and I wrote down what's most important to us (venue/food/photographer) and what was least important (flowers, transportation, etc) from there, you can sort of map out what the more expesnvie items will be, and where you can save money.

i2012do · May 2011

To be honest
We didn't really establish a budget in th ebeginning which is a big no no!
I used a budgeter tool I downloaded for my ipad now, and I have an idea in my head of what I can spend where from looking at it.

I also actually found the knot budgeter tool to be helpful. But I really had to make some adjustments. It doesnt take into consideration region or anything-so for my budget it said to spend $600 on a church. Well, there isn't really any church here you can get married in for that cheap (even my own congreation asked for 950) so you just have to continually adjust it.

The best thing I found, was asking other brides what they spent and where they got their stuff (flowers, cake etc) around here.
It ended up saving me money to use them and mentionede their names, or just saved me a lot of researcing of trying to find a less expensive vendor!

christin228 · May 2011

We budgeted first the venue/food since that's usually the biggest expense and also most important to us. Then, like others said, I budgeted based on what we really thought was important, and priced those things out first so that we could have at least an idea what things cost. It also helps to talk to friends and family who have gotten married, to get an idea what things cost, and where you can cut corners to save. For example, we know we don't want to spend money on invites and paper so we're diy'ing those.

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