What was your wedding budget cushion and did you use it?

dolewhipper

I'm wondering how much you ladies set aside for emergencies/cushion for the wedding. Right now we are pretty much at the budget, but my step mom told me to make sure I have a "little bit" in case something comes up. I don't know if a little bit is $100, $500, $1000 or more. We have CC's if things happen that are out of our control, but I understand where she's coming from and agree if we don't have to put it on CC that's a lot better.

theartistformerlyknownas

We didn't have that. H has more money in savings we could have used if we needed it, but I don't know how much that is and we didn't need it.

southernbelle0915

We didn't really have a set budget. Obviously that does not mean we just spent willy nilly...we had a ballpark figure we aimed to stay under.

In the end, we only ended up going over the original figure by $7-8K or so. 

I think the figure you should come up with for your own situation depends on your overall budget, how well you planned stuff, your tendencies to "add on", etc. Keep in mind tips need to come from somewhere so they should be part of the original budget.

dolewhipper

southernbelle0915 one of my family memebers gifted us the services of our DJ. The contract is between him and the DJ. Should I still have backup cash to tip him at the end of the night or assume (I guess I should never assume) I don't need to or ask him direct?

jenna8984

I had made a preliminary budget that was just estimates and what I was hoping to clock in at for each item. Every time I bought something I recorded it next to the estimate to see where I was at. Some were a few hundred over (my dress, rings), some were a little bit under (officiant, license). I think I ended up about 1k over in the grand scheme. But that was known once everything was paid for 3 months out...there was no surprise charge like on the wedding night.

Cookie Pusher

We set our soft budget at 20k and our hard budget at 25k. We came in well under our soft budget.

huskypuppy14

I had a ball park figure that I was trying not to go over, but it was based on real estimates. So I didn't just pick 30K (example) out of thin air.

 We had less people come than we expected, so we were well under, which was nice since we also bought a house. But I used the estimates on the knot budgeter if every single person came (with plus ones).

We also had plenty of money in savings that we didn't end up using, and my parents said they would give us more money if we needed it. I guess we had a built in buffer anyway. I know not everyone has that luxury. 

larrygaga

We have a little extra saved for my school, that in an unavoidable wedding emergency (lol) I could take that money and then take out a bit more loans for school. I'm so in debt anyway, I don't care. I know it's a stupid. But we are very good with money and budgeting, so we actually have been pretty far under our budget and so we also have that extra. And there is always digging into the honeymoon fund!

thisismynickname2

We also aimed for $20k.  $20k was the budget for the big ticket items- venue/catering, DJ, photography, officiant, decor, invites.

We felt like attire and gifts was more out of discretionary income. DH choose to buy an expensive new suit because he wanted it as an investment, not just as wedding attire. If I had to tally absolutely everything wedding related I'd estimate more like $22 or $23k was spent. 

wrigleyville

We have credit cards and a savings account, so we simply set a budget and stuck to it. If we had decided to order extra photo prints, upgrade our room, or tip our vendors a little more, we would have just put it on a credit card and paid it off over the next month or so.

If someone doesn't have a CC/savings cushion, though, it's a good idea to set a "soft" budget and "hard" budget, as @Cookie Pusher mentioned. Try to come in at or under your soft budget, and if you go a little over, it's covered by the hard budget. For example, put $20,000 in the bank but budget your wedding for $16,000. That way, you have $4000 "just in case".

WinstonsGirl

We didn't have one personally.  We're lucky in that we didn't have a budget, but we're also pretty simple in terms of money.  We don't go for lot of stuff, or big extravagant things that could have pushed up the cost.  Basically, what we spent, we had in savings, so a contingency wasn't needed/an issue.  

KytchynWitche

We didn't have a budget, really. We had been saving up for a while, and sort of spoke about a budget of R24,000 (that's about $2000) because we were going to be paying for everything but my dress ourselves. 

Then there was a clustercuss at work, and when I wasn't able to find work again immediately (still looking) we ended up using our wedding savings to live on. My mom didn't want us to have to move the wedding (because she was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and didn't want to run the risk of not making it) and stepped up to pay for our wedding. She didn't give us a budget either, but we worked carefully with our original budget in mind and were able to come in under. 

We cut our guest list as much as we could (ended up with an attendance of 28), had a venue that charged us for catering only (Friday morning isn't a "peak" time), had cake made by family, ceremony performed by a friend, and photography done by my BIL (he offered, we didn't ask). I also designed all our stationery and DH got it all printed for free at work, on cardstock that I had scored for free from a previous employer. I used things we already had, and things that we would have bought/needed around the house anyway, for decor.

jenna8984

@kytchynwitche I was laughing this morning...my mother in law always takes these stupid quizzesand posts them on her facebook like what kind of tree are you, what kind of flower are you. Today's was what kind of witch are you and her answer was kitchen witch. lol

Kauris

We aimed for $25k, hit $28k but had $30k to spend.

KatWAG

We didnt have an exact number. We wanted to stay around $120k. I think we ended up spending closer to $125k. Going into the planning process we had no idea how much catering, flowers, photgraphers, etc cost. So we planned using approximate numbers.

We did the same thing when planning our honeymoon.

ashley8918

I really don't get the budget cushion as a concept. Maybe it's because I've been broke my entire life, haha? But to me, the budget is the budget. Going over is simply not an option under any circumstances. Had any major unforeseen extra expenses come up, I would have cut something or postponed the wedding and that would have been that. Luckily they didn't, but I was prepared to make some tough choices If I needed to.

Cookie Pusher

ashley8918 said:

I really don't get the budget cushion as a concept. Maybe it's because I've been broke my entire life, haha? But to me, the budget is the budget. Going over is simply not an option under any circumstances. Had any major unforeseen extra expenses come up, I would have cut something or postponed the wedding and that would have been that. Luckily they didn't, but I was prepared to make some tough choices If I needed to.

The reason we did a soft and hard budget was because we had a max of 25k to spend, but knew that sometimes shit happens. We figured by planning for 20k, the extra 5k we had would be able to cover it. And if we didn't need that 5k? Great, money towards buying a house! Instead of being blindsided by something like the photographer flaking out or the venue closing with no notice (we've seen enough threads about that kind of stuff before!), we made our own "Oh Shit" fund. At no point was going over our hard budget an option - that's when we would have cut things.

flyingfoxes

We have a rough estimate on what we're wanting to spend...but much like my bank account, I haven't really been tracking what we've actually spent.  I know we're going to be close to the total budget we'd decided, but it's ok if we go over a little bit.

amelisha

This is kind of embarrassing to admit as I'm a big fan of paying my own way and not relying on other people, but I'm an only child and as soon as I started pricing stuff out for our wedding, my parents were like "Are you serious? We're paying for this." I wasn't expecting it at all. But every time I've looked at booking something for this wedding my father exclaims "Get whatever you want! Put it on my Mastercard! You're still saving me $40 000!" I think he read that was the average cost of a wedding in my area or something, lol. Even with flights and hotels for my parents and for us (they bought us the travel as a wedding gift), it's still only about $6000 all-in (other than dinner, which FFIL has offered to buy as his gift), so he is just completely unconcerned with price.

And all that is a roundabout way of saying that I think our "cushion" is daddy's wallet, much as it pains me to admit it. I'm having the same stuff I would have had if we were paying for it ourselves, but if something does come up and we have to, say, switch chapels or buy...something...my parents won't bat an eyelash. And if it's something stupid that I decide I want at the last minute, I can buy it myself as we haven't paid a penny for anything ourselves (which...ugh. I'm sorry. I feel really guilty but am trying to accept everything graciously because we'd like to buy a house and a bigger car in the near future and it IS amazing to get to save the money we thought we'd be spending on the wedding.)

cupcait927

We didn't budget with a cushion, mainly because we had savings and a CC that we could put any unforeseen or last minute expenses on. We knew when we wanted to get married, how much H was comfortable spending on a wedding, and how much we could save in a year. We added my mom's contribution to that and that was our budget. H wanted to keep it around $10,000 and I think we spent $11,000 for 50 people.

JCbride2015

We are still in the "saving" part of the process and have only spent about 10% of the budget so far on deposits.  Our savings projections initially put us with about a $7,000 cushion.  Then I had unexpected medical expenses of about $14,000.  We chose to finance the medical costs rather than postpone the wedding.  It sucks but after a lot of thought, we are saving money by financing the medical costs rather than losing our deposits.

labro

We had a budget of $25k from my parents. I planned all the big stuff out (all the vendors and the venue, food, alcohol, etc.) using that budget and then all the little extras like STDs, extra stationary, miscellaneous décor, anything else I wanted that didn't fit in to that budget would come from my money. I ended up going over by about $2k on my parents budget and personally spent $3k. I also paid my mom and dad back for our "overage". I honestly don't even remember how it happened because I was on track the whole time I was planning and even the total amount due to our venue was less than my estimate but I guess all the small things add up.

I'm not embarrassed or ashamed that my parents offered to pay for our wedding. Obviously we would've done so on our own if that hadn't been on the table and we probably would've had a longer engagement to save up the money for the event we wanted to have. As it is, it was an amazing gift from my parents (and partially from my oma's estate) and I appreciate everything they did to make our wedding day happen for us.

mrscomposer

We did the same as @jenna8984 - estimated what we thought each item would be and what the whole wedding would pan out at, with those numbers.  DJ, photographer and caterer came in at a little lower, and flowers came out at a bit more.  We were aiming for 10k and pretty much hit it right on the nose.

Wegl13

So I'm pretty sure we stayed on budget, but not completely- mostly because I was using my bonuses to pay for the wedding, and then halfway through the year I was like, oh I have this bonus, I can buy a refrigerator. It was hard for me to keep track of where the money was (like if it had already been earmarked for the photographer that I hadn't paid off yet), especially near the last month or so, when I'm having to pay final amounts, but I'm also in the midst of transitioning jobs and buying a house. The other thing is that a few of the items we budgeted for (cake, dress, champagne, venue) ended up being gifted to us (don't get too wowed about the venue, it was $50 to rent for the day), which was amazing, but also threw my mental calculation of how much money I could spend off by a LOT. We ended up spending about twice as much on the catering as the initial budget (and $500 more than the original agreed upon price because we wanted a few extra items added on), and there were quite a few unexpected costs with my dress (alterations and preservations were almost $300- each), that I didn't even have a line item for in the budget. I also spent quite a bit on little things leading up to the wedding- that last week- that you may not even think about and can add up very quickly (presents and wrapping material for wedding party, boarding for our pets over the wedding weekend, safety pins and chalk markers and sparklers and lighters and ribbon and a license and stamps for thank you cards and hooks to hang decorations from and basically a whole lot of "Hobby Lobby miscellanea").
Basically for us, we started and tried to stay in a rough idea of a budget, but at the end of the day, I was committed to something specific I wanted, and I didn't want to half-ass it at the last minute to stick to something firm when I had the money to spend. My DH was also very nonchalant about additional expenses. It wasn't like I was doubling the initial budget though.
What I would recommend doing if you are having to stick to a closer budget is paying your vendors as soon as you are capable- not when it is due. Then write that down. If you guys have separate bank accounts, try to limit the wedding spending to coming from one of those accounts, so it doesn't get as confusing about what has been spent. If someone pays for a wedding item, write that down and go ahead and alter your budget accordingly. But yes, definitely have a cushion. I would say maybe 10-20% of your overall budget. If you spend $2000 on a dress and then realize you forgot to budget for the alterations, it seems silly to not have them done because you forgot that line item. YOU JUST SPENT $2000 ON A DRESS. IT SHOULD FIT PERFECTLY.