1 post from June 2008

The one area that is essential to get right in your wedding planning efforts is the budget. You need to have at least a rough idea of what aspect is going to cost you how much, before you actually start shopping around for products and services. Without an upper limitation to your spending it is easy to get carried away with (perhaps) the wrong aspects.

As many people want to have as grand a wedding as possible, the budget planning may at times also provide a necessary reality check. For a generic example, have a look at the wedding planning sample budget video I found here.

The days when the wedding is paid for by the parents of the bride are long gone now. Parents will often contribute to the wedding cost as a gift to the couple, but it is rather rare for parents to cover the whole cost of the wedding these days. Usually it is because it is simply too expensive, but couples today often prefer to pay for their own weddings because it ensures that they can do it the way that they want to without interference.

One common way of saving money on your wedding has to do with alcohol - not serving any of it that is. If that is an unacceptable omission for you, there are also many other aspects where you can save quite a bit of cash. According to some statistics about $8 500 is the average cost for weddings held in the state, or calculated in another way about 45 dollars per guest attending. Depending on where you spend the most the figure calculated per guest may of course vary quite a lot. Generally speaking though, the reception is indeed where you will spend the most money.

When we're mentioning figures anyway, it is also worth pointing out that it is indeed not entirely uncommon for people to spend $30,000 on their reception alone, but history has also seen charming receptions that set the couple back only a couple of hundred dollars. Your goals and the funds available to you will naturally dictate which alternative will be the best one for you.

Once the official limit has finally been set it's time to start doing the actual math. Part of planning the budget involves breaking down all needs into categories and then calculating as exactly as possible how much money will be spent for each category. Even if you should try to stick to facts as much as possible, a certain amount of guessing to figure out how much they are going to spend will most often be involved. Where you can't say exactly, at least try to define rough estimations of the cost.

In order to come up with the basic budget you will naturally need to have some basic idea about what the various products and services you need will cost. But you should not starting to hit the stores heavily before you have made some decisions on a more general level. Comparison shopping will be much easier if you have a basic blueprint at hand before you start.

All things considered, budget work may feel a little tedious at times. But when it comes to your wedding it mustn't be overlooked. See some more wedding planning articles here.