Wedding Planning Guide: Producing A Budget
The most important thing that must be performed when you are ready to begin planning your wedding is to first produce your budget. Your budget is vital as it is almost impossible to know what you can afford to spend on each aspect of the wedding if you don’t give yourself a limit to the overall spending costs. For many people, creating the budget is the most difficult chore to do because you want to have the best and most memorable wedding that you can afford.
The days when the wedding is paid for by the bride’s parents are practically gone now. Parents will often contribute to the wedding cost as a gift to the couple, but it is very unusual for parents to cover the total cost of the wedding these days.
Usually it is because the parents just can’t afford it, but couples today often prefer to pay for their own weddings as it ensures that they can do it the way that they want to without interference.
A lot of the time, parents will forego paying for the wedding and pay for the honeymoon instead.
These days, 70 to 80% of couples pay for their own wedding and it helps to know how your budget should be broken down.
Here is an example:
reception 37%, rings 14%, flowers 4 %, music 5%, invitations 2%, bridal apparel 6%, photography/video 10%. Misc 8%, honeymoon 14%
When devising your budget, you will first begin with the overall amount that you can afford to spend. The average wedding today costs approximately $19,000.
Next is to calculate how much money that you will have to spend on each aspect of the wedding.
Once you have figured out the dollar amount that you can spend on each aspect of the wedding, you can then begin to create a chart that will itemize the list for you. I have included a simple table to help you out in this area.
Category(what must be done)
Goal (what you hope for what must be done)
Reception
Ceremony
Photography/Videography
Catering
Rings
Attire
Music
Flowers
Honeymoon
Miscellaneous
decorations
What this list is meant to show you is what requires to be done, but the blank areas are designed as a means of bringing out the dream of it all into reality. You have to make a list of all of the things that you will have to get in order to fulfill your wedding dreams.
This is necessary in order to know if what you dream of can even be afforded within your set budget. If it can’t, you will have to do any or all of the following:
* Lower the guest list
* Exclude some of the services
* Reduce the size of the wedding party
* Forget some extras like limos
Once you have made decisions what you want to include and what you can afford, it is on to the planning stage.
And remember, you do not have to hire a professional wedding master of ceremonies. You could ask family member or friend. Find out more about it here
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