Coming up with a sound wedding budget (and sticking to it!) is one of the most important wedding planning tasks. You will find lots of guidelines out there for how much of your total wedding funds to allocate to the various things you will need, such as 10% for your wedding gown or 50% for the reception. The problem is that these guidelines do not take into account the things which are unique about every bride and groom and their vision of the perfect wedding. These are come tips on how to create a personalized wedding budget.
A big pitfall of using a standard budget guideline to plan your wedding is that it will be hard to stick with. This is because the people who wrote those general guidelines have no idea what areas are important to you. You will end up overspending if you do not allow more funds for the things that you are most passionate about. Let's say that your wedding budget is $20,000 but you have your heart set on a designer bridal gown. There is no way that you would be able to stick within the 10% guideline and get a designer gown, alterations, veil, bridal jewelry, and shoes all for $2000. The smart thing to do would be to allocate a larger percentage of your budget to attire and trim expenses in a different area that matters less to you.
Sometimes a general wedding budget planner may over-allocate to a category. If you were having a large reception, but not serving alcohol, you might not need to budget half of your funds for the reception, which would give you more to play with in another category. Or perhaps your mother is arranging all of the flowers for your ceremony and reception. Instead of spending $2000 (10%) of a $20,000 budget on flowers, you might spend half that or even less. Brides who are smart shoppers may also be able to source things such as bridesmaid jewelry gifts, wedding stationery, and favors for lower than average prices. Shift that extra money into something that you want to splurge on, like a photo booth for the reception or a vintage car instead of a basic limo.
Planning a customized budget will also be a great starting point to help you and your fiance identify which things matter most to you early on in the planning stage. It provides a good opportunity to have the conversation. Otherwise you might assume that because music is not a big deal to you that your fiance will feel the same, only to learn that he wants a huge live band when you start interviewing musicians. It is common for brides and grooms to have different priorities for their weddings. Typically things that really matter to the bride like her gown and bridal jewelry, invitations, and flowers are less important to the groom than stuff like food and entertainment. Or maybe you can both agree on a category that you can cut altogether, like expensive transportation from the church to the reception or costly gifts to one another.
A computer spreadsheet is the ideal way to create your personalized wedding budget and to track it as you actually start spending the money. That way if you catch yourself going way over in one area, you can look for somewhere else to cut back to keep the budget balanced. One more tip is to make sure that all of the percentages you allocate to each category actually add up to 100%. The standardized wedding budgeting tools often show ranges of percentages for each item (such as reception 48-50%). If you plan for the higher percentage in all of the different categories, you may well end up allocating 110% or more! Good planning in the beginning will make the entire wedding process more smooth and enjoyable along the way.
