Tips on How to Create (and stick to) a Wedding Budget

With an average wedding in Australia costing $36,000, £17,500 in the UK, $29,000 in America and $32,000 in Canada it’s no wonder the budget ends up playing a huge role in where, who, what and how a couple’s wedding will play out.

But how do you even create a budget? And more importantly, how do you stick to it? These are hot topics in the wedding planning world but don’t worry, we’re here to help.

How to Create a Wedding Budget

There are a few factors to consider when calculating your wedding budget. Firstly, do you already have savings? Are your families going to contribute? And if so, how much? Talking about money isn’t always the most comfortable of subjects but you’ll quickly become used to having frank, open conversations with those closest to you during this time! And finally, depending on when you are planning on getting married (a rough date / month at this point is fine), work out how much expendable income you have available during this time to put towards weddings costs. Remember to be realistic though, consider what else might crop up during this time – holidays, moving house, changing jobs, having children etc.

Although getting into debt isn’t something that we would advocate if you were planning on using credit cards / personal loans then now is the time to factor these in too. It’s worth remembering that just because you may have X-amount of money available for your wedding, that doesn’t mean you have to spend it all. You might not feel comfortable spending thousands on your wedding day, so if you think it could be something you may later regret, decide on a figure together that you can live with.

How to Stick to a Wedding Budget

Much like building or renovating a house it’s common to hear about blown budgets and funds quickly disappearing so from the outset you must make sure that someone is overseeing the finances and can keep a close eye on mounting costs. There are plenty of helpful tools and platforms that can help you with your budget – from good old spreadsheets to high tech apps. Say I do even have a free wedding planning checklist that updates in real-time and ensures you don’t miss any important tasks as you move along your wedding planning journey.

This is the point where we would recommend putting a contingency in place. If you have never planned a wedding before, costs might arise that you had never even considered, not to mention things that crop up over the course of your 12-ish months of planning. So with this in mind go ahead and take 15% off the budget you originally planned, the final figure of which is your new wedding budget. Don’t allocate anything to this contingency fund in the first few months, it’s there purely as an emergency back-up. You may not thank us now, but you will thank us later!

Decide on the priorities for your wedding. You might be a real foodie whereas your partner loves live music, if this is the case these are the areas you might need to allocate more of your budget to. Get these conversations out of the way early so you can research and book the most appropriate vendors for you.There are some areas you might be happy to save on, such as sending e-vites instead of traditional paper invitations. Or asking a friend or family member to bake your cake for you.

As a general rule though 50% of your budget should be allocated to your ‘venue’. This includes venue hire, wedding breakfast, cocktail hour, drinks, late night snacks etc. Keep this figure in mind when researching and viewing venues. That leaves the other 50% to be allocated to vendors such as your photographer, florist, cake makers, your outfits, transport, and accommodation. Of course every wedding celebration is different, as is everybody’s personal preferences and priorities but hopefully this gives you a good starting point. As you allocate portions of your budget out and start booking things in you might find you need to keep going back to your budget and readjusting, this is absolutely fine. In fact we absolutely encourage you to do so. Keeping track of the money coming in, the payments going out and the balances that are due later down the line is imperative to staying on budget.

Finally, if you find you aren’t able to save as much as you had anticipated or you are spending much more than you can afford, don’t bury your head in the sand – you need to address the issue as soon as possible. And on the flipside, if you find you’re staying on budget and even have money left over (go you!), then just think of the honeymoon…