Nailing down your budget early on in the wedding planning process will help reduce headaches down the road. I developed this three part Excel wedding planning workbook to help in determining who is contributing, what matters most, and where all the little items add up.
You can utilize this spreadsheet to facilitate the conversation with your family members and fiance. It helped me educate my family, future in laws and fiance on all of the expenses associated with the wedding. I went back and forth between the three tabs to finalize each one--it is not a one way process.
Wedding Budgeting Steps
1. Who is contributing?
It is important to sit down everyone who may be contributing to the wedding early on to understand what they are willing to contribute. Setting up dinners with both your parents as well as your fiance's parents is a nice environment to have the conversation. My parents had an amount set aside since I was little for my wedding, so it made for an easy conversation. My fiance's family on the other hand wanted to understand what we were spending money on prior to committing to a set amount. Prior to the dinner, try to assess the information your family may want so you can be prepared for the conversation.
Once you have the total contributions from your family, you and your fiance can decide how much you can afford. It is important to plan ahead and think through all your expenses (e.g., house payments, car payments, bills, friend's weddings and any other large purchases). Keep in mind honeymoon and ring expenses as you plan for what you are willing to contribute.
Once you have the total contributions from your family, you and your fiance can decide how much you can afford. It is important to plan ahead and think through all your expenses (e.g., house payments, car payments, bills, friend's weddings and any other large purchases). Keep in mind honeymoon and ring expenses as you plan for what you are willing to contribute.
2. Where are you willing to splurge?
The total amount from contributors should feed the allowable budget in the estimator tool. Here it is important for you to think about where you would like your budget to go. Would you like to splurge on the food and drinks because you and your fiance are foodies? Or is the dress something you always dreamed about and you want to spend more there? The spreadsheet allows you to adjust the percentages of the total budget to get to what matters most to you. Make sure that all percentages come out to 100% when you are done adjusting.
3. What will you be spending money on?
The detailed budget will give you a reality check. You should start getting quotes from rental vendors and caterers to get an accurate picture of your costs early on. Make sure to factor in service charges, staffing fees and delivery costs into your budget. I tried to list out as many items in this spreadsheet as possible, so make sure to cross out or place zeros in the rows that you will not be spending money on and add in any additional line items for items not included. After you start budgeting out all the items, you will likely have to go back to steps 1 and 2 to do a bit of adjusting.
In the future, I will post about creative ways to save money on items that do not matter as much, so that you can splurge on the items you care the most about.
In the future, I will post about creative ways to save money on items that do not matter as much, so that you can splurge on the items you care the most about.
You will be able to download the file through the link below. If you have any issues downloading our Wedding Planning Budgeting Tool, please email us at inspiredwives@gmail.com
What tools do you use to budget for your wedding? Do you have any budgeting conversation tips?
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