Stay on track with your wedding budget

Happy New Year every­one! (I know I’ve already said it but you might not have been back to Eng­lish Wed­ding yet!) I hope you’re hav­ing a great time launch­ing into your wed­ding plan­ning, whether you’re newly engaged or a 2011 bride.

With it being time for res­o­lu­tions and all, I thought this would be a good bit of advice to start off the new year — because set­ting out your wed­ding bud­get is the best way to avoid wed­ding plan­ning stress. I hope it’s use­ful for you!

Get­ting started with your wed­ding budget

by guest blog­ger and top UK wed­ding plan­ner Bernadette Chap­man of Dream Occa­sions

If there is one thing that upsets me greatly, it’s see­ing cou­ples strug­gle to pay for a wed­ding they can­not afford. Please work out what you can real­is­ti­cally afford to spend and speak to your par­ents about any con­tri­bu­tion they can offer.

You should do this from the out­set so you know what venue you can book and what sup­pli­ers to hire, you don’t want to book a venue only to dis­cover it blows 70% of your bud­get, whoops just doesn’t cover it!

How do you work out a wed­ding bud­get?

Think about when you want to get mar­ried, is it this year or in 18 months time. To begin with work out your expen­di­ture for each month and what do you have spare, don’t for­get to allo­cate money for enter­tain­ing, clothes, hol­i­days, birthdays.

This is the amount you have avail­able to save each month, mul­ti­ply this by the num­ber of months before your wed­ding (don’t for­get to do this for both of you) then add to any wed­ding sav­ings you have.

Then are fam­ily mem­bers giv­ing you any money towards the wed­ding? Add this all together, this is your total avail­able wed­ding budget.

Dis­cuss with your fiancé what ele­ments of the day are impor­tant to you, i.e enter­tain­ment, venue or num­ber of guests.

When wed­ding plan­ners are plan­ning wed­dings for clients we allo­cate a % to each cat­e­gory for the wed­ding, this will vary depend­ing on what the pri­or­i­ties are for each client. i.e if enter­tain­ment is very impor­tant we will spend more on this and reduce the % in another cat­e­gory instead. Use the below table as a guide­line when pro­duc­ing your budget.

Wed­ding Bud­get Guidelines

Track your wed­ding budget

As a plan­ner, I of course LOVE a spread­sheet! Put all the cat­e­gories for your wed­ding on a spread­sheet with esti­mated cost then actual cost so you can keep track of any over or under spend. If you would like a FREE spread­sheet to use with your plan­ning email Bernadette@dream-occasions.co.uk and I will send one to you.

Don’t for­get if you just must have those shoes………………..the money has to come from some­where so think about where you can shave some costs from.

Be cre­ative with your wed­ding spending

Think about areas where you can save money.

Wed­dings nor­mally bring out the best in friends and fam­ily so why not ask them to actively help you with the wedding.

Pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions relied on the gen­eros­ity of fam­ily to ensure they could have a wed­ding they desired. Per­haps some­one has a hid­den tal­ent like cake mak­ing, hair & beauty or does some­one have a lux­ury car that can be used as the wed­ding transportation.

Maybe your in laws are enthu­si­as­tic gar­den­ers, they could make up pots of flow­ers or herbs for you to use as cen­tre pieces.

In the past friends of clients have helped with:

• Use of lux­ury car as wed­ding transport

• Use of gar­den fur­ni­ture (for gar­den of mar­quee functions)

• Mak­ing favours or wed­ding cakes

• Song dur­ing the service

• Played clas­si­cal instru­ments for drink reception

• Pro­vided the disco for the evening

So ask around, I’m sure there is some­one that can help with your wed­ding, most peo­ple love to be asked.

Get wise with wed­ding budgeting

If you need to cut costs then think about what is really impor­tant and where money can be saved. Does it mat­ter that all sta­tionery coordinates?

Instead of flow­ers why not have can­de­labras (www.dreamoccasions-hire.co.uk) instead? Why pay hun­dreds of pounds for hair/makeup when a friend can do it for free instead.

And don’t for­get larger com­pa­nies charge vat which from Jan­u­ary 2011 is a whop­ping 20% on top of their reg­u­lar quo­ta­tion. Think about using smaller com­pa­nies for some of the wed­ding sup­pli­ers thus sav­ing dramatically.

For exam­ple if a pho­tog­ra­pher charges £2,000 the vat is an addi­tional £400 (from Jan­u­ary 2011) mul­ti­ply by num­ber of sup­pli­ers you are hir­ing for the wed­ding ………….and you begin to talk about a LOT of money.

That said don’t dis­count a com­pany just because they charge vat! For exam­ple I never use a new/small caterer as for me I need to use some­one I trust, the more estab­lished & suc­cess­ful cater­ers are nat­u­rally vat reg­is­tered. Like­wise the florist I use charges vat but I use her because she has the stock, staff and expe­ri­ence to cre­ate the type of dis­plays I need for my clients.

Wed­ding sup­pli­ers with enthu­si­asm vs experience

Con­tact your local col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties; those study­ing music could play at your drink recep­tion or maybe there is a uni­ver­sity band that would love to enter­tain you for free? The cater­ing stu­dents might want to make canapés or your cake for you. And lets not for­get those study­ing floristry, I’m sure they would pro­vide their ser­vices for free as long as you buy the flow­ers (whole­sale) for them.

BUT work out what is impor­tant to you, if pho­tos are espe­cially high up your list ensure you pay for a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher – this isn’t the time to ruin future mem­o­ries for the sake of a few hun­dred pounds. Some­times pay­ing for expe­ri­ence is the best decision.

Finally remem­ber it’s your wed­ding, no-one else’s, is it worth get­ting into debt because you didn’t have the heart to say sorry you’re not invited…?

guest blog­ger Bernadette Chap­man is Train­ing Direc­tor at the UKAWP

Thank you to Bernadette Chap­man for the guest post. I’ve known Bernadette (vir­tu­ally!) for a few years now and she always comes up with great advice for brides.

As the founder of the UKAWP (Alliance of Wed­ding Plan­ners) Bernadette is highly respected in the indus­try. Please visit her web­site for more infor­ma­tion: www.dream-occasions.co.uk and her wed­ding blog for prac­ti­cal wed­ding plan­ning advice, design tips and prod­uct & sup­plier reviews.