by Helen Hopkins, Pudding Bridge

Setting your wedding day priorities early on is imperative

It means you can divide up your budget according to what is important to you both for your day, making sure you don’t waste your budget on things you don’t need or want! As a wedding planner, I work with couples to help them plan their dream day.

 

One of the very first things we do is look at priorities. It so interesting to see who picks which area as the most important. So here is what to do…

Write a list of every element of your wedding day.

For example: venue, food, drink, ceremony, guests, entertainment, attire, cake, stationery, location etc.

Make sure you both have the same list and rate the items into order so that 1 is the most important.

Then compare.

Now it’s likely that you and your partner’s lists will be different.

Now is the time to review what’s important to each other and reconsider your lists together.

By agreeing this early on, you can make budgetary and supplier decisions together.

So, if having an amazing party is the ultimate goal of your wedding this is an area you’ll spend a good proportion of your cash on.

If it’s not, then you’ll reduce spend in this area and focus on the element that means the most to you.

By working this way you can fully maximize your budget as you’ll know where to spend your hard earned cash.

It is worth noting that there are some tried and tested formulas when you work out your budget.

Looking at these means that you’ll have a ball park figure to start with.

So I tend to initially portion out my client budgets as follows: around 50% for venue, food and drink, around 10% on photography and videography, 8-10% on décor and the rest for the ceremony, insurance, stationery, contingency costs etc.

This is just a rough guide but it’ll give you a starting point!

All images accompanying this article are of Nick & Kristina, by Camilla Lucinda Photography. See their full wedding feature here