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Inspiration

Set Your Wedding Budget in 3 Simple Steps

  • BY SARAH MACKLIN
  • 04/01/2019
  • 6 MIN READ

It’s so easy to dive in and start booking suppliers for your wedding. But before you do anything, you need to set your wedding budget. I’ve created these 3 simple steps to get you thinking about your wedding budget and how to spend it well.

Do your research

Research is absolutely key. You need to collect some general figures surrounding the cost of flowers, cakes, decor, food, and go from there.

There are plenty of websites that will tell you what you should put aside to spend on things, but this isn’t necessarily the best thing to listen to. The wedding industry wants you to spend £1000 on flowers, and £1000 on a 5-tier cake adorned with sugar flowers, but this isn’t doable for a lot of people.

This is why it’s better to get in touch with some local suppliers. Wedding fayres are a wonderful place to meet a range of suppliers all under one roof. You can ask them for a price list, or for a quote based on what you think you’ll need. You could ask a local florist for the price of 3 bridesmaids’ bouquets. If you do this at multiple florists in your area, you’ll get an idea of which is the cheapest.

You’d be amazed at the cost of food and drink too; sometimes it can be as expensive as the cost of your venue. This is the point where you want to make certain vague decisions: do you want to spend £5k on a sit down meal, or is a casual buffet more your style? Do you want two meals, or to get married at 4pm and just have one evening buffet?

There are a lot of decisions to make, and you shouldn’t rush them. Think carefully about how you want your day to go, as well as if you can afford it.

Who's contributing towards the wedding?

You might be lucky enough to have parents and grandparents wanting to help. Family usually enjoy contributing to a day that they know means a lot to you, and they want to help make it as special as possible. They also know that weddings are expensive.

It can be a little awkward asking family members, but I found that they will approach you first. Just make sure any contributors provide a maximum figure so you don’t go over the budget they’ve got in mind.

Decide how much you can save

Finally, once you’ve got some basic figures in mind, and hopefully some contributions from family members, you need to work out what you and your partner can save.

You need to set your wedding budget to a figure you can actually afford. You should work out the maximum you can save each month, and then multiply this by the amount of months between now and the wedding. If you want to save £200 a month, and the wedding is 18 months away, you can save about £3600.

You should also aim to make some bargains. Wedding suppliers might have a 10% off sale in January, or might offer 15% off if you book them at a wedding fayre. You’d be amazed at how these little amounts can add up to save you a lot of money.

Once you’ve set your wedding budget, use a handy budget planner to keep track of your spends.

Click here to download our budget planner for free!

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