Real Life Budget Planning for Weddings by Nancy Hoffmann-Allison

Yes, I know you’ve been pouring over every bridal magazine, book, and website you can find for months on end. You’ve read every article about wedding budgets you can find. They all seem to have a magic formula where you spend a certain percentage on this, that, and the other. You’ve looked at your funds, you’ve looked at the things you want and what their cost will be, and said “Guess what?” that formula just will not work for me.

Okay, don’t panic. I have a system that I have been using with my brides for the last 23 years. It’s called the Allison 5-Step Program: Visualize Prioritize, Budgetize, Research, and Decide. I use the suggested percentages as a guideline only.

1) Visualize: Envision your wedding and reception. Collect pictures of everything that you find visually appealing for your event. What do you see? Is it acres of flowers with a white horse drawn carriage in a country church with a huge reception at the country club with a band and dance floor? Maybe it’s a Victorian Historic House with a rose garden. Now, come to reality and visualize what your budget will realistically allow. Maybe it’s a few lovely flower arrangements with scattered rose petals in a little chapel with a medium size reception in the church hall. Okay, we are back on earth and we have the beginning of our plan. We have a realistic vision of what we want and think we can afford.

2) Prioritize: You and your partner must each make a list of top ten things about this wedding in the order of importance. Once these lists are complete compare them to one another. Make a new list that is a compromise of the two. The top priority may be the flowers, music, venue, the photographer or it may be the catering. Whatever the most important thing is will be where we begin to start our budget wish list and then we research costs and availability.

3) Budgetize: Put together a real budget for your event. What funds do you have available? What extra funds will be accessible by the wedding date? What funds and contributions will you be able to count on from your family? You do not want to begin your married life with a huge debt from your wedding, so be realistic about where your funds will come from. You should now have a good idea of what money you can comfortably afford to spend for this event. Now comes the reality check, you may need to make some major changes to fit everything into the budget. Things like cutting the guest list, cutting out the limousine, or maybe postponing the honeymoon till next spring. But we’ll get to that a little later. Next…

4) Research: Before you spend one penny on anything, and I mean anything, you need to do your homework. Start with the most important item on your list and go down the list in order of importance. Find out three or four real quotes on price for everything on your list. Most importantly, make sure that you understand everything included in the price quoted. If the venue gives you a quote, ask what is included. If the caterer gives you a quote, you need to understand what is included, how much, and for how long. Do they have tables and chairs and how many? Do they have china, silverware, and linens? Or is that extra? Don’t give anyone a deposit until you have a good ballpark price on everything on your top-ten list. Remember to shop, shop, shop around. Once you have done your research, list everything out by price, and then add it all up. This figure will now give you a realistic budget. It is also imperative that you take a look at anything that needs to be included in this budget that was not included before and add that in at this time as well. This is the reality of what the wedding you want may cost. Now you need to determine if this is within your reach or if we need to begin to trim your expectations.

5) Decide: It is now time to come down to earth and look at where you stand. If you feel that you have plenty of money in the budget for everything you want, great, let’s start planning. If it appears that you will come up short, we will need to go back to step one, make adjustments, and work our way back down the list. Many times cutting back may just mean that instead of Gold Chivari chairs, you need to settle for white folding plastic instead. Or instead of layered linens with toppers, you may need to be happy with single-layer linen. These are places that can be cut back and nobody will ever know you cut. This may be painful for some of you, but you may find that it really puts things into perspective, gives you parameters, and makes some decisions easier. Most important, once you have set up your very realistic budget, stick to it.

Nancy Hoffmann-Allison is a Certified Professional Wedding Planner, the instructor for The Wedding Planning Institute’s How to Become a Wedding Planner certification course at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, and the founder of Allison’s Events, a full-service, award-winning wedding and event consultation and design company.