Budget, Guest List, or Venue -- what's the right order to tackle these?

Budget

Guest list

Venue

You need to know the budget before looking anyplace, and you need to know the guest list or a rough number so you know what restrictions you have on your venue. IE: if your budget was $5K and you had 100 guests, you wouldn't look at places with a $30k min or that only held 25ppl.

I am going about the order you have above. Budget first, Guest list second, venue third. You need to know what you can afford to pay and the number of guests will help you determine what each venue will cost.

Most will probably say budget...but I would say guest list first meaning find out how many people you really want/need to attend. This will then help you determine your budget. more people = more $$, no real way around it.

Most people will probably say budget first, but I tend to think knowing how many people will be attending will help you shape your budget. I'd decide with FH how big a wedding you two want and make a list of the people who you really want/need to have there and get an accurate estimate based on that. More people = more money, no real way around that one. Then once you know how many guests, and budget you can look for your venue. Happy planning to you!

We did guest list, budget , venue... maybe a little wrong but I needed to know who HAD to be there from both sides and who we could cut to keep the guest list small, then we were able to figure out how much we could afford to spend per person... it worked for us...

Sorry, double post, thought it disappeared. Also, if having a huge party with tons of people is your main priority you CAN stretch your budget to make that happen. If you want a real "classy" affair with lavish meal, immaculate decorations and a name brand dress etc, you will need to keep your guest list smaller

Budget, Guestlist cut it down to fit in budget, venue, the I replayed with my budget

Yes, BUDGET. Unless you really don't have a limit on how much you want/can spend then you need to start with that. It will also let you know how much you can spend on the venue and how many guests you can actually invite.

I suggest setting a total budget and splitting it into reception/ceremony and another for your/his attire and rings.

Lila and Victoria have a point about the number of guests shaping your budget. But for most folks, budget is the starting point. If you can only afford 5K for your wedding, you simply can't have a wedding with 400 guests. But getting a guest list together and then pricing out venues will give you a good idea of how many people you can truly afford to invite.

I would like to recommend...

Budget

venue

preliminary guest list

then:

revise budget (again)

revise guest list

revise budget (again and again)

hire other vendors

revise budget (again)

revise guest list

get married and have a wonderful life together

I did budget, venue, guest list. I had an idea of what type of wedding I wanted (outdoor, summer, party, night time, fairy lights) and I knew I had to find a place that could accommodate that. From there, I figure out the rest.

As most others said: Budget, guest list, venue. For us we wanted to know what we could afford first before even thinking about anything else.

This can go in any order depending on you cause you're gonna keep going back and forth with all 3. For me and FH, we both already knew what we wanted as far as the type of venue & other details, & we also knew that our max to spend was 25k (that's our budget), then we wanted no more than 150 or less, and then we started looking at venues. (budget, guest, venue)

For a bride who has no idea, how many guest she'd want or how much she's willing to spend, looking at venues can help you. Once you know their per/person price, you can figure out how many people you can afford at that price and thus figure out your budget. (venue, guest, budget)

A friend of mine did guest, venue then budget.

I would start with whichever is most critical. For example, if you only have $X in savings that could be put toward your wedding, you would start with budget. Conversely, if your budget is somewhat flexible (you have more in savings than you will need for a wedding), but it just wouldn't be a wedding for you without all your aunts and uncles there, then you start with the guest list. And if both your budget and your guest list are flexible, but you really want a particular venue, you could start with that.

As others have suggested, you may find you are making tentative decisions on any of these, then looking at the impact those decisions would have on the other two factors, and readjusting.

I think we thought about all three simultaneously. Because of the wide ranges of prices depending on how many you invite and where the reception is, I feel like it could be in any order, depending on what is most important to you. If you don't have a budget in mind first, at least thing in broad terms about what you'd be able to afford...because the last thing you want to do is get your heart set on something and then overspend. (we knew from the beginning we were willing to 'splurge' on the reception....even though our 'splurge' is probably considered frugal to most people on the outside looking in. lol). We set ours at $5,000 for the reception, and once we knew our guest list and the price per plate at the reception location, we were able to par down (or add to) our guest list and adjust the add-on appetizers, etc. to make sure everything synched up.

We actually did venue and guest list before budget. It was critical to me that we have a Jewish ceremony. That meant finding a rabbi willing to marry us (a tough issue, because NotFroofy is not Jewish). When we found one, we booked him and his synagogue right away. That by itself was $3,000 of the $10,000 we ended up budgeting. However, since that was a bigger priority than anything else, it was clear we were going to do it, even if it blew most of our budget.

For our at-home reception venue, a friend offered to let us use his private club. It was right in downtown DC, would hold pretty much as many people as we wanted, and was much less expensive than any other reception venue we could have used. So pretty much regardless of our budget, we knew we wanted to use that space.

(cont.)

When I got married I went.

Budget

Ranked importance of options.

Wifes Dress

venue

Guest list

Vendors

then scream yikes!!!

Revise budget, was higher than I thought

Revise everything again.

Budget

Preliminary Guest List (to be able to quote to prospective Venues)

Venue

More Finalized guest list based on budget and Venue costs

Everything else. lol

Budget is the biggest and most important thing, because without knowing how much you can afford, you have no idea how many people you can invite or what sort of venue budget you have.

Oh and for budget? ALWAYS ALWAYS under-estimate. Like if you can afford a 20k wedding, then budget for a 15k wedding... because it will end up being 20K in the end after all the little things that you didn't expect to need to/have to spend money on are paid for.

We then turned to the guest list. Because our ceremony had to be eight hours from where we live, we thought it was silly to ask all our friends to go there. We therefore decided to invite only my immediate family and a very few close friends to the ceremony. However, because the cost of the at-home reception was mostly fixed rather than per person, we figured we could invite pretty much anyone we wanted. Thus, it was just a question of coming up with a list of all the people we wanted to invite.

Budget came after that. And even then, the budget was not totally cast in stone. I'm self-employed, so I kind of had to guess how much money I would take in (and thus, how much I could save) during the engagement period. I therefore tried to pay for items in proportion to their importance to us. For example, a wedding dress was important to NotFroofy. (Her mother used to make custom wedding dresses back in Wales, so to her it wasn't a wedding without a wedding dress.)

(cont.)

I don't think you can decide an order until you decide what kind of affair you would like to have. Do you want formal and extravagant; small and intimate; a DW or an outside BBQ? After you decide that, than you can decide the other things.

We are having a DW so it was def venue first, because the venue had to be a specific B&B in a specific place. We then had to figure out how many guests we could comfortably accomodate in that particular B&B. With regard to budget, we knew it was not going to be over a certain amount, but we were really clueless as to how much things would cost in our destination. We knew we wanted casual elegance, but had no idea what it would cost. So, having a max limit on the budget helped.

Good luck and happy planning!