Budget stress!

Daughter actively planned her wedding for about 16 months. The two biggest gambles regarding the budget were: potential cost increase for the food from the venue (it was in the contract that food/beverage prices weren't finalized until 90 days before, but a potential increase was capped at 10% of the contracted F&B costs) and the final guest count. It was critical to stay in budget, so daughter assumed/planned for the 10% increase in F&B from the very beginning and worked really hard to keep the guest list in check. The goal was always 100 guests attending; 127 were invited (we had room for, and, if needed, budget to cover all 127). There were a number of elderly and/or out-of-town/country guests that we were nearly certain would not come. The final count was 101, and the venue did not charge us the potential cost increase. The other thing that helped was daughter had firm numbers in each category and she did not go over those numbers, unless there was a matching underage somewhere else. Ultimately, she was a couple hundred under her total attire budget and a couple hundred under her initial floral budget, etc., and that gave her some wiggle room for things she hadn't planned on or that cost a bit more than she budgeted. She also comparison shopped like crazy though. When all was said and done, she ended up almost to the penny on budget Good luck!

View Quoted Comment Thanks for the input! How did your daughter know why “extra” expenses to budget for? Extras that maybe you didn’t think of initially. I guess the most stressful thing for me right now is figuring out all the categories for my budget and making sure I have all my basis’s covered! If that makes sense..I feel like I’m missing something!

The thing is that even if you went over budget it’s ok. Like even if you went over by a few hundred that’s not so bad. I think it’s just about how comfortable you would be going over x amount because it’s very common for people to go well over budget after realizing how expensive things are but if it’s over budget by a minimal amount it’s not so bad

Have a miscellaneous category in your budget to catch all the stuff you forgot. Google wedding checklists just to view them and see if anything pops out you don't have on your list. Don't forget you need return card RSVP stamps and sometimes invite stamps are more then 55 cents usually 70 cents. Don't forget to budget in tips for all the vendors and venue, they can add up quickly. Diy stuff as much as you can. You have lots of time to shop sales and stuff. For our budget we planned that almost everyone except about 10 people (out of inviting 150) will come that way if we don't get alot of no responses, we'll still be ok since it's a sit down dinner and we pay per person. You can create pie chairs in Excel for % used or I think wedding wire even breaks out the %.

View Quoted Comment Thanks for the advice!! I have definitely been on Pinterest looking at tons of budget info graphs and checklists!

So, I just checked daughter's wedding budget Google doc (highly recommend as a great tracking mechanism!) for the discrepancies. We increased the bar and food packages from the original estimates, but those increases were offset when the venue did not increase prices as expected and we stuck to the guest target. Daughter budgeted $2000 for her attire, while her dress was only $1200, alterations were more than expected (budgeted $250 and it ended up being $400); however, I made her veil for next to nothing and she chose Converse as her shoes, so the total ended up being $1700, so we saved a little there. Her hair, make-up and nails (with HMUA trial) was $700, which was a couple hundred more than she originally budgeted (we're in a high cost-of-living area, so she just underestimated on that). She saved money on florals ($1700 vs. budget of $2000), but then we hired her florist as the DOC for $500 to cover making sure everything got packed up at the end of the night without me (MOB) having to worry about it. (For me, that was money well spent, but a net $200 increase.) Tips were about $1000 that we didn't originally include in the budget.... And we probably went over for the rehearsal dinner when we included all OOT guests who had arrived by then and did a full open bar (it was just the right thing to do for people who had traveled cross-country to be here); but we had it at a family restaurant/brewery chain, and at Christmas they had a promotion where if you bought $100 gift cards you got an additional $25, and a 20% off coupon. We double-checked that we could use all the cards & discounts for the RD, and then bought $600-700 worth of GCs and that saved us a couple hundred off a $1700 bill. Like I said in an earlier post, it was mostly about knowing what the bottom line needed to be, and then matching individual expenses to that plan. Good luck!

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much!! That’s all been super helpful!

I think we've just stuck pretty close to our budget which makes it a little less stressful.

We did go over by about $500 (compared to our original budget) but it was for my veil & flowers that I considered a non negotiable and when we looked at how long we had to save, we knew we could save up the extra money so it wasn't a big deal!

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I highly recommend using something like this!

I have an excel doc that tracks everything to the penny so we know exactly what we've spent, what we've paid off, etc.

Great way to keep track of everything! I also added our guest list to it so that we could mark people's RSVP answer right away!