Timeline of payments

I was just thinking about this earlier this morning. Following!

I have made all my deposits. My venue I've made a deposit, and first payment. A second payment is due in October. All my other vendors I plan to pay off soon. Except my officiant and videographer. Officiant gets paid day of and videographer gets 75% and the 25% when the finished product is done.

Even if you're parents say they're contributing - budget to cover it all. You can't use money you don't have in hand. They may be "comfortable" with a certain amount now but when they give you the money or pay for something it could change. I've budgeted to pay for everything ourselves. At first, we were paying 100%. Then my parents offered a certain amount (but I haven't received it yet). His parents gifted us already. Their's was unexpected so it really helped.

ETA- I'm not saying they're going to take back their offers. It's better to be prepared in the event something changes.

I just realized I didn't even answer your question. Our venue has a set schedule for payments as did our photographer. All the other vendors I'm just going to pay off, since the money is due right before the wedding. I'd rather not wait until the spring.

Well, I know the amount his parents are paying as its the same amount that they've paid for each of their children, but that is definitely a good thing to point out and keep in mind. The amount that FH and I are each setting aside a month will more than pay for it though, I figure it is best to do it this way just in case!!

All we have so far is venue and dj/photobooth (same company) and neither have any sort of set payment other than deposit and final, but we have the option to make payments with both. We are doing sola flowers through eco flower, which can be purchased at any time! FH and I are still in talks over photography, as we have different opinions on the amount of service we want now.

I kinda set myself up to pay a portion of the wedding every month. Like buy our rings one month, then the next month we'd buy the invitations, then the next month pay the rental company, and so on. This way the payments were less of a shock to our accounts.

Our vendors have a set payment schedule. The last payments are due about a month before the big day!

FMC gave some great advice about parental contributions. It sounds like you've budgeted to cover the whole thing though, so you should be good.

As far as when to make payments, it's really up to you. You can make them when the contract states or you can try to set up a payment plan. As long as you hit the deadlines laid out by the contract, I'd say do whatever is easier for you guys.

Also if paying by credit card, a payment plan may be easier so that you aren't charging a large amount one time. We ended up breaking the venue up into a payment plan for this reason. The charges would've gotten flagged if we had done it as one payment. It was paid off right away, we just couldn't give our venue a check.

We have paid our deposits. And all of our vendors have a payment schedule and due dates. We plan to just stick to those. If you want a good way to make sure your funds are kept just for wedding, you can always open a joint account and you can both deposit the wedding fund in there.

Most of my vendors had a set payment date after initial deposits. I pay off large chunks to each vendor has i get it. If i kept it in my account i'd probably end up spending it. I like to pay it to each vendor as soon as i get it. I keep a spreadsheet of when i make payments and how much left i owe.

You guys are awesome! Thanks for the advice!

Your vendors will have a schedule. Like for our venue/catering, we paid a deposit up front, 50% 90 days before the wedding and the rest 14 days before the wedding.

FH and I went ahead and set up a joint account and put all wedding money in there. It's nice to have a separate account just for wedding expenses. We have already made deposits and almost all of our vendors do not want the final payment until the day of. We are going to make envelopes with cash or check and give out that day.

As nice as paying things off early sounds, if your vendor goes under (photog hit by a car) you may never get your money back. Awful to think of, but true. Don't prepay too early.

It depends on your agreement with the vendor. All of my vendors required a deposit when I signed contracts and booked them. They also each had their own payment schedule. Some wanted me to pay the balance the day of the event, and others had payments due at certain times (i.e. 6 months before, 45 days before, etc.). If you have the money to pay them off sooner I say go for it, but the most important thing is to make sure you follow the payment schedule and timelines required by your vendors.

All our vendors have a set schedule. Take a look at your contracts for it. We are going to pay off each vendor as we can since most of the vendors right now have their final installments due the month of the wedding. We don't want to deal with a huge chunk of money exiting our accounts at the same time but more importantly don't want to stress about it then.

Our baker said we can make payments whenever, the balance just has to be paid off by 72 hours prior to our event. All the other are due two weeks before (DJ, photographer, venue, florist, etc). I've been using my credit card for the cash back program. I'm selling my condo so everything will be paid off by the wedding.

I would ask your vendors how/when they would like to be paid. I'm sure they'll accept early payments.

Hmm... it sounds like the trend is that a payment plan was set up by most vendors. Both of ours had the initial deposit, and then said we could either pay at the end (I'm blanking on if it were 90 days or a month prior) or that we could make payments.

We made all our deposits. Once we did that, I paid one vendor off at a time. For example, venue, then when done paying for that, I paid off the photographer. Once done with photographer, I paid off the videographer. Now that the wedding is 2.5 months away, only food, alcohol, and photobooth is left to pay. Way less stress that way for us!

All our vendors have set dates for when they want payments, but they agreed to the idea of us making smaller payments every month. By doing this, the final amounts will be smaller and more manageable for us.

Well for our venue I did it over time because if you pay it all at once early on, reason being is let say you accounted for 100 guest and you have only 70 attending, the money that is paid for 100 guest is not refundable (some venues work that way) so with our venue it was paid over time and the final payment was done 2 weeks before the wedding (and we have our final count)

Our photographer, florist, decor, steel pan player for our ceremony, pastor etc. Was paid in full early on because they don't relay on the number of attending guest (maybe florist for center piece) but that we got out of the way ASAP