How did you determine your wedding budget!?

We made our budget by writing down what each of us had to contribute, and then what each of our parents were willing/able to contribute. From there I read books, and used budgeting tools to determine how to think about breaking up the overall budget into smaller areas (dress, florist, venue, etc.) and then we have adjusted it a bit from there.

Well, think of the things you'd like to incorporate, the venue, the type of dress, to make a rough estimate. That's what we did, we came up with an Excel sheet and established what was the maximum amount or the approximate amount we were able to spend on each thing.

My FH and I initially picked a lowball number out of thin air. Once we got a realistic idea of how much different vendors cost, we decided to re-evaluate. With a date in mind already, we calculated how much we would be able to save before then. There isn’t one right answer on how much you should spend, but you definitly don’t want to start your marriage off in debt. You could have a talk with anyone who is contributing. Ask them if they will be giving you a lump sum, or paying for a particular part of the wedding. You can decide together how much you are each comfortable contributing on your own, and then start looking for vendors that fit in the budget you have made.

How much do you have in savings right now that you’d be prepared to spend on your wedding? How much can you save per month? If you have a rough idea of when you’d like to get married, multiply the monthly savings amount by the number of months until then, add the amount from your savings and there’s your budget. If your parents are contributing, add that in - but don’t count on that money until it’s in your bank account, there are too many stories on here of couples who have been counting on money from others, budgeted accordingly, booked vendors and then the offer was withdrawn, leaving them in a very tricky situation.

Once you know what you can spend, work out a rough guest list, then start looking for a venue which will accommodate your guest list at a price you can afford.

We figured out how much we could realistically save each week from our paychecks and added it together and added in some of our savings and came to our total budget.

We started with what we were willing to spend ($10k) and adjusted as we started booking vendors.

I totally know what you mean. You don’t know how much each aspect of the wedding costs so it’s hard to set a budget. I was the same way. We are fortunate in that we have a good savings and well paying jobs, so I didn’t set an initial overall budget. I did it more vendor by vendor vs overall. You can always research the big vendors in your area (venue, catering/alcohol, photographer, dj, flowers, cake) and create an average and add those all up...and then factor in dress, decor, bridal party gifts, hair and makeup, invitations, etc.

I think you can also find something that breaks down like if you say a $20k budget, it would divide that up into where it needs to be allocated...like I’ve heard that your venue and catering is usually 40-50% of your budget. You could play around with that and see if the numbers for each vendor align with what’s available in your area.

I did lots of research about the average prices vendors in the area were charging and then factored in how much my parents offered us.

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Thank you! How did you determine what you had to contribute? Certain portion of your savings?

It was a combination of okay this is what we have in savings, this is how much we can save, and this is how much we can expect to get from family.

And then part b googling average prices even reaching out to some vendors to get an idea and just plain estimating and readjusting. I went under in cake over in flowers ect. It's also going to depend on what you want so set a number like okay I'm willing to spend up to 5000 on a venue if you go under you have extra money to spend somewhere else if you go over you have to cut funds somewhere else. Prioritize what's important though and add 10% to your final number to account for things you missed, taxes, tips, ect. Goodluck!!

Whatever you think it will cost ... double it. Especially for a 200 person wedding.

WeddingWire has a pre-set number in their budgeter tool, but I don't know if it assigns the same number to everyone, or if it's dependent on location.

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We are both a little older (almost 30 and 36) and are fortunate enough to have had pretty steady jobs for the last 8 years (or more for him). One of my grandparents had set up a small investment fund when I was a baby so I am doing the amount that is in there now, plus an amount that I feel comfortable with coming out of my savings.

Because after our wedding we are going to share our finances, FH is also matching that amount, and collectively we feel comfortable with it. We also felt like it would be wrong to make our parents pay for the full thing when we had the means to contribute as well. We actually ended up with extra in the budget with what everyone is contributing and what we feel appropriate to spend on a wedding and we are hoping that no one will spend the full amount of what they offered.

My advice would be to figure out what you can actually afford to spend, and then fit your wedding into that amount. There are so many different options to DIY and areas to save that you don't need to go overboard and go into debt for one day. Better to start off your new life together in a good place financially than to blow everything for one party.

For us, we did something similar to the first post. We took a look at our current finances, our current bills, what we have in savings and what we were willing to contribute from that. We also took a look at what we spend socially and thought about what we were willing to cut out or scale back on. Once we had our number (what we would have spent if we got ZERO contributions from others) we factored in what our family members graciously offered. We were blessed to have family members who were ANXIOUS to contribute (it's been a LONG TIME since our family had a wedding) so that totally combined number was our final budget.

Then using tools like stuff I found here, reading articles, and looking at what others had spent/done/etc. we made our category by category budget, realizing that since we're near a large city (Chicago) our costs would be higher than somewhere further out.

Hope this helps! Budgeting isn't fun or easy, but once it's set, it's a lot easier to move forward. Happy planning!

We kept in mind that this is both of ours 2nd weddings, we’re going to Cozumel for the honeymoon, he’s buying us a house, we have payments and that we have 5 kids between us. As much as we would like to go all out we know it’s not possible so our venue is $425 fit the ceremony and there’s no reception.

We figured out how much we could each continue to a wedding checking account every month for 12 months (which turned into 15). Plus we counted my mom’s cash gift. That was our initial budget.

As we exceeded our budget, we put in a tax refund and bonus check. We still went over by a few thousand and put that on our credit card.

We first created our guest list (A-List and B-List), then looked at the cost per person at local venues and went from there. We quickly had to adjust our budget to be more realistic for what we wanted, and came to a number that was comfortable with us based on our savings and what our parents were contributing.

We haven't really made a budget thus far but are kind of estimating how much things will cost based on a few decisions we have already made such as guest list and venue. FH has been married before so he has a little experience with how things add up. Honestly it is a bigger number than I was originally thinking it would be, but we are feeling good about the decisions we are making and can afford it. We will continue to look at how the prices are adding up and if it gets out of hand we will cut back.

We went through our expenses to see what money we had left over and decided off that how much we could put aside each month to a wedding fund. Once we came to the total we decreased it by 10% to take into account unexpected expenses. Then used wedding wire's wedding budget and changed to the pricing to what was average for our area (you will need to do some research for this) to see how many guests we could afford to invite. Don't forget the cost of invites, stamps, favors, centerpieces, etc. goes up the more people you invite. Not just the price per plate. Our budge guest list was 172 and 141 attended.

I tell everyone don't start with a guest count then try to figure out how to afford it. Do the budget first then determine how many you can invite based on that number.

So to start off, I googled the "average wedding cost in Denver" and came up with $34k so we started there. We also didn't really have a strict budget, my father didn't give us one. So I started getting venue & major vendor quotes and making our guest list, and we realized we needed a higher budget for the wedding we wanted.

We first determined what we could afford to spend, based on what amount we could put towards the wedding each month into our savings. Then we started researching costs of the big things like venue, catering, photography, etc. We came up with a number that way. I'm actually trying to stay under that number (find deals, etc.) but that's the max we can afford. I'm not willing to go into debt (loan, credit cards) over this one day.