How far did you go over your budget?

Budget?? What's that?? Haha jk! Luckily our families have been VERY generous, and I keep freaking out about how expensive things are and my FH keeps re-assuring me things will be okay (and his mom has a soft spot for us and wants to impress her friends so she's willing to help a lot). Luckily we're pretty far from settling into a permanent house and can get away with just one car and kids are still in the distant future (we're grad students now...so we've got a lot of time) so we don't need to save a ton right now, so we can justify putting money toward our wedding thankfully. So I guess we don't really have a really strict budget thankfully!

$5,000 over budget already? I don't even know what to say about that.

Let's just say I started with 15k as my budget and now we're coming in just under 27k. I don't consider it going over budget because to be fair I didn't know how much things cost, now we do so we just are going along with what we like and want, yet we still have a number for each vendor we try to stay at. So, I don't think we'll go to much over what we are estimated right now-unless we decide to have a huge bump in our guest list.... which I doubt

I don't even want to think about our budget anymore! It feels like we went spend over budget before we were even able to set one in place! lol

Our budget was originally $35000...It steadily crept up to just under $50,000.

We decided the venue we wanted (which is the bulk of the extra cost due to catering and what not) was worth it. SO we took a look at our finances and made it work. We had 19 months to plan/save and our parents ended up helping out ALOT even though we were planning on paying for it ourselves. It was worth it to us to be able to have the day we want!

My wedding date is off on here. Getting married 6/13/15. My budget was originally 10,000.. LOL little did I know how much everything actually is! So I'm iver my original budget by $5,000. It's tough. I bet I'll hit at least $18,000 when all is said and done :/

I am $8,000 over budget with no regrets

I agree with some of the other ladies. It's hard to set an initial budget because you don't always know what realistic costs will be for different services in your area. Some areas are cheaper than others. We had an initial budget based on what my parents offered, but there are some things that didn't fit into that amount, like a videographer. So I have been working a second job to cover the extra costs for things I want. In that sense, it's not really going over budget to me, it's just expanding my budget. If I was paying for any of the costs by going into debt, then I would consider it over budget.

I am just speechless. How can you be so carefree about THOUSANDS of dollars???? And by 'you' I mean a general you as more than one person has mentioned going thousands over budget.

Our budget is so exact and detailed I'm making sure I don't go over by as much as $100 let alone $5000 or more. I priced things out roughly before we set our budget and if things crop up that I didn't account for - or that simply won't fit in the budget I don't get them.

I mean, $5000 is a lot of money. It's no pocket change. Or maybe it is, maybe you (again general you) are so rich that it's a drop in the ocean. But that's eight months of mortgage payments, or a new car. I just find it mind blowing that people can be so carefree about money!

We haven't really gone over as much as it's been upped thanks to generous family help. We originally had $25k in mind, but my parents and aunt have all come in with contributions so it's probably closer to $45k now, not including honeymoon. FILs also want to contribute but we haven't discussed what specifically, although they'll probably just pick up a payment we've already got set versus upping our budget.

I'm about $10k over budget , I never realized how crazy expensive things are ! $175 for a bouquet ...$300 for hair and makeup ...decor ...DJ...cake ...I've done my best to cut back but there are some things I didn't want to change . My initial floral quote was over $4K ...I now have it down to under $2K...and that's still crazy! It will take us about a year to pay off our wedding but I'm fine with that .As a second timer I already have a house , car , good career etc ..so having the wedding of our dreams is more important .

I think budgets depend on what you are seeking from your day. When we first got engaged I had 10k in my mind.... that was very unrealistic even with a small wedding venue. Its looking like 20k now. I hate saying im spending that much on a day, but from my research and conversations with friends we're being "modest" with our wedding.

Never go into debt, if we didn't have the money to spend we would have eloped, or done it in my parents backyard.

Our budget is 15k and since FH and I are paying for this ourselves we refuse to go over budget. I want really badly a videographer as well but it's not in our budget. I'm gonna try to save from my own money to get one. Already started my secret stash lol

Slightly under my budget right now, but still have 9 months to go, and everything isn't done yet. I'm hoping I don't go over to much.

And I agree, it's hard not to go over budget. You don't realize how much things cost. Before you know it, you've sailed right over your budget. You don't mean to, but you do.

We are over budget too and its because we had totally unrealistic ideas of what things would cost. However, we have a cut off point that I refuse to go over. Like budget + 2% is our cap that I refuse to hit. Our budget is there for a reason- we aren't going into debt, we don't have a whole ton of savings, and we would like to start saving for a house after the wedding. Wedding money is coming from what we can save up during our engagement of 14 months. I know that there is no way on earth we can come up with more than budget + 2%. I will be happy if we come in at budget + 1%.

Vanessa, hi date twin!

We started with a $15k budget and we'll probably end up right around 22k, without a honeymoon.

We went "over" by 4k. But, we didn't really have a budget so much as a starting point of what we knew we had the money put away for and were open to going up from there as we planned if we could afford it and wanted to. A big chunk of that 4k was the dinner we did, which was switched to mid-planning once we realized we were able to put away a lot of "extra" money and could more than afford it. The rest of it was the alcohol we had to pay for at the end of the weekend. I knew we'd go over the pre-pay estimate, but I had NO idea my group would more than triple what I had already paid for! Ha. That wasn't totally anticipated.

And while 4k isn't "pocket change" for us, we have a house (mortgage free), we have vehicles, we have kids (well one for now), DH owns a successful business now. It was 9.5 years together by the time we got married, so we were open to spending a little extra for something we had waited so long for, if we could easily afford it.

We've not gone over budget yet; we can't afford to.

We've booked almost every vendor & we're right on track with our budget so I'm happy about that. For some reason I forgot to factor in the honeymoon so now we have to add another 5k to the budget for that.

@Nicola did you say 5k is 8 months of mortgage payments? I'm in shock lol that's only 2 months of mortgage payments here. Man I need to move