Wedding budget and spending: How did you pay your vendors? Deposits and regular payments, or a lump sum?

The only vendor that really gave me a choice was my venue (all inclusive with food, etc). They asked for a 20% deposit and then the rest whenever I want to pay it, final balance due when I give the final numbers. All of my other vendors required a deposit and gave me a payment schedule.

I put all the payment amounts, dates, and method of payment in one document. Anything I could put on my credit card I did, because I get miles (and double on dining and transportation, should pay for flights for honeymoon!) and paid it off right away. About half of my vendors don't take credit cards though, so cash/check for them.

Now that the deposits are done, we one payment two months before, a few the month before, and the majority the week or day of the wedding.

Ask your vendors if you can make payments. They'll require a certain amount as a retainer to save the date; after that, for me, I use the HoneyBook system and I can set up payments however you'd like, as long as you are paid in full one month prior to the wedding.

Google spreadsheets also has several wedding planning templates:

https://drive.google.com/templates?q=wedding+template+collection&sort=user&view=public&ddrp=1#