A Few Tips on Planning Your Wedding Budget

Your budget is the most important tool in organizing a wedding. If you plan your funds well from the beginning, you will save yourself a great deal headache and heartache as your wedding day draws near.

How can you come up with an accurate budget when you have never planned a wedding before? Your first step should be researching wedding suppliers in your areas, and obtaining quotes from the suppliers you liked. Once the quotes start rolling in, you will probably have a small melt down and might even consider calling the whole thing, but here are a few tips that can help you.

A wedding is a luxury, and entertaining your guests will cost you anything between R1000-R5000 per guest and much will depend on your style and requirements. Please remember this amount should include everything you need – the dress, the venue,  photography, flowers and decor, etc.

The number of guests closely correlates to the quality of the wedding, and the budget available. It can boil down to the choice you will have to make – you can either trim away on all the necessities of the affair (no canapes after ceremony, no entertainment or cocktails whilst you off having photographs, loosing overlays on your tables, and foregoing the decorations) or ask yourself if the wedding boils down to a cost per head affair, then by loosing some of those heads is the single most effective way to bring wedding in on budget without having to compromise on the quality (quick math: 10 guests at R1500 per head = R15000 which can go a long way on your flowers and decorations). Being brutal with your guest list may be the only way to have an amazing wedding as opposed to a budget wedding.

Choose your venue wisely – some venues may appear to be more expensive but very often the cost of included items may be the reason. Ask the venue what is provided in the venue hire – tables, chairs, table cloths, overlays, chair covers, etc. The less you have to hire, the better (delivery charges for the hired items should always be considered but often forgotten and can add up to R800+ depending on the location of the venue). Some venues are so beautiful that you will need to spend less on decorations and draping (which is very expensive).

If you wish to save on the venue hire, then you need to be more flexible with your date. Winter specials are a reality, and so are the shorter notice dates. Some venues sell available high season dates if they have not been filled to the couples who would consider getting married in 2-1 month time. And ladies, it is possible to plan an entire wedding in less than a month!

It may be very tempting to splurge on your wedding dress, and yes your wedding dress is very important. Yet it makes little sense to spend up to 30-40% of your budget on a gown and then skimp on everything else. Your designer gown will look out of place at the wedding that screams out ‘BUDGET’ everywhere you look. You can find an amazing dress that will compliment your budget and will make you look incredible.

Avoid ‘hot dates’ such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Spring Day and dates around these seasons as your flowers can cost up to 20-40% more than usual. Weekends around Easter and Christmas are the same, due to the lack of supply of flowers from farmers and demand from florists drives prices higher.

Yes you can also make your own favours and stationery, many magazines and wedding blogs are full of inspirational ideas which will give you something to do whilst you are waiting for your special day.

You can always approach a wedding planner for a budget planning consultation. A wedding planner will be able to sit down with you and give you a realistic budget based on your wish list and make cost saving recommendations, or propose a workable budget based on the figure provided by the couple. You may be scared/intimidated/reluctant to approach a wedding planner, but most planners do have an option of providing budget consultation only, without any obligation to hire their services further. You can contact myself for such a consultation info@splendidaffairs.co.za.