Sane Wedding Budget Planning: How Much Can You Actually Afford to Spend?
For realistic wedding budget planning, do the five important steps below to determine the total budget you will be working with:1. How much money have family members offered you?
Sometimes it’s not a number they offer, but a service – “We’ll pay for the limousine,” or, “We’ll buy the wedding cake.”
If your families have been vague about their contribution, ask for clarity.
Tell them you are trying to work out a realistic wedding budget, you really appreciate that they’re willing to contribute, and then ask what they have in mind.
Talking money makes most people uncomfortable, but it has to be done so you can move forward.
If family is paying for a large part or all of the wedding, they will want a say in the wedding budget planning.
Anticipate areas where there’s potential for conflict and do your best to prevent it.
Sanity tip: Avoid clashing with family over details by paying for particularly contentious services or products yourself or by tasking them to be in charge of something that is not a high priority for you.
2. How much money is each of you comfortable contributing to the wedding budget from your savings?
You don’t have to spend your entire savings on your wedding. It’s not only reasonable to want to keep a pad in your savings for emergencies, in these tough economic times it’s necessary.
No outside contributions and the combined contribution from your savings is not enough? Need to know how to budget a wedding when starting form $0? Start with step 3.
3. Determine how much each of you can realistically set aside each paycheck for the wedding fund.
Don’t set yourself up to fail by planning on staying home every night and eating Cheerios for dinner, you won’t make it. Find creative ways to scale back your spending while maintaining connections and keeping a social life.
4. Calculate how much your wedding account will increase each month that you both contribute.
Be as exact as you can and consider when each payday falls.
Estimate how long it will take before you have 3k, 5k, 10k, whatever number you’ve set as a goal. See what month the target number falls on and pad it by a month or two.
What month do you reach your goal budget?
Determined to get married in the summertime, but you don’t reach your target budget until December?
You may want to wait until the next year to get married, or scale back your wedding plans.
Don’t stress out too much if the numbers and your target wedding season are not in-line, there’s still more work to do. For now, just write down the dates you’ll reach a few budget milestones. More below...
The Ultimate Budget Bride: Lisa Spooner saved almost 90% on her wedding, now she helps others save big money on their weddings.
Deposit the amounts from both your savings into the wedding checking account as well as any family contributions you may already have, and then set up monthly automatic withdrawals from your regular checking accounts.
You may find that you don’t want to throw a wedding on a budget as small as what you have, and you don't want to spend a year saving for your wedding. That's a dilemma, prepare to make hard choices.
Whatever you do, don’t consider financing as a wedding budget planning option.
Instead, scale back your plans, take a part time job or ask for extra work at your present job.
If you already know how to budget a wedding, go through all three of the above wedding budget planning steps with your present budget in hand and review it.
Talking money makes most people uncomfortable, but it has to be done so you can move forward. 
Be as exact as you can and consider when each payday falls. 
