Weddings can be very expensive. If you are not careful, your wedding budget can get out of control and put you in unwanted debt. You don’t have to ruin your credit for the sake of a one-day event. You can have an awesome inexpensive wedding that fulfills most of your fantasies.
Here are some ideas to help you plan your wedding on a budget:
Manage the Major Cost Factors
The 80/20 Pareto principle applies to weddings as well. There are several pieces that go into putting a wedding together but just a handful of them account for nearly the entire wedding budget. In a wedding, things like wedding and reception venue booking fees, transportation costs, and decoration will eat up most of the wedding budget.
If you want to put together a budget wedding, you should pay more attention to these few factors that eat up significantly more money than all the other small factors combined. Landing a great deal on your venue booking fee will save you more money than you would save getting a deal on makeup artists’ hourly rates.
Time Your Wedding Appropriately
The cost of a wedding is going to be markedly higher during the peak wedding season than the off-peak season. If you still want to have your wedding around the time when most weddings take place, you can time your wedding to happen at the end of the off-peak season or at the beginning of the peak season. Prices of wedding services will be picking up during this time period but they will not have heated up to the levels seen during the middle of the peak season.
Hire a Wedding Planner Who Can Get You Great Deals
If you must hire a wedding planner, hire a local wedding planner that has established relationships with various vendors. You will be able to get recommendations on where to buy the things you need and where to score great deals. Ideally, your wedding planner should be able to leverage the relationships they’ve formed over the years working in the industry to save you money.
Control the Guest List
The number of guests at your wedding will determine the total cost of your wedding more than any other variable you have control over. It is the size of your guest list that determines the size of the venue, the amount of decorations you use, the size of wedding staff, the cost of food, and pretty much every other wedding cost you can think of.
Small weddings can be just as fun as big weddings. In fact, an intimate wedding where most of the people present are people you know personally will have a more celebratory feel to it as everyone present knows your story and will be genuinely rooting for you to succeed.
Instead of Going into Debt, Have Family Members Chip in
There’s no use racking up debt if you have family members willing to contribute toward your wedding. To ensure you don’t budget with money you don’t have, make sure that the family members who commit to contribute make definite pledges with exact amounts of money they expect to give you.
The last thing you want is to spend the first year or more of your marriage rebuilding your credit. You don’t want to enter into financial commitments you can’t meet if some of them don’t meet their end of the bargain.
Don’t Be Afraid to Call Around
You have no obligation to take up the first quote you get for a service. You can shop around as much as you want and even get your favorite vendor to match the lower price being offered by a competing vendor. You have time to decide – but don’t wait too long.
It goes without saying that for this to work, you have to start planning your wedding very early. Giving yourself more time to shop and make great deals will ensure that you save more money than you would if you were making bookings and purchases just a few days to your wedding day.
Avoid Cancellation and Late Fees
Since you are on a budget, you don’t want to make planning mistakes that will end up in your incurring cancellation or late fees. Get your act together and be absolutely sure that every service or product you book will be used on your wedding day. You don’t want to hedge your bets and end up incurring cancellation fees on bookings you shouldn’t have made.
Some vendors of wedding products may charge late fees if leased products are not returned on time. To avoid these fees, make arrangements for all leased products to be delivered as soon as is it is practical to do so.