The Budget Circle: Surviving Wedding Planning
It's tempting to say that making your wedding budget is like piecing together a puzzle, that it's just about arranging all the pieces and fitting them together to match the picture of your day. Anyone whose planned a wedding can tell you that's not true, because what's on the pieces hardly ever matches the picture on the box and to get things to fit sometimes it's just easier to do it with some glue and scissors (and of course, once you change one piece, you're going to have to start changing others).
So how can couples navigate the wedding budgeting process? Here are five things to think about when laying out your budget.
1. The Guest List: It seems obvious to say, but the size of your guest list is going to be one of the biggest factors in your budget. There are the obvious ways: every additional guest adds to the cost of catering, the bar and rentals. There are also more subtle ways. Smaller weddings are easier to fit into alternative venues (like a restaurant reception or a cute little art gallery) and big weddings take up big spaces (that you then have to decorate because twice as many tables mean twice as many centerpieces). If your crowd is large enough, you might consider adding amplified sound to your ceremony and adding on an extra photographer (as a Boston wedding photographer, we often recommend adding a second photographer for larger weddings to cover the crowd and free me up to focus on the story of the couple's day).
2. Deposits: When you're reading about wedding budgets the basic advice is often to think of your budget as savings + income + contributions. There's an implication that successfully paying for your wedding is about taking a steady pace right up until the finish, but that's not the case as many vendors require significant upfront deposits to secure your wedding date (like a certain Boston Wedding Photographer). Flexibility with deposits and payment schedules can often be very helpful in keeping a wedding on track if your savings aren't enough to cover the fees at the start of planning.
3. Hidden Costs: Pricing in the wedding industry isn't always transparent, but often many vendors will give you a low upfront number that gets blown up with extra fees and charges. Venues and caterers frequently add on charges to the sticker price (for example, a venue might charge a per-serving cake cutting fee). So when you're getting information on prices, make sure you're specifically asking about any of these fees and charges. With other vendors might cost a little more than expected through basic care and feeding (travel charges and meals). If you don't see these costs coming, you might have to make changes down teh road that take away from items that are important to you.
4. Tracking Small Expenses: With a wedding there are a lot of little pieces (especially when it comes to decor items) and because they're accumulated gradually it's often easy to lose track how much has been spent. There's also a temptation to purchase pieces because you might use them but even if the sale price was amazing, it wasn't great for your budget if it's sitting at the back of your closet on your wedding day.
5. Research and Revise: After almost a decade as a Boston wedding photographer I've seen a lot of sticker shock from couples planning their weddings. I get it, most people don't throw a lot of fancy parties for everyone they know, so once the numbers start flying in it seems like the numbers are just plucked out of the air because most people haven't hired a live band, commissioned an artist or rented out a venue. So start your research with the broad strokes, what does an average wedding cost in your area? What does that cost break down to (the Knot has a lot of great resource in there, but the data is self-reported and tends to omit a lot of low-budget and high-budget weddings)? With that context it will be easier to assess prices, figure out your priorities and evaluate how your budget aligns with your wedding goals. Also, as we discussed with the guest list, choices you make in one area of your wedding will impact other decisions.
What budget tools and tricks are you using for your wedding planning for your upcoming New England Wedding?
Ryan Richardson is a wedding and engagement photographer serving Boston and beyond; including Cape Cod Weddings, New England Weddings, Massachusetts Weddings and Rhode Island Weddings.