Weddings can be expensive if not planned correctly. The average couple in the UK spend on average £25,000 on a wedding, which is an amazingly high amount. We decided that we were going to do so much wedding planning it was unreal, we planned almost every aspect so that we got everything right and spent the right amount of money that we wanted to spend and not a huge amount. It was only fair I shared our wedding planning tips so that everyone else could benefit. Weddings are not easy!!
It was really important to us to make sure we had the best wedding budget in place that we could, this meant a lot of wedding planning and playing around with quite a few figures as well.
Wedding Planner
It’s so important that you have a wedding planner or a wedding journal. You need somwhere that you can keep everything wedding related and somewhere you can reference when you need to know something. We had a wedding journal each, this way we could right down information on our individual stag parties and we also had a google sheets so that we could keep track of everything we spent. Make sure you have some sort of wedding organiser to keep all the wedding information in one place. If you don’t have everything in one place you might end up buying some wedding bits twice and spending out even more than you wanted to. If you’re finding it difficult to get cheap wedding supplies take a look at these posts.
Set A Wedding Budget
It’s important to have a set budget for every element. We have a google sheets with all our suppliers on, although we haven’t found all the wedding day suppliers we want we still have a budget in place. When you create individual wedding day budgets I’d suggest adding a little extra. We put down £1,000 for our wedding rings and we only spent £200, we also put down £1,000 for the wedding cake which only cost £600. We over budgetted on purpose, 1 because it makes you feel so much better when you’re getting something amazing for a lower cost and 2 so that you don’t have to deal with extra costs on top as it’s already on your budget.
Overall our initial figure came to £16,000 for the whole wedding which was crazy, you could put a nice deposit down on a house for that! Half way through we managed to get the wedding budget down to £13,000 and towards the end it came in at just over £10,000 which means we saved around £6,000 which is a great deal of money! It also just goes to show that you don’t need to spend £25,000 on a dream wedding, you can still have the perfect wedding for less!
Ask For Wedding Advice
It’s really important you ask for advice when it comes to the budget. If you know someone that has created the perfect wedding for a fraction of the cost, ask them how they did it. Ask any married couples you know how they saved money creating their own wedding and see if you can put any of their advice into practice. Remember everyone has their own opinion and it doesn’t mean they’re right but if you can get something out of their advice you might as well use it.
At the same time make sure you follow wedding related Instagram accounts, search for blog posts about saving money for a wedding and use all the advice out there. Sure not all of the wedding advice you find will help you make the best wedding budget but you can always find advice and information out there to help you along the way.
Ask For Discounts
When you figure out your wedding budget you’re going to find out you’re looking through quite a few suppliers to make sure they make your budget. Wedding suppliers can be expensive, however maybe ask about a discount. I know some suppliers will give show discounts if you find them at a wedding show, we got a discount on our photographers as we booked them on the weekend of the wedding show! It might seem cheeky asking for a discount but you never know unless you ask and you might be surprised as to what you can get!
The Importance Of A Wedding Budget
There are so many reasons why you should have a wedding budget. When it comes to paying for the wedding you want to make sure you’ve covered everything, if you don’t know everything you’re paying out for it might leave you needing money close to your wedding day, which means borrowing money from friends and family, putting it on the credit card or worse; taking out a loan. All three want to be avoided if possible as you don’t want wedding stress leading up to your wedding day or after. With a budget in place you’ll know what you need money for and you won’t overspend, set a budget for everything and stick to it as best as you can.
