Congratulations! You’re Engaged. ~ Your Wedding Budget ~ Part 3

Two major keys to having a wedding budget that works for you are making a realistic budget and sticking to it. At the end of this post you’ll find some sample budgets and worksheets.

Be sure to research wedding cost in your area and include those cost in your budget. Pricing in different regions can differ quite a bit. Recently married friends and family are a good source of information. They also know about budget busters that you wouldn’t think to plan for.

It is important that you do not exceed your total budget amount. You wouldn’t want to start life happily ever after in debt would you? However, if you need to, you can adjust or eliminate various components of the total budget. This is when deciding when to splurge and when not to splurge becomes important.

When making your budget, you and your fiancé should rank the various categories of your wedding budget based on importance. By doing this in the beginning, you know where to splurge and where not to splurge. Being a scrapbooker, I chose the splurge on photos. Photos last a lifetime and we were willing to pay more for quality products and service. We chose not to hire a videographer. A wedding video was not important to us. You have to decide what is important to you.

Be sure to refer to your wedding budget often. Post it to your bathroom mirror and refrigerator if you have to. Out of sight is out of mind. Remember don’t exceed your wedding budget.

Below you find other articles on wedding budgets:
--Your Wedding Budget - When to Save and When to Splurge by Bridget Mora
--5 Tips to Cut Down Your Wedding Guest List and Your Budget by Erica Tevis
--How to Calculate Your Wedding Cost Breakdown by Marcie Pearsons

Sample Budgets and Budget Worksheets from my Google search.
--The Knot’s Sample Budget
--Sample Budget from images.della.com
--RealSimple.com’s Wedding Budget Worksheet
--WeddingDetails.com’s Wedding Budget Worksheet

In the previous post of this serious the topics were Getting Started and Wedding Planning Checklists. I hope you got some good information from this series. Email us if you have any topics you would like to see discussed on our blog.