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Congrats! You’re newly engaged! It may feel tempting to start researching venues, vendors, and your dream dress before you’ve nailed down your budget. In fact, many couples typically dive right into the wedding planning process without giving much thought to three critically important decisions. Decisions we recommend making before you book anything because they serve as guides for your entire wedding planning experience! 

 

We want to caution you against the-dive-in-and-just-get-started-approach. It’s the number one way couples end up stressed, overwhelmed, frustrated, and worst feeling regret about decisions made during the process. If you are newly engaged, we want to empower your planning process with tools that will truly help you have the wedding of your dreams. 

 

Over the next few weeks, we are sharing those three first steps we recommend getting started with so you can plan your wedding with confidence – and feel ready to take on all the big and small details that go into planning your dream wedding! 

 

One of the three critical first three decisions we recommend in our six phased approach to event planning – is to first start with Building Your Budget – a critical piece of building a rock solid planning foundation. 

 

As one of those three first steps,  building out your budget empowers you with a guide and ensures you have enough money to truly execute a full event and not just pieces of it – and more importantly to do so without going into debt. 

 

When you start to research different aspects of the wedding you are going to find that most vendors will ask for approximately how much you want to spend. While some believe this is an approach to upsell a potential client, it is actually an earnest attempt by most vendors to help you get the most value for your budget. Knowing how much you want to spend in any given area allows you to confidently respond to this question. 

 

In this regard, you can think of your event budget as your roadmap for spending – it gives you permission to spend the dollar amount you’ve allocated in those areas and assurance that what is most important to you will be part of your event. 

 

As an event planning firm, we believe your wedding budget is not a one-size-fits all. It’s actually dependent on a variety of highly personalized factors (many of which were discussed in this post). 

 

So, how exactly do you get started with building a wedding budget? We’ve got you covered. 

 

Building a Wedding Budget In Four Easy Steps

 

• Step One – Determine the overall amount of money you are willing to spend on the wedding 
• Step Two –  Use the percentages provided the budget tool we use with our full service planning clients {you can use our exact tool, click here to head to our shop} as starting point for approximately how much you should spend in each category 
• Step Three – Adjust the percentages/numbers based on your personal priorities and preferences 
• Step Four – Add itemized values to the remaining rows under each category 

 

Be sure to add line items as you move throughout the wedding planning experience and reminders to your calendar system when payments are made and due. 

 

If you haven’t yet setup your wedding planning organization system – be sure to grab our tips and tricks for getting your system setup and running efficiently so you can stay on top of all the wedding planning to do’s in the months/weeks ahead! 

 

Planning a wedding? Overwhelmed by where you should start? Tired of hours spent googling only to fall down wedding planning rabbit hole after wedding planning rabbit hole – looking at you outdated/unhelpful wedding blog. The kind of googling that gets you nowhere closer to what you are looking for? We have the perfect resource for you {and it mirrors this approach exactly!}! Grab your free wedding planning guide today!