Bride Blogger Update: Money Money Money
Last week, it was so fun to hear from James , Marybeth’s fiance. I just loved his perspective on the church.
Today, bride blogger Marybeth is back to discuss a very tough subject: money. As a planner, I know how challenging it is to work within your budget – whether it is $10,000 or $100,000…so kudos to Marybeth for her (one again) responsible and realistic approach.
***
The wedding budget is probably the most feared topic for a newly engaged couple. There is no quicker way to suck the wind out of the excitement of showing off the ring, dreaming of your dress and googling honeymoon locations; but ultimately, the budget is one of the most important parts of planning a wedding.
When James and I first met with our wedding planner, she was very upfront about establishing our budget, and also recognized the sensitivity of the subject. When the dreaded question came, James and I looked at each other, looked back to Jen, and both said a different number. Neither James nor I are the “budget” type of people. Its not that money isn’t a concern, wouldn’t that be nice? James and I just both chose to spend wisely and save for that rainy day, so actually setting and tracking a household budget didn’t seem necessary to us. I know all of you finance people reading this post want to sit us down and set us straight, but until the wedding came along, our budget-free way of life suited us well enough.
So with no previous budget experience, I turned to our expert (the wedding planner) and asked her what the average wedding cost. After James and I both recovered from hearing her answer, Jen whipped out her budget worksheet. The worksheet is amazingly helpful and I highly suggest this approach to any new brides and grooms. The concept is simple; the sheet is a list of all the various wedding elements with percentages attached to them. Once you have determined your total budget, you use the %’s to determine how much to spend on each aspect of the wedding.
After determining our budget, James and I were then able to determine what were our “priority areas” of the wedding. For us, flowers were a low priority (we are more of a candles and mood lighting couple), while the food and entertainment were high priorities. We were then able to adjust the percentages for certain categories based on our priorities. The budget worksheet enabled us to focus only on venues in our budget range and made us aware of costs we never would have thought to include.
So bottom line, although it is painful, get the budget discussion out of the way so you can continue on in pursuit of the perfect dress and browse travel magazines with a piece of mind. As our planning progresses, we will see if James and I turn into budget people or avoid adding up all the costs.
0 评论: