Ladies,
My sisterplanner keeps reminding me thar FH and I need to think of a budget and guest list. Everytime I start thinking of this, I get overwhelmed and don't do it. The reason why this is important now because I'm getting married in my brother and SIL backyard in Charlotte and I live in DC. I am starting a new job and won't be able to travel so much for a while, so I am going down there in about a week and will use some of that time to figure out logistics. So what I need help with is 1) Budget...I have no idea how much it should be. I know we won't be paying for venue or food, but I really don't know where to begin with that. 2) Guest list...we will have to keep it small, and I'm just wondering how you ladies decided who was coming to your weddings (other than immediate family), especially when many of your friends know each other and would know that they weren't invited but another friend was.
THANKS...I don't know what I would do without you ladies.
Ladies,
My sisterplanner keeps reminding me thar FH and I need to think of a budget and guest list. Everytime I start thinking of this, I get overwhelmed and don't do it. The reason why this is important now because I'm getting married in my brother and SIL backyard in Charlotte and I live in DC. I am starting a new job and won't be able to travel so much for a while, so I am going down there in about a week and will use some of that time to figure out logistics. So what I need help with is 1) Budget...I have no idea how much it should be. I know we won't be paying for venue or food, but I really don't know where to begin with that. 2) Guest list...we will have to keep it small, and I'm just wondering how you ladies decided who was coming to your weddings (other than immediate family), especially when many of your friends know each other and would know that they weren't invited but another friend was.
THANKS...I don't know what I would do without you ladies.
Well I won't be much help with the guest list, because my motto is simply: we are paying for the wedding, therefore we will decide who comes and who does not.Sorry but this is not a time to worry about feelings.
Now as far as budget,in our case FH&I decided how much we could afford to spend on a wedding TOTAL. Next we allotted percentages of our budget for each particular item/vendor or in other words how much we are willing to pay for each particular service. This way if we came across a florist and for what we wanted they wanted 2K over what we were willing to spend...we knew that either they were out of that we had to scale back.
WARNING#1, do reseach before alloting a certain amount for big ticket items i.e. photographers, florists, band/dj, cake, (& venu-not in your case)
You may think that $500 is reasonable for a photographer, but w/research you will find that you may be WAY off. Same goes for cake(boy was I wrong!)
WARNING#2 always have in the back of your mind the secrect stash of money that you personally can spend for items that FH will think are unreasonable, but you know that you KNOW you need (all the small details :))
anyway, sorry so long winded but you get the drift right?
Great advise MsB!!!!
Funny you should ask -- we're in the middle of designing a Budget & Guest List manager for vibride.com.
There's a lot of statistics about how much the average wedding is & how much you should spend for each category. Would any of them make your planning simpler?
In my experience, no.
How much the budget should be depends entirely on how much you can afford. $400, $5,000, $22,000... This should take less than 5 minutes. You know how much money you have, and you know how much you can raise by 3 months before the wedding date. Open a savings account & put this money in it.
Now you have to figure out how much you want to spend on each item.
To keep this answer short I won't go into details, but here's how in a nutshell:
- Figure out what kind of wedding you want. Be optimistic.
- Make a list of *everything* that needs to be bought.
- Get a bunch of folders. And maybe some index cards.
- Write the name of 1 budget item on each folder.
- Over the next few months, get at least 5 cost estimates for each folder item. Attach a price to each picture.
- Now that you have a bunch of options, start juggling numbers! Think about how important each folder is & keep moving prices around until you end up with an acceptable wedding that fits in your budget. This should take an evening.
- Now you have a wedding plan! The pressure's off, so now you can start looking for deals! Whenever you find one, get the folders & cards out and start juggling numbers again.
That was real generalized, so I know you're gonna have questions...
Thanks ladies!!!! FH and I are going to have a nice long talk about all of this, and your suggestions will make it a bit easier for us.
I think eloi did a great job setting that up....Also, understand what is realistic for you....For some, setting a higher budget and coming down from that helps them....because the higher budget is the most they can actually afford gives them a good idea of how far to go, but thats for people who are really good at budgeting....for others like me, we planned to spend 6000, but after every single detail using a budgeter online, it came up to 10,000. It may seem like we overspent, but we actually could afford to go as high as 15,000 if we needed to without hurting ourselves....Plus, my hubby is a strict moneywatcher so he was there to help....we saved every single reciept, from the 1.50 reciept to the large 2,000+ checks or 150.00 deposit. When we added it up we got 9963.00....So we still were way in the green.
We did have a savings that we worked from that was dedicated only to wedding costs. The only thing we put on a credit card were the hotel stay...Everything else was cash or check card. We paid the hotels off completely in one month. The money to pay the cards off for the hotel stay was from some of the money we got in gift cards....
Definitely working to get at least 3-4 options for vendors to get the best price and the best work your money can afford...Getting a good, reputable coordinator who is known to do an almost flawless job, and can help yoou stay under budget also helped us....we told our coordinator 6,000 for everything except for wardrobe, rings, and hotel, and she did it....that including her fee. And we got a flawless wedding....so a GOOD coordinator will want to make sure you stay under budget and help you keep deadlines....
We've been Happily Married 2 Years and Counting:)
a href="http://www.TickerFactory.com/">
I concur with everyone else's advice. STB, remember what's important in terms of your guest list. I started out inviting everyone i thought would be happy for me then i cut out the people who would be just as happy to hear about the wedding and wouldn't be offended if they weren't there. Eloi, i can't wait to see how the new features turn out!
Hi Ladies,
Here's an update:
- Guest list is pretty much done. Including wedding party, there will be approximately 70 people.
- I work for a University, so I have the whole week between Christmas and New Year's off. FH, sister/planner and I are going to meet vendors and make deposits.
- I created a budget, and we are actually coming out cheaper than I though. FH and I have chosen favors, flowers, invitations, ect and these things are coming out much cheaper than we expected.
- Sister/planner and I have started working on centerpieces and the supplies that we need are beautiful but inexpensive.
- FH and I are buying things in pieces so that we can spread out the cost of the wedding. We ordered a cake topper yesterday, we're buying our broom and invitations within the next month...you get the point.
I am feeling less overwhelmed because although the wedding is less than a year away, it's not so close that I have to rush to do everything. I've decided to have everything done by June 08 so that I won't be adding extra stress to myself when the wedding rolls around. Thank you all for your help because you all gave such great advice. I brought it back to FH and he was receptive. Actually, I'm so proud of him because he is actually involved in making decisions about the wedding and I didn't think he would.
That's good to hear! Are you doing any of your projects yourself?
Yes I am, I'm designing centerpieces (my godmom will handle the flower arrangements), invitations, and probably programs. There will probably be more projects for me to work on, I just haven't thought of them yet :) Oh yeah, and I'll probably be in the back yard setting up tables and all of that too.
For paper for your invitations and programs check out:
http://www.paperandmore.com
For ribbons:
http://www.waymoreforless.com/giftpouches/default.asp
For other craft supplies (such as vases, etc.):
www.save-on-crafts.com
Oh my Gosh, where do I start? I've done all the bouquets except for mines. I have done the boutonnieres, centerpieces, invitations, and programs. Time is creeping up on me soooooo fast and I have so much to do yet!!!!!!!!
Alright now tdankel! Post pics! We'd love to see your creativity.