For many, budgeting is the worst part of wedding planning. Keeping track of so many vendors and numbers can be overwhelming and stressful. While wedding planners are able to help you stay within your budget and keep your budget-related stress at bay, if you are working on your budget alone or more involved in the process, we wanted to share our top tips to help you stay organized.
Create category budgets
Dividing your budget into vendor categories can help make budget tracking more manageable because it is divided into sections. Tackling your budget by categories will help you focus on smaller scale budgets at a time and will allow you to redistribute amounts as you move forward with different vendors.
Understand what you need and what you don't
Not all vendors are for all couples. Some people dedicate a section of their budget on professional hair and makeup services, while others choose to save money and do hair and makeup themselves. Some couples spend time to find the best baker for their cake, while others find the best caterer for their needs that will also take care of the cake. Understanding what you need and what you don't right off the bat will help you better allocate the appropriate amount of your budget to respective vendors.
Identify your top vendor
For some couples, the venue is the most important vendor, for others, it's the caterer. Priorities vary from couple to couple, so it is important to make sure you identify your top priority vendor and seek them out first (or close to first) so that you don't have to make sacrifices on your most important vendor later down the line.
Keep track
This may be an obvious one, but once you start setting up your budget, it is important to remember to maintain it! Keeping track with each new quote and each final cost will ensure that you are aware of where your budget stands at any given time. This will make the process of ruling out vendors and adjusting your approach to each quote seamless. We recommend setting up a spreadsheet that will adjust and generate your new totals with each line item change. For a spreadsheet that is already set up and organized to help keep you on track, check out the one we created on our event planning template shop!
