2009 Wedding Lessons Learned
I know that talking about money is like talking about a dirty little secret. No one feels comfortable doing it, BUT, when it comes to planning your wedding, its a conversation that absolutely MUST HAPPEN! Whenever I have a consultation, its one of the first questions I ask, simply because as a wedding planner, knowing what your threshold is, makes me do my job better. I will recommend vendors that are appropriate to your budget, so no one's time gets wasted. So, please don't think I am being nosy, I am just trying to do my job!
When you sit down to discuss your budget - please be reasonable. There is no need to have a wedding that will start your marriage off in debt. Remember that a wedding lasts for one day, a marriage lasts forever. On the flipside - if you have unlimited funds for the wedding day - set a limit. Its actually not helpful to any of your vendors if you say the budget is unlimited. Unlimited and Wedding mean very different things to each person. Unlimited could mean $50,000 to one vendor, or it could mean $1,000,000 to another vendor. I know those are two extremes, but they get my point across, unlimited does not hold the same value for every person. Set a limit.
I ran into this budgetary conundrum with one of my couple's this year. They were adamant that unlimited meant unlimited, no expense spared. When we started getting quotes from vendors for every aspect of the day, unlimited came to have a very defined number that was near where close to Unlimited. They had quickly realized that if you say "unlimited" to your vendors, they will create very pricey proposals. We had to scale back every vendor to fit into their definition of unlimited - something that could have been avoided if a budget had been pre-determined.
For more budget information, please read this post!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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Thank you for the encouragement, I'm planning a VERY small-budget wedding, and it's encouraging to think about the positive aspects of that. One of my family members suggested we wait to get married till we've both graduated from college, working and would be able to afford a bigger wedding. BUT then I would miss out on planning all the little creative details, like making my own invitations (see the 3rd item on here: http://thefuturewife.blogspot.com/2009/11/wedding-project-progress.html
ReplyDeleteHello TheFutureWife! I love that you've been inspired to create so many details for your day! That level of personalization will certainly shine through on the wedding day and make your wedding that much more intimate! Regarding when to have a wedding {and adding in budget} - that is the sole decision of you and your fiance and you shouldn't let family try to influence you. There's almost never a "right" time to have a wedding - you could always wait to build more savings, you could always wait to make sure so and so can come - don't let little things pile up and push your big day back - regardless of what you spend on the wedding - it will be fabulous because you and your man are declaring your love for each other in front of everyone! Best of Luck with the planning!
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