Yeah, We're Blowing Our Budget

Back in March, I proudly declared that our wedding budget would be $20,000 (not including alcohol and my dress, two areas where we’re receiving parental assistance). Well, it looks like we’re going to have to push that number up to $25,000.

Though we’re certainly going to aim to be as close to our original budget as possible, there’s no way we’re going to come in under or even right at $20,000. While it looks like we’re saving a bit of money on our centrepieces, we’re over on our photographer and I have a very strong feeling that we are going to be over on our cake, florist and officiate. We also decided to hire a DJ, something we didn’t originally budget for at all and that’s playing a big role in busting our original number.

All of this has made me wonder if maybe we should have gone with a $25,000 budget from the start. However, I worry that if we’d started with $25,000, would we be looking at a $30,000 budget now?

So here’s my new budget philosophy: look at your income, your lifestyle, your debts, your spending habits, your wedding expectations, location and potential guest list and come up with a realistic number that’s also a bit on the low end. Tell yourself that that’s the number you are going to aim for and then do your best to meet (or be under) that figure.

At the same time, create a contingency fund of 10-15 percent (the lower your original budget, the higher the contingency fund). Make sure that this is “real” money that you will have access to in case you need but only spend it if you really need it, for example, your dream photographer turns out to be $1000 than you budget or, like us, everything is turning out to be another $100-$200 more than you thought it would be.

I think the areas that we were hoping to cheap out on are areas where a lot of couples hope to save some cash. I’ll take a closer look at these areas in the next blog post.