Budgets - where to start?

hunnycat

we started off on a budget of us paying for the whole wedding and worked out how much we could save a month and took it from there.
A lot of family members have since contributed and we have been able to get things we really wanted but could not afford in our original budget.
one thing i would suggest, our venue we can pop in and pay any amount at any time so if i am close by i just go in and pay £20/£30 which i dont miss at the time but it has soon added up! If you can do this with any of your suppliers as an addition to your savings it really will help.

TamVilla80

You need a spreadsheet! We had some savings, thought about how much we could afford a month, and then saw how much we would have by the approx date we wanted to get married. You then need a budget spreadsheet, fill in what things you want (do you want cars or are you not bothered etc) and approx cost next to it add it up and it should hopefully be in budget for you. Bit of tweeking here and there and hey presto - wedding budget!

Congrats by the way!

Plans_all_plans

Well we had quite a lot of money saved up for house deposit/wedding savings, but we wanted to put as much as possible down on the house, but also have a decent wedding day.

We decided (before looking at prices of things) that our budget would be 5k for everything (incl 3 course sit down meal for 100 people and buffet for 125 people) We were disappointed as it was not possible! So to get the reception venue etc that we wanted, we upped the amount we were prepared to put in to 8k overall. I wanted a cheap wedding, but one that didn't LOOK cheap, if you get what I mean.