How to Plan a Dream Wedding in San Diego: Tips and Top Venues
MY WEDDING BUDGET REVIEW (HOW WELL DID WE STICK TO IT?) + USE MY FREE WEDDING BUDGET SPREADSHEET
I started to share more about my personal finances as a way to open the dialogue on money and shed some light on debt. Today I want to show you our wedding budget breakdown, how it both worked and didn’t work and how to plan you own wedding budget using the lessons we learned and my FREE Wedding Budget Spreadsheet. My overall hope is that this review of our wedding budget inspires and informs you to make good financial choices for your wedding and create a day, that you wont still be paying for in years to come.
Let’s do this!
Our wedding budget
| Total Budget | £15,000 |
Expenses
| Attire | ||
| Description | Estimated Cost | Actual Cost |
| Bridal gown | £1,500.00 | £1,214.00 |
| Bridal gown Alterations | £0.00 | £80.00 |
| Bridal Shoes | £50.00 | £34.40 |
| Wedding Rings | £650.00 | £605.61 |
| Grooms Suit | £300.00 | £150.00 |
| Grooms Shoes | £50.00 | £121.00 |
| Bridesmaids Alterations | £50.00 | £0.00 |
| Bridesmaids Dresses | £140.00 | £105.00 |
| Flower Girls Dresses | £100.00 | £119.60 |
| Page Boys Outfit | £50.00 | £31.05 |
| Groom & Groomsmen Accessories | £50.00 | £154.13 |
| Groomsmen Suits | £200.00 | £240.00 |
| Manicure | £40.00 | £21.00 |
| Venue & Catering | ||
| Description | Estimated Cost | Actual Cost |
| Ceremony Room | £395.00 | £0.00 |
| Vegan Catering – Daytime Guests | £4,140.00 | £3,540.00 |
| Drinks | £1,020.00 | £990.00 |
| Vegan Catering – Evening Guests | £600.00 | £1,343.25 |
| Early Entrance Fee | £450.00 | £0.00 |
| Notice of Marriage | £70.00 | £70.00 |
| Registrar | £434.00 | £451.00 |
| Vendors | ||
| Description | Estimated Cost | Actual Cost |
| Photographer | £1,000.00 | £1,350.00 |
| Videographer | £1,700.00 | £1,770.00 |
| Accomodation for Videographer & Photographer | £0.00 | £320.00 |
| Band | £500.00 | £2,003.30 |
| Florist | £359.00 | £435.00 |
| Table Flowers | £100.00 | £105.50 |
| Make-up Trial | £0.00 | £75.00 |
| Hair & Make-up | £200.00 | £220.00 |
| Venue Stylist | £0.00 | £400.00 |
| Decorations | ||
| Description | Estimated Cost | Actual Cost |
| Ceremony Backdrop | £50.00 | £59.99 |
| Reception Backdrop | £90.00 | £169.01 |
| Balloons | £60.00 | £32.45 |
| Place Settings | £20.00 | £6.00 |
| String Lights | £50.00 | £79.96 |
| Plants | £100.00 | £243.50 |
| Guestbook | £0.00 | £34.39 |
| Vegan Sign | £0.00 | £8.91 |
| Jam Jars | £0.00 | £27.90 |
| Estimated Expenses | £14,709 |
| Actual Expenses To-Date | £16,928 |
| Available Budget | -£1,928 |
Phew! There’s nothing quite like looking at a list of all your expenses to put you off getting married, am I right? Ha ha!
Would I spend that much again? Maybe?
Now that’s all out in the open, lets chat more about the budget and what we learned, where we failed and how we managed to make up for the losses.
So you can see we had a budget of £15,000 to spend on our wedding. Majority of this was from our savings, the rest we paid for along the way and we did put £2250 on a credit card. This isn’t my proudest moment. This was actually the first thing I’d put on a credit card in a year and we are now paying it off.
Most of our budget was devoted to our wedding venue, so much of our day centred around this aspect – our ceremony, catering and reception all took place under one roof so we needed to make sure it was right. For reference we didn’t pay for the ceremony room as the owner of the venue was kind enough to do us a deal which included it in the total cost. We also didn’t pay the early entry fee to set up the day before, as an event that been previously booked was cancelled, which allowed us to get in sooner than we’d originally planned.
The second largest expenditure was on services. I don’t regret a single penny that we spent on any of our suppliers and part of me feels really guilty for originally thinking a band was going to cost so little as they literally made our whole night (I might be in the wedding industry but entertainment is something I know little about). We also made good photography and videography a top priority, so we always knew we were going to be spending a large amount of our budget on these services. However, we did set ourselves limits for these and approached both our Videographer and Photographer who gracioulsy accepted our offers and created a package to fit us.
It’s tricky because you naturally want to spend the majority of your budget on the things you value the most. For Mr T and I that was good food, good photography and good videography but in hindsight we weren’t as financially prepared as we originally thought we were and thats because exactly 10 months before our wedding date, we bought a house. The thing is life happens and as nice as it would for everything to go on hold whilst your planning your wedding – it doesn’t. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, so you have to do what you can to make it work for you.
Altogether we went over budget by £1,928 which all went on the credit card along with a few other bits.
If I could give future me one piece of financial advice now, it would be exactly the same as I told myself before, prioritise and plan but don’t be to hard on yourself if it doesn’t go quite the way you expected.
Now that I’ve had time to review our wedding budget, I do think if we had to priortise ‘NEEDS’ over ‘WANTS’ there were things we could have done to keep within budget. For example we could have opted out of a drinks package, perhaps put some money behind the bar so our guests could have a free drink on arrival and just had Prosecco on the tables to toast.
Myself and the bridesmaids could have also done our own wedding makup, we could have reduced the number of our bridal party and opted for dried flowers that could also have been used in the house long after the wedding was over. I could have sent digital invites and been a little more savvy and recycled old jam jars rather than buying new. But the fact is, I’m glad we did none of these things, because they each made our day that little more special.
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To Conclude…
Budgeting for a wedding is one of the hardest things you will do, I class myself as pretty money-savvy nowadays but even Mr T and I managed to spend over our means. Because of this I would also advise to add a buffer to your budget of about 12-15% to account for unforseen extras, as those amounts really do start to add up. Most of all, starting a budget from the very beginning will not only help you dertimine what you spend, it will help build on your relationship skills, (I advise creating and maintaining the budget together) and give you confidence when you speak to wedding suppliers because you know what you can afford. It might sound daunting at first, but I promise you wont regret it.
