3 easy steps to make your wedding expenses less painful

I know you are tired of all the information about pandemic and how hard it is for all of us. It’s not by chance that I don’t really mention it in my socials, or anywhere, really. But one thing has to be said straight: weddings are not a cheap thing and now, because of difficult economy situation, we have to watch our budgets more than ever.

Probably most of you hate budgeting. I’m one of those from the other end of the spectrum – I love planning how to spend my money. In this blog post I’d like to show you that budgeting your wedding doesn’t mean resigning from your dreams. It actually helps you to stay calm and focus on what’s important.

1. PRIORITIZE

Yes, so many great things, so little money… This is exactly why prioritizing is so important while planning your wedding day. The best way to do it is to sit down and write down three things each of you finds the most important for the wedding. It can be literally anything – band, beautiful designer dress, venue, photographer, specific type of drinks, food, you name it.

When this is done, compare your lists and probably some of the points will be the same on both of them. For example, on our wedding day our priorities were food, music and photographer. We were doing what we can to get as close to the ideal scenario as possible.

2. DO THE MATHS AND BE CREATIVE

Believe me, I know your pain. I hate maths too, especially if it means subtracting. Well, there’s no escape from that this time. Do the research and check how much does it cost to get the service you REALLY want. Good excell spreadsheet with all the numbers put next to each other makes it a lot easier. I realize it’s stresfull and time consuming to prepare such document, that’s why I’ve done it for you. You can download it for free on the bottom of this blog post. Together with another gift, but we’ll get there in a second.

Ok, now when you have it black on white, it’s time to think. How to get close to the ideal without going close to buncrupcy at the same time? I’ll give you again my own wedding as an example. As I already mentioned, music was very important to us. We wanted to have big life band, with drums and someone that can actually sing. Of course it turned out that we can’t afford such service and we really didn’t want the cheap band to kill our ears after two songs. We decided no band is better than a bad one, so we started to think about having a DJ instead. We coundn’t afford good band but we could afford good DJ from another part of the country. We gave him (long) list of songs we want him to play and it was amazing experience! Some guests decided on having DJs on their own weddings after our party!

3. TALK WITH OTHERS

For sure you have friends who already have been there and know your struggle. Just ask them what was the biggest financial problem and how did they solve it? Maybe they will have simple answers to your complicated questions? Or perhaps they will help you to get another perspective. There’s nothing wrong in planning your expences, all in all you worked very hard to earn that money. Spending it wisely means no more than respecting your own time and energy.

So don’t be shy and ask you friends what is it that makes great wedding for them? Is it Bride / Groom pillows all over the house or is it a great dinner? Such conversations will give you a greater look at the needs of your guests and will help you to plan the perfect wedding day.