Budgets and Brides

Let’s face it, nothing can strike down that post-engagement bliss like getting real about your wedding budget. It’s easy to get caught up in the romance of planning your floral arrangements, scheduling cake tastings, and booking the band, but there’s nothing terribly romantic about budgeting for the costs associated with a wedding.

The best initial investment you can make as a bride? Hiring a creative wedding planner to take the burden off your shoulders—you deserve it! There’s already so much on your plate, the last thing you need is to be kept awake at night thinking about maintaining your budgeting spreadsheets.

The good news is that you can actually plan a wedding without going into debt, especially with the help of us here at Neon River Weddings. But before you can get to the fun part of the planning, you have to sit down and get real about your finances to determine a realistic budget. This might mean booking an appointment with your financial advisor to go over your savings portfolio to see what’s feasible and to ensure that you won’t be scraping by once you’ve paid for your wedding. 

But what are some other important considerations to make when determining your wedding budget? Let’s take a look at some essential steps.

1. Determine What Matters Most 

Discover where you’re willing to make compromises by making a list of non-negotiables. What are the things that will make your wedding a magical day you and your guests will never forget? Is it a live band? Lobster served at dinner? An Instagrammable flower wall? Whatever it is, you’ll want to have a good idea of your meaningful must-haves. Equally as important, however, is knowing what you care less about. Savings elsewhere means you’ll be less likely to overspend, and leaves some extra wiggle room to invest in what you really want. 

 

2. Plan For Emergencies + Surprises

There are few guarantees in life, but one is the potential for emergencies or surprises to spring up while planning a wedding. One of the major benefits of hiring a wedding planner is that they have tight-knit connections to vendors and can examine fine-print on contracts in their sleep. If you name any possible emergency or surprise fee to a wedding planner, they probably already have a contingency plan mapped out. Regardless, it’s important to set some budget aside for those what-ifs in case they do happen so that you’re not paying for it later.

 

3. Keep Your Feet On The Ground

When you’re planning a wedding, you’re doing so with the intention that this will be the only wedding you’ll ever have to plan for. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, after all! But to get your happily ever after, you have to keep one foot in reality. You’ll likely be surrounded by temptations to throw your budget off track, but you don’t want to be paying off your wedding debt until the day you retire, do you? You can count on a wedding planner to pull you back down to earth when your ideas become greater than your budget and to find creative compromises that you’ll love just as much as your original wishes. 

The main takeaway? Wedding planners have your back and your budget at the front of their minds. In fact, their main priority is ensuring that you get what you want while avoiding overspending. Ready to get started on planning the wedding of your dreams, slide into our inbox at hello@neonriverweddings.com. We’re waiting for you!