setting a budget..........help !!!!

hi!! im going to look at several places this weekend. this may sound crazy, but how the heck do we go about setting a budget? i have no idea how to start. we're going to be buying land in nc & are taking out a loan anyway for that, so we're just going to take out a little bit more for the wedding to have as back up (i know, i know, not a good idea, but we have no choice at this point, unless we win the lottery).....i have no idea about what a good price is to start figuring things out, flowers, dresses, photographers, dj, etc. WHERE DO I START?????????? THANKS!!

First, set a round about figure on what you want your total wedding to cost. Before I knew about this site I was on www.weddingchannel.com. they have an excellent budget manager. You put in your total eg. $25,000 and # of guests and then they break it down by category on how much you should spend for flowers, music, etc. I found it helpful. You can also adjust categories. For example, we are not doing limos so I took that out and also decreased the amount on some items and increased it on others.

Hope that helps.

Some hints:

1. Your reception is the biggest expense. Be flexible about the date and time and guest list and you will save $$$$$. For example, I'm getting married on Monday, July 4th at 11 am at the hall. I am paying less than 1/2 per person than the Saturday night bride 48 hours before me for the same menu.

2. Be brutal about cutting the guest list to as little as possible. For example, think about dates, people from work and children. We made a pack that anyone we hadn't seen or heard from within a year was not invited. We have a guest list of 100. If we had a wedding of 200 people on a Saturday night my reception would cost $40,000 instead of less than $10,000 at the same place.

3. Bridal party- the more people, the more expense.

Hope this helps. Got to run the bell just rang and I'm a teacher.

First think about what kind of wedding you want to have: big, small, intimate, daytime, evening, etc

Are you flexible on the day of the week and time of day? Afternoons, fridays, and sundays will save you lots of money.

How many guests? You should draw up a rough guestlist to get a realistic idea. Multiply that number by the number you would like to pay per head for your reception. Realistic numbers: $75 - $125 (and up) per person.

Then figure that the reception is supposed to be 40% -60% of your total wedding budget.

Also take into account how big of a bridal party you want to have. The bigger the BP, the more $$$ (limos, flowers, gifts, etc)

Do a search on posts regarding wedding budgets on this board and you get alot of insight into the various weddings you can get for the various budgets.

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Posted by David'sbride

First, set a round about figure on what you want your total wedding to cost. Before I knew about this site I was on www.weddingchannel.com. they have an excellent budget manager. You put in your total eg. $25,000 and # of guests and then they break it down by category on how much you should spend for flowers, music, etc. I found it helpful. You can also adjust categories. For example, we are not doing limos so I took that out and also decreased the amount on some items and increased it on others.

Hope that helps.

Some hints:

1. Your reception is the biggest expense. Be flexible about the date and time and guest list and you will save $$$$$. For example, I'm getting married on Monday, July 4th at 11 am at the hall. I am paying less than 1/2 per person than the Saturday night bride 48 hours before me for the same menu.

2. Be brutal about cutting the guest list to as little as possible. For example, think about dates, people from work and children. We made a pack that anyone we hadn't seen or heard from within a year was not invited. We have a guest list of 100. If we had a wedding of 200 people on a Saturday night my reception would cost $40,000 instead of less than $10,000 at the same place.

3. Bridal party- the more people, the more expense.

Hope this helps. Got to run the bell just rang and I'm a teacher.

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I did the same, but used the budget tool at www.theknot.com, it really helped me understand that $15K was nt going to cut it. Start out with a rough figure and a rough number of guests and go from there.

I agree that theknot is not geared towards NY. I too plugged in my $15k budget and got a laught at what it spit out! no way can you do the full wedding experience on LI on $15k. so i am now exploring other options, maybe somethign at a room in a restaurant and not calling it a 'wedding'
the easiest thing is to ask people you know (or on these boards) how much they paid. you can get a rough estimate of how much it will cost.

I ended up spending about $17k, but I cut out a lot of things that many people might think are 'musts.' Also, we weren't able to get our church for a Saturday in November, so we did Sunday instead. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that many of the halls had openings for Sunday at pretty good prices. Here are some things that might help:

1.) Alternate day of the week or month of the year - we did Sunday in November. When we looked at halls, a few said that November and December were discounted months- I know some of the winter months are too. You can get a better price for a Sunday, or a Friday night than for Saturday. Don't worry about what other people will think. The ones who really want to be there will come regardless.

2.) Small bridal party- we just had MOH and Best man. We didn't choose to do this for $ reasons, but again, once we started paying for things, we realized how much it saved us (only one limo, fewer BP gifts, fewer flowers, etc.)

3.) No video - I know this is a definite for most people, but we didn't really want it and it is pretty expensive

4.) DJ, not band - DJs are much cheaper and there are fewer vendors to feed at the reception if you have one or two DJs/MCs instead of a 9 person band.

5.) Ordered our invitations from an online company - we thought about doing it ourselves, but we found some pretty inexpensive ones at rexcraft.com and invitationsbydawn.com that we liked a lot.

6.) Inexpensive favors - we did chocolate and the matchbooks with our name and date

7.) Made my own programs - from kit at Michaels

8.) Made my own STD magnets - got the magnets from magnetvalleyusa.com and used business cards from staples and my own computer.

9.) Did my own centerpieces - not spectacular, but this saved a huge amount of money - they ended up being about $20 a piece

10.) Bought a gown for less than $500 and borrowed my veil. I also bought shoes I would wear again.

11.) Had a friend do my makeup

12.) and probably most importantly....kept the guest list small. We had 100 people and it not only was a really nice number, it kept the cost down. We got to talk to everyone at the wedding and it was a manageble number for us.

I also used the knot calculator to get me started, but rather than just say forget it, I added a little to my budget and then manually changed a few things around.
Hope that helps- Good luck!