Planning a wedding budget always starts with a series of conversations, not just with your partner, but also with your families. Here’s what you need to know before you get started.
Not one couple ever in the history of planning a wedding has been excited to plan their wedding budget. It’s not a thing. There are no champagne glasses brought out when you get to the end of the monumental task. Should there be? Our wedding planning team sure thinks so!
Darcy, our lead wedding planner at Easy Weddings, is here to walk you through the conversations you need to have before you start reaching out to suppliers and venues. Once your budget planning is complete, she says, “Reach for that bottle of bubbly! Seriously! You’ve nailed one of the hardest parts of planning your wedding.”
Below is a breakdown of the conversations to get you started planning your wedding budget, along with Darcy’s discussion point suggestions.
Conversation with your partner
The very first conversation to have about your wedding budget is the conversation you’ll have as a couple. This is challenging for many couples, but you got this. You can start by talking through what you want your wedding to feel like then following that discussion with more specifics about what you’re willing and able to spend.
Here are Darcy’s suggested discussion points:
- Will ours be a large wedding or would we prefer something intimate?
- Should we stay local or consider a destination wedding?
- What are the three most important elements of our wedding?
- Can we afford to pay for the wedding ourselves?
- If not, who do we think can reasonably contribute to our wedding budget?
- Do we need to consider a longer engagement so we can strategically save for our wedding?
- How will saving for our wedding affect other things we’re saving for?
- Have your parents mentioned anything about contributing to our wedding budget?
- How should we approach our families about contributing to our wedding budget?
- If our parents are contributing to our wedding, do we need to give them more say in the decisions on who we hire and where we host our wedding?
Conversation with your parents, grandparents, or any other contributors
Many couples accept help with their wedding budget from their parents, grandparents, or other close relatives. If you’re in the position to do so, it’s important to have clear communication with them throughout the wedding planning process so you know you’re on the same page about the extent of their contributions and how involved they’d like to be.
Here are Darcy’s suggested discussion points:
- First off, thank you! It means the world to us that you’re willing to contribute to our wedding.
- How much are you comfortable contributing to our wedding planning?
- Do you have any preferences about how our wedding budget is allocated?
- Would you like to have a say in any specific aspects of our wedding?
- If so, how can we best communicate about these details?
- Is it easier to do one lump-sum transfer, multiple sums over time, or would you prefer to pay the suppliers directly?
- How involved would you like to be in our wedding planning?
- Are there any additional wedding events you’d like to contribute to?
Revisit your first wedding budget conversation as a couple
Now that you have an idea of the total funds you’ll have to allocate to your wedding budget, it’s time to do the nitty-gritty planning of how you’ll prioritise each wedding category. Go back to your initial plans for your wedding ambience and dive into what a more detailed version of that looks like now that you know what your budget reality is.
From here, you can start to collect ideas about what elements of your wedding are most important to each of you individually and as a couple.
No idea where to start with your wedding budget? Book a time here for a FREE one-on-one consultation with our lovely wedding planners and they’ll get the ball rolling on your perfect day.
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