Cover photo by Cara Mannino and Chris Largen.
I have never been good at setting a budget. Whether it’s for Christmas shopping, the monthly bills, or planning a wedding, my brain just does not work that way. Things cost what they cost, and I just do my best to figure out how to pay for it. If I decided I had a $100 to spend on something, and the one I really want is $120, I’m not going to let trying to stay on budget force me to make a bad purchase.
That being said, I knew as soon as I started this series, someone would ask, “What’s your budget?”
Well, my goal was to keep it under $10,000, including the cost of the cruise. That is not happening, because we crossed the 11K mark on January 26th. I could have kept it under $10,000 if I’d really wanted to. We could have skipped some things: I could have stuck with the original wedding bands I found that were much cheaper, I could have cut things from the favors, or cut the favors entirely, and I could have not offered to take care of parking for everyone. All little things, but they add up quickly.
These were my initial estimates:
Cruise: $1,944
Venue/Floral/Cake/Music: $3,000
Photography: $2,876
Dress and Attire: $570
Invitations: $115
Transporation: $55
Jewelry: $185
Other: $383
Total: $9,128
- Cruise 21.4%
- Wedding Package 33%
- Photography 31.6%
- Invitations 1%
- Transportation .8%
- Jewelry 2%
- Other 4.2%
Now it’s not like I sat down with my parents or Jay and we said, “We have X to spend” and then went over that amount. I specifically told my parents, and Jay told his parents, that if they wanted to help us recover on the back end, they were welcome to do so, but we were going to pay for this on our own. I wanted full control over the guest list, and all decisions, and knew that wouldn’t be the case unless it was our money. One of us has a large extended family, and the other one doesn’t, and we wanted to be able to keep the list immediate family, and close friends.
So, our budget was more a plan of what we were spending and when. Now I’m hoping to keep it around $12,000 when it’s all said and done, but we’ll see!
Up next, invitations!
