Figuring out the budget for your wedding is no easy feat. Your wedding will likely be the biggest party you’ll ever host- and the most costliest. After all, you can’t move forward with your dream wedding until you know how much money you have to spend.
We’ll let you in on a secret! Planning your wedding budget doesn’t have to be difficult or scary. It can actually be downright simple, especially if you have everything planned with a comprehensive budget breakdown.
To get started, you need to figure out what you want your wedding day to look like. What kind of venue are you looking for? What type of food will be served? What type of entertainment would you like? Once you have these answers, the next step is finding out how much these things cost and how they will fit into your overall budget.
Let’s talk in detail about how to do it.
Set Priorities. Decide negotiables & non-negotiables
One of the most important aspects of planning a wedding is deciding how much you can afford to spend and on what! It’s important to decide what your wedding budget will be and what you can spend on. Your wedding budget should include both the non-negotiables and the negotiable parts of your wedding.
The non-negotiables are those things that you need for your wedding, such as venue, catering, flowers, and other rentals. These are mostly the costliest and take up the most budget in the wedding. Things that you have in mind but may not necessarily need are negotiable. They may be nice to have but not necessary for your day to go off without a hitch. It’s the easiest to cut & save from your non-negotiables. A few examples of things that might be considered negotiable are flower arrangements, or whether or not you want to hire a professional music system or a DJ instead of using your own Spotify with pre-chosen songs.
Choosing the ‘Right’ date
Choosing the right wedding date is important because it has to fit with your budget. The best time to get the best price for a wedding is when you can find a lot of availability and you are not too early that it overlaps with other occasions.
Mostly, if you plan your wedding on short notice with a lot of mahurats/wedding dates, the cost will be on the higher side as the cost of the venue and other rental stuff will be expensive. Whereas if you plan it way well in advance and in not so highly auspicious muhurat or long weekends, the same venue will come at a cheaper price. This is the case with all other wedding bookings like makeup, caterer, decorator, choreography, photography etc.
Preparing the guest list
There’s no doubt that if you want to plan a wedding under a budget, you have to manage the guest list very well. Whether you’re looking for a close-knit affair or an extravagant party, it is important to plan the guest list in advance to plan your wedding budget.
If you’re looking for a destination wedding, or a wedding with very close knit family members and friends, managing your guests will be easy and will also make a lot of room for other things in your budget. But if you’re planning a wedding for a big gathering and still want to make it happen under a budget then do it in the city where most of your guests reside, like your home town or the city you currently live in. This way, you won’t have to plan for their travel, accomodation and other amenities.
Don’t spend a bomb on decor
Weddings are all about beautiful venues, insta-worthy spaces, and lovely decor that truly makes everything feel like a dream. It’s one of the most important elements of wedding planning that could make or break your dream wedding vision. It truly brings and uplifts the beauty of the venue. But if you want to plan a wedding under budget, don’t go overboard with the decor. If you’re on a low budget, a great way is to cut down on flowers and other decor arrangements by reusing them wherever you can. You can reuse the flower arrangement of the sangeet for a table arrangement on your wedding night. Or you can go for artificial flowers, vintage props that will give exact breathtaking appeal without burning a hole in your pocket.
DIY Wisely
This might not sound very practical to pull it off during a highly hectic wedding planning, but it is actually very effective to cut down on cost. There’s a lot of things where instead of professional help, you can do it yourself or ask for help in your family to cut a lot of costs. Like having a friend who’s a pro in dancing? Wedding choreography sorted! Love how your aunt does her hair, you might ask her to get your haldi and sangeet hair, if not the main event, to cut down the cost even further.
Even for your wedding invitations, there’re a lot of online websites which help you to design your own invitation with very minimum design sense requirement and absolutely no cost. This way you’re not only saving money, but that extra personal touch will add so much meaning to your special day.
Your wedding is a day for your celebration….celebration of love, of life that you’ll have ahead. It should not be a cause of stress because of money. So the best way to plan your wedding with a small budget is to make your own rules. Don’t feel bad about decisions that you think are ‘trendy’, ‘popular’ or a typical thing to do. All the power to you and have fun planning your wedding!
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