It’s one of the biggest fears couples have about weddings that often times comes true. I’m talking about wedding budgets and why they most times go way over budget.

In the United States, more than 45% of couples go over budget with an average of about $7,319, and some of those couples more than $20,000 or more, that according to 2017 data from The Knot.

Why couples go over their wedding budgets?

For a couple of reasons. First, the most common reason is that couples simply don’t have a detailed, realistic wedding budget. One of the most effect things that couple should do but often times don’t is sit down, come up with a complete game plan on how much they plan to spend, where they will get the money from and how they will pay things off.

It’s a huge downfall that many couples just blindly go into wedding planning thinking they have an idea based on what others are spending and not realizing that whats reasonable in cost to their friends isn’t always reasonable to them.

“The number one thing couples need to do before they meet with any wedding vendor is to design a budget and stick to that budget throughout the entire wedding process.”

We actually developed an online wedding budget calculator that can help give you a great starting point. This calculator is based on 100 wedding guests and you simply input the total amount you wish to spend on your wedding and the calculator will estimate what you should be spending for the major categories.

Second, many couples will make decisions as they go along meeting various vendors and before they know it, they extend the budget by many thousands of dollars and they are out of wedding funds.

It’s more of an emotional process than anything else, couples see envision themselves in the images or videos they see of weddings the vendor has worked.

One of the best sales tactics many wedding vendors do is sell their services with your heart and being able to envision yourself in their wedding dreams. It’s not a bad thing and in fact selling with your heart is one of two ways just about every business operates.

From grocery shopping to car shopping to weddings, the two methods to persuade you to buy is with your heart and your pocketbook.

So, what does that have to do with weddings?

Couples tend to get their heart string pulled with many wedding vendors because they visually see themselves with what the vendor can provide, so if you have a budget of say $2,000 and the vendor is $4,000, then pulling at your heart strings is how they will most likely get your business.

On the other side, your pocketbook, other companies will use price or value-added services to book couples, sometimes they’ll use both.

So, how can we keep on budget for our wedding?

It’s hard, trust me, but you can do a few things to stay on track, it takes some willpower and a few tactics, but you beat the budget monster.

First, take a look at each of your wedding categories and take the number you come with and create a range, plus or minus. For wedding photography the spread is 8-13% with 10% being the average couples spend on wedding photos. Here is a tool we made for wedding photos, give it a try.

Take that range and use it to seek out all the vendors in your region that fall into that range.

From that, connect with them, compare what they offer and what makes them unique. Creating an excel document can help you figure that out, much like the one below.

As you start to go through and narrow down, you should start to see several commonalities as well as differences. It’s those differences that will separate the vendors and what you will want to use to help determine whom you’d like to work with and book.

Getting back on track with the task at hand, those are the vendors within your budget that you should seek.

What about everyone else and who they’re using?

That’s a giant mistake, asking what everyone else is using for their vendors.

Not everyone can afford what you can afford and vise versa.

So, just because a wedding vendor is popular doesn’t mean you should spend more than your budget has to book them.

One of the biggest mistakes I see just about every day on social media are questions about who to use for their wedding vendor.

Let me share a couple of examples with you.

Here is an example that I searched for and found within a couple minutes.

The problem with this is two fold, first, there isn’t a price range for each of the vendors they’re seeking and because of that, they will get everything under the sun with regards to vendors, price ranges and quality.

Second, they are lumping out the vendors together instead of doing separate posts for them. Unfortunately, this post got more than 90 responses and not all of them were for what the person asked for and several are out of their price range too.

It wastes their time and the vendors time too.

Be as a Specific as You Can

When do you reach out for help, ask for two things, one vendor type a time and a range to work with.

As I’ve stated previously on the blog, make sure you have the following in your online posts:

• Wedding Date

• Price range

• Vendor type you’re seeking

• Details about the vendor you’re seeking

Here is a poor example:

“ISO a wedding vendor for my November wedding that does great work, I want them affordable because were on a tight budget.”

And here is a good example of the same thing:

“ISO of wedding vendor for my November 24th, 2022 wedding day. We have a budget range of $4,000-$4,600 and we’re seeking someone that can work with a luxury rustic theme and provide us with tasty treats!”

The MORE Specific you are when asking others about wedding vendors, the BETTER you’re results will be.

Any Other Advice You Can Give about Budgets?

Yes, build in enough padding to your budget to except to go over it.

Overspending is common enough that we recommend actually planning to go over your budget while making your budget.

It's a smart way to beat the system when you think about it:

By accounting for extra charges (like weather backup plans, hidden costs, overtime fees, miscellaneous emergencies), you allow yourself a little wiggle room and won't technically end up overspending.

Take your entire budget and add roughly 15% to it.

Beyond that, try your best to stick to the wedding budget itself as much as possible. Be smart about your wedding decisions and you should be perfectly fine.