Chapter 2: The Wedding Budget
Your wedding budget is by far the MOST important piece of your wedding.
Without having this locked down and kept fairly firm, you’re going to have a rough time planning the wedding and you will be worrying about other things, like coming up with deposits and having to pay for a vendor such as myself.
That’s no fun!
By far, the easiest thing to do is come up with a budget to start with.
Many websites out there have tools that you can print our or you can create something in an excel spreadsheet, but Carole and I took the liberty to design something in house here, a online wedding budget tool.
Before you start with the tool, you and your soon-to-be need to sit down and take a hard look at your finances.
If you’re like most typical American’s, you’re going to be in debt, lots of it.
Student loans, credits card, car payments, house payments, the list goes on and on.
You have a couple of choices when it comes to the wedding budget here, you could work your way through it wedding debt, you can put it on credit cards or unsecured loans, ask family for some help or you can save up for it and pay cash.
Paying cash is the best way here, meaning getting a side job or working extra hours to make additional money to pay for the wedding, that and also trimming the fat so to speak.
Whatever the method you choose (or combination) you and your soon-to-be spouse need to be on board with a whole number to spend, how its going to spent and how your going to pay for it all too.
Be on the same page with each other and how you will tackle this wedding.
Without good communication and some serious commitment here, you’ll quickly lose out.
The Budget Tool
This is how the tool works.
Put in the total amount of money you want to spend for your wedding day.
The application will break out everything for you in a reasonable way and give you a starting point to work from. It will not be your final budget resting place, but the idea is to give you a high-level idea of the numbers that you would be spending for the wedding.
Because wedding vendors vary in cost region to region the average cost for that specific vendor may be higher or lower by as much as 15%.
This is a great starting point to start working from.
For example, if you’re having a $20,000 wedding, then you need to look at venues in the $3,000 range with a 10% variance.
The two biggest factors in the wedding cost are your wedding venue and the wedding catering.
Catering (which includes wedding cake, alcohol, plates, linens and the like) will cost you the most because of the amount of guests that you have on the list. The tool is based on roughly 100 guests (not including the bridal party, vendors).
Catering/ Cake/ Alcohol Costs
Here, you will see that adding 100 extra wedding guests to the list will quickly raise your fee from nearly $8,000 to closer to $12,000.
Guests are your biggest expense and couples often forget about that thinking the venue is the largest cost when in fact, it’s usually the second highest.
The Hardest Part
Perhaps the hardest part of the wedding budget isn’t really how much you’re planning to spend, but being able to stick to it.
In fact, we did a survey in 2012-2013 asking 1,312 couples across the mid-Atlantic United States if they stuck to the budget, we’re close or just flat out blew it.
Met the Wedding Budget
From the data collected, only 18% of couples stuck with the budget while a whopping 78% went over the budget. Surprisingly here, about 3% actually went under. (2% of those asked said they were unsure).
Of those 78%, almost 89.2% said they went over the budget by $7,000 or more!
Who Should Pay What?
One of the common questions asked with those getting married is who’s going to pay for what and rightly-fully so.
Years ago, it was expected that the father-of-the-bride fit the bill to send his little girl off to the man of her dreams, well that’s mostly a common misconception here.
Today in 2020, most couples are excepted to pay their own way for the wedding day with the help of the parents to some extent, that according to Martha Stewart Wedding magazine.
Now that’s the “traditional” answer to the common question, but that’s not reality, couples today are very different than those from 25 years ago.
In fact, most couples will fit the entire bill themselves with family helping about 23% of the time because the couple asked.
But what about actually paying for it?
When it comes to starting to create an effective wedding budget, one of the first things you need to do is first figure out who is going to pay for the wedding.
This could be any combination of people, sometimes it’s all yourself, sometimes your parents might help, maybe you take on a second job to help cover the expenses or maybe you are considering getting a wedding loan in order to pay for your wedding.
How Couples Paid for the Wedding
Through a Second Income
Couples lives together and uses one income to pay for the wedding, the other to live
Couples will take on additional part time jobs
Couples will take on overtime if possible
Through Credit
Couples will get a wedding loan, sometimes called unsecured loans at a bank or Propser.com
Couples will use credit cards
Through Family
Couples will ask family to help
While the money portion of your wedding might be an awkward thing to talk about with family, it’s important to know how you plan to pay for your wedding day along with all the features that come with it.
Don’t be surprised if you get a lot of “Sorry, I’d love to help but I can’t…” from friends or family, not all families can simply pay for it out of pocket.
How wedding is paid in 2019
Typically, couples will wind up spending about 80% of the wedding form their own pockets with family helping out, sometimes friends too.
I’ve found the best way to ask for help is by asking for friends or family to pay for a certain portion of the wedding, like a photographer or wedding cake.
Breaking up the wedding into smaller chunks and being specific about what the money will be used for often times works better than just asking for a flat X amount of dollars here.
Should we use credit cards, loans or cash?
Honestly, the notion, cash-is-king is the by far the best way to pay for a wedding.
The cold hard truth is that either way, YOU have to pay for it, are you going to pay for it upfront or 10 years down the road?
Sadly, most couples tends to just charge it on the old credit card which puts the couple into debt when they’re first married.
Anyone that knows about marriages, being in debt is usually a hot button topic when it comes to fighting.
While credit cards are an easy way to pay for it, I highly discourage people form paying on credit cards, even for the short haul. Take a look at this example.
Say you hire me and Carole for your wedding photos and video, our common price for both is $2,450 (with some credits). You put all of that on a credit card that has a modest 19% interest rate.
Over 84 months, the typical time is costs to pay off a balance in the United States, you’re paying $5,309 for our services!
Like we said, cash is king.
That same service in cash is the same amount as the booking price, $2,450.
When it comes to bank loans or “wedding loans” you may sometimes see at places like Propser.com, you will many times be worse than a credit card when paying them back over time. I myself used this when I remarried and man was it bad news.
I took out a loan to pay for the catering and a few other smaller line items, borrowing $4,000 seemed like a pretty good idea, at the time that its
This was for a 36 months paying back and the monthly payment was actually pretty cheap, about $136 a month. Well, the interest was 36% and fortunately I was able to pay it off in 16 months instead of 36.
Just look at the amount of interest I paid back, more than $1,100, They made a LOT of money off my $4,000 loan.
My best advice as a wedding vendor is try hard to stay away from debt as much as you can when it comes to life in general, especially weddings.
The ONLY time you should be doing any sort of financing or monthly payment plans is when there is a 0% rate and even then, pay if off BEFORE the wedding day.
Sadly as a wedding vendor, I see too many times couples hiring me for services and using borrowed money and I cringe at the thought that someone does that.
What you are doing is blowing out your wedding budget by borrowing money and that’s the main point here, borrowing money means you’re extending out the budget from a few percent to 20-40% at times!
The best advice I can give for paying for the wedding is two things.
If you’re already living together as many couples tend to do today, have one salary for living and the second for paying for the wedding.
If you’re living apart, then I recommend taking on a part-time job like delivering pizza, driving for Lyft/Uber or working a part-time job up until the wedding day.
It is easy?
No, it’s not.
But paying for the wedding BEFORE you say “I do” will put you and your new spouse in a much better financial position and much less likely to fight over money issues thereafter too.
Can We TRULY Save Money at the Wedding?
Yes, in fact that’s one of the main reasons I put this wedding education program together, to help you save money through the wedding process or at least try.
There are many routes you can take to help get the vendors that work best for you with being able to pay reasonable rates for everything.
Listen, my wife and I are in the wedding photography and video part of the industry, we see a lot of waste and a LOT of overpricing when it comes to vendors.
Most everything you do when it comes to the wedding boils down to two things, budget and emotion.
The truth is that there is a fair price to pay for services like ours, but there is also a point in which you overpay for a vendor because you get your emotions wrapped up in them.
Sure, vendors come in all sorts of price ranges and quality, but think about it like this for a moment.
Lets take wedding photographer as a base line example since thats what we do.
Without getting into the logistics (I’ll do a blog about it soon) of everything, it cost me and Carole a LOT of money to be able to do the services that we do, photos and films.
We need to charge a fair price where we can pay off the $20,000 in gear that we’ve invest in on a regular basis, pus marketing and the like too. Overhead in our business needs to be turned over every 3-4 years. That means every 3-4 years we need new gear, new computers, and the like.
Truthfully, we could charge twice what we thin is fair. Some in the industry for example do charge twice what we charge and honestly we’re no better than they are. This isn’t a price bashing session, I’m trying to make a point here.
If you could get the same type of service for half the cost, would you take it?
That’s a great question and I have some reference to provide you with that answer.
Take the auto industry for example.
Everyday vs. Luxury brands
Many car brands tend to have a regular, everyday brand then a luxury brand.
I myself an a Nissan guy, I like them, so much that I’ve owned more Nissan’s than any other brand. But, they also have a luxury brand called Infiniti.
They make a lot of the same types of cars and change them up slightly.
Nissan Armada vs Infiniti QX80
I recently purchased a Nissan Armada and got an awesome price for it about $40,000, slightly used. I could have bought the Infiniti QX80 which is more than $68,000, but it’s basically the same car.
They have the same engine (slightly different displacements), same transmissions, very similar looks, almost the same inside and yet they cost two completely different prices.
Why would someone choose the Armada vs. the QX80?
Because they are appealing to different markets, thats why. Truth be told, its the same SUV underneath it all.
The truth is that many people that offer luxury services often times use the same elements that the everyday counterparts use, yet people pay more for that luxury feel. It’s all about emotion.
And you’re saying so what Joshua, how does this apply to the wedding industry?
Well, many vendors appeal to different types of demographics.
Using the photo industry again, you have those budget photographers for under $1,000 (think like a used car), those that are everyday or middle of the road couples and those that are rich, people with high end taste and will pay more for the brand name or for having a bit more oomph if you will.
There are actually 4 types of wedding vendor categories, budget, mid-range, high-end and luxury.
Types of Wedding Photographers
Part of this education is showing you how to dissect those demographic ranges and keep the emotion out of it.
I could have spend nearly twice for the QX80, but why would I do that when the Armada is the same thing with a different skin?
Makes no sense to me and it shouldn’t to you either.
My point is that yes, you can save money, you just have to know how. Keep emotion out of things when making decisions. Make logical choices and ones that align with your pocketbook too.
In the next chapter, Carole and I will share with you the most valuable player in your wedding, it’s the wedding planner. We explain why and why you should be hiring them for the duration of the wedding planning process and not just the day of.