Since one of the pluses to a long engagement is the ability to save up for the wedding expenses over time, perhaps it’s time to broach the subject of exactly what our budget is. After all, budget it one of the big three to decide early on, along with when and where, and can have quite a bit to do with the latter.

I firmly believe that your wedding can be as lavish as you want; it doesn’t matter if it’s your first or your fifth. Whatever you want–as long as you can afford it–go for it.

And while Todd and I are a double-income-no-kids household, in possession of good jobs and able pay our bills every month a wedding budget wasn’t really something we’d planned on needing, oh, ever. Since I changed the rules, so to speak, on that topic, we had to confront the issue that if we wanted a wedding, we would need to pay for it.

Being the non-saver of our duo, I had to take a hard look at what I could realistically save up over the next 2 years and a bit. I figured $100 a month would be tight for me (for reasons I’ll get to in another post) but I could do it. That sounds like a lot, right?

Um, yeah. $2500. Double that because Todd is already adept at saving and I’m insisting we do this equally and you’ve got our starting wedding budget: $5000. (Okay, because we started saving before the engagement was official, it’s more in the $5500 range but let’s be cautious because, well, it’s me. And while there are plans for being able to increase that amount, it’s our bare-bones budget and the safe number to work from.)

I’ll sigh while you laugh.

But I know we can do it! It may not be easy as pie but I’m convinced it’ll all work out okay, we’ll just have to do a few things that every bride and groom have had to do since the beginning of time, even those with unlimited budgets:

1. Prioritize
2. Shop Smart
3. Make Some Sacrifices

Plus, we’ve got a few things on our side:

1. Small guest list–we’re talking a cap of 50 people, including us!
2. I’m an inveterate crafter with my own in-home studio (own my own Gocco and everything) and Todd is quite handy with tools and such.
3. We don’t want a big massive show-stopper of an event, just a good party to celebrate this next step in our lives together.

Next thing is to figure out how to allocate our meager funds to make sure we get not the perfect wedding, but a wedding that’s perfectly us!

 

How did you figure out how much your wedding budget would be?