Your wedding budget

It's easy to over spend on your wedding preparations, as it is to go over an overdraft limit. My suggestion would be to sit with your partner and write a list if the things that immediately come to mind for the wedding day. These are your ‘must haves’ and will probably include: Invites, fee for the church or civil ceremony, transport, venue, food and drink, rings, dresses and shoes, flowers, suit hire, cake, entertainment and the honeymoon. What you should do now is price these up so you have all the ‘must haves’ covered.

At this stage if you feel this will meet what you can afford, stop. Don’t feel pressured by what other people are doing. This is supposed to be a special day where you show the commitment you have to your partner, to your friends and family. Some of the best weddings are done on a shoe-string budget and everyone still remembers the day with the same ‘teary eyed’ nostalgia. There is no point in maxing out the credit card because when the honeymoon is over it will come back to haunt you. Do you really want that kind of pressure in your first year of married life?

So now you have the ‘must haves’ covered and have sent out the invitations, you might be pleasantly surprised to find people will offer to help you out with things. Here’s an idea: have a girly night where you make the bomboniere and the table decorations. After all, this is what it’s all about, getting people together. If you feel you have not quite spent the whole budget, or you find you have a rich relative who wants to splash-out on you, then you can go to the next stage. Go out and get a few wedding magazines and see what’s available for the contemporary wedding. There are some great new ideas from the sublime to the ridiculous. What about a pair of ‘Bride’ and ‘Groom’ cufflinks?

We all hate to be tied to our bank statements, but managing a budget is something we all navigate on a daily basis; treat wedding plans with the same respect and you and your partner will have the have the best wedding day ever and come back from the honeymoon with great plans for the years ahead.