If you’re a brand newly engaged person – congratulations!
Christmas and New Year are some of the most popular times of the whole year to get engaged.
Where do you start? It’s easy to start researching madly online looking at venues, frocks, cute decor ideas, flowers, cakes, cocktails, bands – you never knew a wedding required so much organisation!
At the end of a few days you’re overwhelmed, you thought you wanted one kind of wedding, now it seems like you want another and before you know it, you have no idea where to start. Sound familiar..?
There are plenty of things to think about and some of the most important are when and where? But before you can even think about that you have to think about budget. Get yourself a spreadsheet (you need to get serious about wedding planning!) and start sketching out how much you think you want to spend. Are your family going to be making a contribution? If they’re paying most or all of the costs, you’re going to have to sit down with them and talk about budgets. What do THEY have in mind?
Some of our couples are sharing the cost of their wedding between the two of them and also each of their families. Some couples are paying for everything themselves and some are lucky enough to have the entire cost paid for them.
You need to have some frank discussions between the two of you about your expectations of the wedding costs and if you are getting help from other members of the family, you’ll need to have frank discussions with them too. This is no time to be coy about money, being up front and honest now could save embarrassment and disappointment later so be brave and start talking.
Until you have an idea of budget you really can’t start looking in detail at venues. It’s a shame to fall in love with a venue only to find its outside your budget. Of course you might need to do some initial research to have some idea of how much the big ticket items like venue, dress, bands etc might cost so your budget can inform your choices and vice versa.
Now is not the time for details, now is the time for setting the overall budget and then seeing what you can fit within that.
I’ll be doing a series of posts on the beginning of wedding planning and where to start so do pop back for some more tips on how to plan a great wedding day.
