Every wedding has a budget. The only question is whether it is set on purpose at the beginning or discovered by accident at the end. The couples who set it first have one uncomfortable conversation in month one. The couples who do not have a slightly uncomfortable conversation every week for a year. This is how to have the first kind.
Three numbers, one evening
Work them out together, in this order
What you have
Savings you are willing to spend, plus what you can put aside each month between now and the wedding, multiplied by the months. Be honest about the second number; it is the one couples inflate.
What others are giving
Ask parents directly, early, for a figure rather than a promise. A contribution is a number with a date. Ask, gently, whether it comes with expectations about guests, venue or format. It usually does, and knowing is cheaper than finding out.
What you will not borrow
Decide this now. A wedding on credit is the one decision on this page that follows you into the marriage.
Add the first two, subtract nothing, and you have the total. Then take ten percent off it and call that the budget. The ten percent is the contingency, and it will be spent, on the overtime and the extra table and the tent when the forecast turns. Budgeting without it is budgeting to overspend.
Then split it
A total is not a plan until it is lines. Venue, food and drink take roughly half of most weddings; photography ten to fifteen percent; flowers and decor around ten; music, attire, a planner if there is one, and the long tail of stationery, cake, rings and transport take the rest. The full breakdown is in the wedding budget breakdown guide. Split the total by those shares on the same evening, so that when the first venue quote arrives you already know whether it is a yes.
The two conversations to have before the first tour
Say them out loud
One thing each you will not skip
The thing you would spend on if nothing else. One each, protected from the start. Everything else is negotiable and knowing what is not stops you trading it away by accident.
What happens when a quote is over the line
Decide the rule before it happens: the line moves only if another line moves down. A budget that grows when a quote arrives was never a budget.
Set the total before you look at a single venue. A venue tour without a number is a tour of venues you cannot afford, and one of them will be beautiful.
Keep it in one place
A budget lives or dies on whether both of you can see it. If it is in one person's spreadsheet, the other person is guessing, and the money conversation becomes a monthly surprise. Put every line, every quote and every payment against the same total, in the same place, on both phones. UNSTAGED's budget does exactly that, in real time, and it is the reason we built the budget before we built anything else.
Once you have a number, the UNSTAGED budget is where it meets the quotes as they come in.
One evening, three numbers, ten percent off the top. The rest of the year is easier than the evening.
— The UNSTAGED Studio
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