Keep Your Wedding Costs Down

One of the first things a smart, newly engaged couple does for wedding planning is to come up with a wedding budget. This is the amount of money you will have to spend on all parts of your wedding, including your honeymoon. Once you know how much you have to spend, you can then start to plan where to spend that money. Weddings have a way of getting out of control when it comes to how much they cost, so keep some tips in mind to help you keep your wedding costs down.

Before you think you know all of your wedding costs and what you can spend, find out what your family wants to do do help. Some pay for entire weddings, and some can only help a little bit. Some can not help at all. It is important to know what your family can and can not do before you even think about the rest of your wedding costs. Remember that some couples take out loans to help pay for weddings, but that is not always a good idea. The last thing you may want to do is to go into marriage already in debt, especially if you want to buy a house and start a family right away.

Weddings have a way of costing more than you think. This happens if you are not careful with whom you hire and what you want to spend your money on. Think about what is important and then work from there down. If you can not decide between two different venues for your ceremony, you may just decide by the prices. That is often the deciding factor for many brides and grooms in many areas when it comes to wedding costs. What you want to do is have a budget written down and detailed so you know what you can spend on each and every aspect of your big day.

Once you have a budget you have to stick with it. This is where things get troublesome for some couples when it comes to wedding costs. They find a dress that is a bit more than they budgeted for, but they assume they can either make up the money or save it on another part of the wedding. This rarely happens. Do not let someone show you any dresses out of your price range. They do this in hopes that you spend more. Tell the sales person how much you have to spend and tell them that is the limit you have set in stone and to not bother showing you anything more expensive.

Wedding costs can also get out of control with other vendors. They may offer something, but then sneak extras in for extra money. Be sure you know exactly what you are getting for the price quoted to you, and ignore any extras they try to show you. Get your price and terms in writing and sign it. This is one of the best ways to keep wedding costs under control. If you are not careful, you may end up paying almost twice as much for your wedding than you planned, which usually means you end up losing things that were important to you.