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Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Wedding Wednesday: Budget Woes

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When I got engaged all of the websites and books and blogs and people repeated to me the importance of a wedding budget. It is THE most important thing to have a stress-free wedding. I've been engaged for 9 months and I do not have a budget.

Not because I haven't tried. I have forms up the wazoo and sit down to work on them all the time, but then I just get overwhelmed. I don't like to see the glaring amount of money I somehow have to save to have my wedding in 8 months. 

At first I was excited to see that it was possible to have a 4k dollar wedding with a bunch of people. All of these blogs boasted about it. I could do under 5k. Besides, I have a lot of people donating their time and skills to us.

Then Iman and I went to look at venues and we realized that to get married in Southern California...that 5k wedding would only work if we miraculously had a huge house and backyard to get married in. If we had a huge house and backyard...we probably wouldn't need to have a 5k wedding.

Our venue, including meal service and champagne, costs $15k. That is the cheapest we were able to find, and miraculously it has absolutely everything I wanted.

Our wedding photographer is a dear friend of mine and we're paying less than $2k for her and a second shooter [also impossible in Southern California...we're flying her in from OHIO].

We don't have to worry about: any of my attire, most likely his attire thanks to all of the suit places doing their buy the groomsmen, get the groom free, any of the attendants attire [they're buying them], DJ, cake, my hair, makeup is largely discounted, most likely we won't have to pay our officiant...and you see how the costs were cut low.

Yet, I'm still looking at a number around 24k. Which is roughly what I make in a year working 2 jobs and a million hours.

My other problem with the budget is that, I really have no idea how much anything is going to cost because I'm not paying for a lot of things and I'm too anxious about it to sit down and do the research on pricing. Our day of wedding coordinator [I won a discount in a blog contest!], is super helpful with giving me feedback on prices but she's not going to write my budget for me. I'm not paying her for that. I'm paying her for day of and anything she does extra is out of the pure kindness of her heart.

I can't rave about her enough. She is phenomenal.

But really, I need to just sit down and do the research and write the prices down in my own custom budget.

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Only, I think I'm way too busy trying to work a million hours to pay for the wedding. I cut back my hours [I'm sure you've seen my rant post where I decided it was enough]. My room is finally clean.

I have no more excuses but to sit down, do my research and plan my budget.

I don't like budgeting. I don't even have a regular budget. The important part is that I'm trying at least?

Hopefully by next week I'll have something made up [and maybe even share].

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4 comments:

  1. Oh man. I hear you. Honestly, the budget is one of the biggest things I stress about. We are already over ours and we haven't paid for everything yet. Somehow I feel like it will work out regardless and be a beautiful day, but geez. It's so stressful!

    My budget is 25K and I am getting married in the middle of nowhere GA. We are coming out of pocket almost 6k for our photographer and videographer (these were HUGE deals to me and I wanted really good people). It's just part of it, I guess. We also had a BIG list of must haves, and we are getting them all but for a price.

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  2. Ugh, the budget really is so tough. It's amazing how quickly all of the details really add up. It doesn't help that you're getting married in one of the most expensive in the country! However, I am completely impressed with all of the deals and help you have received. You are kind of amazing with finding the deals - and a blog contest for a coordinator? Amazing idea!

    Haha good luck figuring out your budget and thanks for linking up!

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  3. holy balls 24k?! I HAVE to have a budget cause all of it is coming specifically out of MY pocket. I'm literally getting no help from anyone. Mine will only be about 7k, but then again you might have more guests than me

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  4. I never really had a budget per se. I did download a wedding budget worksheet, and would fill things out as they came up (i.e. the amount of the venue, the amount of the photographer), and then play with the other percentages to make them work with our estimated total. Although looking back, I have to imagine we went way over budget, but I can't bare to go through the receipts to figure out how much.

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