calculate a wedding budget
It's interesting:"During my research - and yes, believe it or not, this was researched - I looked into the three key elements of a wedding day: first, the aisle, the longest walk ..."
Planning a wedding can be a lesson in compromise. You don't want to begin your new life overwhelmed by debt, but you do want to mark one of the most important occasions of your life in style. This is where a wedding budget can help. You can decide ahead of time where to splurge and where to save, making intelligent decisions about how and where to spend. It can also prevent hindsight sticker shock when the bills start arriving.
Instructions
List and Calculate Your Wedding Expenses
1
Divide the wedding into broad categories, such as venue, food, bride and bridesmaids, groom and groomsmen, transportation and entertainment.
2
Brainstorm by creating a mind map. On a large sheet of paper, write "Wedding" in the center, and add expense branches from this word. For instance, one branch will be "ceremony" and another will be "reception." From these branches, create more branches.
3
Ask married friends to help you create your budget or look it over once you are done. Only those who have gone through the process will be able to spot gaping holes in planning and know the true price of swans carved from ice.
Use a Template to Create and Calculate Your Wedding Budget
4
Access an online wedding budget template at TheKnot.com or Elegala.com (see Resources below).
5
Enter all of the information (number of bridesmaids, total overall budget) into the template to the best of your current knowledge, and the program will calculate a budget for you. If things change, you can always go back and enter new information. The template will recalculate to include the changed expenses.
6
Keep in mind that the template is just a guideline. You may want to allocate more of your budget for the dress and less for food or vice versa.
Tips &- Warnings
No matter how meticulously you plan in the beginning, your wedding budget will expand as long-forgotten relatives and overlooked expenses pop out of the woodwork. Aim low in the beginning, and give yourself a little bit of breathing room.
Using a pre-made online template can save time, keep you organized and bring to mind things you would have overlooked. However, your wedding may incorporate non-traditional details, such as souvenir DVDs of the wedding or a Hawaiian-luau wedding breakfast the day after the celebration. Keep a page of your own add-ons.
Tags: wedding budget, calculate wedding, calculate wedding budget, Calculate Your, Calculate Your Wedding, wedding budget, your budgetSource: www.ehow.com
