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My fiance and I just hired a wedding planner to help keep our budget in check, actually! It's VERY important to us that we stick to our budget, so we're determined not to let it get away from us. :)
We're pretty sure that the coordinator will be one of the best investments we make (or at least, we hope so!).
Well, I can already see several areas in which we could have saved money, but I wouldn't say our budget is out of control. If I were doing it over, I almost think I would have bought a less expensive dress... but then again, I love my dress, so maybe I wouldn't have. I've pretty much decided not to have favors. They're not common in the area where we're getting married, and that's an expense we don't need.
We are trying to stick as close to our budget as we can. It's really hard when we see something we like but know that if we splurged on it, the money would have to be taken out from other areas of our wedding. We have sat down and made a list of "must have's" and a list of things we could go without if they cost too much. One thing I have had to give up was the chair covers. The venue that we are using will not allow us to bring in our own vendor for chair covers but is charging $10 a chair. Combined with a 20% service fee and 9% tax, covering 150+ chairs was just not something that we could bring ourselves to spend our hard earned money on. It would have made the ballroom look nicer, but not for the price.
Overall, we are pretty set on our budget because we don't want to start married life in debt with our bank accounts cleaned out.
Like you things just got so crazy we lost track. We have kind of an idea of what we spent and it's so high we don't want to figure it out to the penny. We just smile and say, what a fun day and great party!
We're on our 5th month of planning and have already gone at leat 15% over budget.
Whoops.
And the scary thing is...my parent's are not paying for this wedding...the fiance and I are.
yeah...i'm doing the large majority of planning and havent always been the best at budgeting. soo...with a month to go, its freaking me out. there are things we didnt factor in at the beginning (like boarding the dog we just got while we're out of town for the honeymoon, etc.) that put us over the top. both of our sets of parents are helping with set portions, and we havent asked them to go over that. the extra costs are coming out of our pockets....tax refunds help :)
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Everything I bought and decided to go with I decided to go as inexpensive as possible! My splurge was my photographer. I also factored in appropriate costs for things in the future that we'll need. We're only about 3K over budget. YAY! We set our budget at 15K for the low end, knowing that if we hit 20 it would be ok.....
And ditto on the tax refund. I can't WAIT for mine!! WHoopde==eeeee!
We made the mistake of being rather unrealistic and setting our initial budget at $10K. LOL...yeah, OK in NYC? *cackles*
So technically yes, we did go over "budget."
But for the most part, we're hanging pretty steady at $17K. Including just about everything. Down to the penny. We may end up at $20K which would not be unexpected, but we've really cut the fat out of a lot of our expenses to try our best to manage it at $17K altogether.
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We have been keeping an almost crazy close eye on our budget and with 5 months until our wedding we are still under budget :), however, keeping such a close watch on just about every penny has forced me to have one stressful dream after another, is it worth it to keep such a close watch? Our budget is 25k which sounds like a ton of money, although it doesn't get much for 410 people.
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We are actually doing pretty good - so far! But then again, we have about 4 months until our wedding. I'm sure things start to add up as the time gets closer!
we were silly and didn't have a budget. i guess we were thinking it would be about 15k. well, last night we went over our expenses and we are at about 30k. EGADS! we both looked at each other in horror. at least we haven't used credit cards...and we own our home (that i bought 8 years ago).
honestly having a traditional catholic wedding is really more money than we both anticipated. it's incredibly important to us but there are just a lot of little extra costs and fees. it's for sure the most important part of the day for us, but it is definitely more than we expected.
I wouldn't say we've lost control of our budget yet, but I can see how that could happen for us!
We didn't actually set a number for the budget when we started planning - our goal was to be rational with our purchases. So, for example, while I first wanted a particular photog that would have cost us $5k, I'm now overly thrilled that my friend from college (a professional sports/wedding photog) is going to do our 3-day event and engagement shoot for under $1k!
Then again, I love letterpress... and he wants a band... so I think we'll splurge on a few things.
I don't think we'll go TOO out of control... I hope...
We have been trying to monitor the budget, but we didn't really have a set number, and keep finding things that we would love to include. Everything that we have purchased/booked/planned has been as cost effective as possible. One place we have splurged is the photographer, but I think we will value that in the end. There have been a couple of surprise costs creep up, but all in all it has been pretty manageable. I think the fact that we are funding the majority of the event ourselves has made us a little more mindful of where the money is going.
Ours is definitely out of control! I was so relieved to see Mrs. Cherry Pie's post recently about her budget and how it kind of got away from them - after reading Weddingbee with so many brides who are so good about keeping a budget I started to feel like maybe I was the only bride not tracking every cent!
It also doesn't hurt that my parents are paying for the whole wedding - and my mom wants what she wants and I don't argue with her!
If we were paying for the wedding ourselves, budget wouldn't be an issue either. But that's because we'd have to have it in the county courthouse for about $100.
I can't say we've lost control, but I've definitely come to a point of--we'll pay what we need to to get the job done. I've spent a lot of time researching and selecting affordable options, and I don't have any more time for that any more! I'm still hoping we'll land our ballpark budget, but it gets harder to keep track when convenience and time become more valuable than money.
I'm not sure I ever had control over my budget because we're still not sure what my parents are paying for and what we're having to pay for.
I'm just in the early stages, but guest list is wreaking havoc on my as-yet unset, unspent budget.
I mentally set an original budget and guest list ($12000 for 40), thinking of something posh and intimate. Then it became clear that 40 would be 70 at the least. I scaled down my vision, but after initial research found out how much stuff actually costs. A good photographer is expensive!
Now I'm in panic mode (for no reason) that all of the adult cousins I am inviting out of protocol that I haven't seen in a decade will come and bring their partners and never-before-heard-of children, balooning my attendee list.
Finally, I'm graduating from law school and starting work in a couple of months. I interned there, and already have good relationships. Do invite my whole department, or just those I am social with? Do I invite the whole intern class (12) or can I just invite the two that are also from my school?
Basically, I set this arbitrary number, and now realize it may have no relationship with reality. Technically, I could afford to spend more, but I really don't want to spend much more. *Sigh*. Thanks for the rant opportunity.
Ugh. I'm still three months out from the wedding and it's looking like we're going to go over budget by $1,000-$2,000, which is significant if your budget is $5,000!
I'm still trying to cut costs, but it's so hard. I don't want to reduce anything! Most recently I'm struggling with chairs. I can rent cheap white alumnium and plastic ones for $1 each, but I'd much rather have the white resin ones for $2.25 each. They look nicer and seem much sturdier. I don't want our bigger guests to worry about sitting down!
I'm not sure how it's going to work out in the long run. My mother said she'd give me $5,000 to work with and anything excess was up to me. Problem is that even the basics are coming out to more than $5,000 and I don't have the cash to make up the difference. I have full run of the budget and she's just been putting up whatever cash I ask for, so I'm definitely tempted to push her limit a little. *sigh*
Instead of giving into temptation or asking FI's parents for help (they've offered, but I don't want to take them up on it considering they spent less than $5,000 for my SIL's wedding), I'm trying to be creative about ways to raise money. I'm thinking a garage sale, maybe?
Oh my gosh. We're still trying to figure out what our budget is. This has proven to be impossible--do we want Small? Tiny? Large? Medium? (the mental process seems to go in that order).
Whatever the budget ends up being, we are tracking every penny on excel and on weddingwire.com.
Best wishes staying on budget!
yeah my budget was 15,000 now its ballooning to 22,000, the guest list is now up from 50 to 68 yeah same here, I invited a cousin and his wife an dofund he wants to bring his kid I'm not close to and only met once, waaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh, my bro is bringing his kids, I asked him 4 weeks ago, he said no, I gave their spots way to friends. grrrrrrrrrrrrr it keeps adding and adding
Have we lost control of our budget?... it sure feels like it 
When we first started planning I did tons of research and contacted many vendors to get a sense of costs and came up with a preliminary budget that we were fairly comfortable with. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but everything seems to be costing more than I initially expected. Every time i look at our new updated budget I feel so uneasy. We are trying to keep costs low by doing our own centerpieces for instance, and invitations, but things like the caterer are ending up being so much more money than I initially calculated. On top of this unease, we have received a few off comments from my finace's parents. From the start they agreed that they would help pitch in, and then when we got to the awkward conversation of how much they would pitch in they threw a number out there that was more generous than we anticipated. But then about a week later that called us and decided that they in fact could not give that much and gave us a new number. Since then my FML has made some weird comments, one of them about how she was going to subtract her veterinary bill off our wedding funds, and another about how she can't throw her other son a graduation party now because of our wedding.
The budget is a very sensitive subject with me and lately I have been feeling tons of guilt at having to ask both sets of our parent's for help, although we ourselves are going to be contributing a significant amount to the cost.
Sigh
We didn't really have a budget when we were initiatially planning (because family members approached us to gift us money months apart from each other and we were sort of in limbo). We didn't commit to any $$ figures, like a catering quote or rental items, until we had at least a solid ballpark figure.
Once I made our wedding budget in excel, I re-visted it on a very regular basis. I updated it every time we spent something, and checked our performance against our wedding fund balance frequently. I definately had some challenging days and a few tears over the budget, but that was mainly because we were saving for a very expensive honeymoon at the same time and couldn't predict how much money would get put on our honeymoon registry by our guests.
Staying on budget was important to us, and we knew that if we overspent on impulsive or poorly thought out decisions that we would feel foolish and mad at ourselves later. I think a lot of people let their budgets get out of control because they aren't committed to them as a tool that helps execute the project. Obviously things change, costs are incorrectly projected, but the budget becomes a way of maintaining an understanding of what's happening and allows you to make clear decisions.
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were going over budget at the moment it looks like. we set the basics needed and that just gets up to our budget of $50k. I think when its all sad and done, when things have been continuously added, or I think of something else I want in the wedding (I blame weddingBee for that one, seeing and hearing everyones idead makes me want them all) I think we'll end up anywhere from $55k-$65k just depends what I CAN cut back on, or what else I wont budge on.
It sure feels like we are going over budget =(. We originally set our budget at 20 K but didn't include things like honeymoon, rehearsal dinner, rings which wasn't smart because we are paying for them too. I am keeping track of everything I spend and looking for places to save, but sometimes it is hard to change anything about it
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Towards the end of the planning process, I no longer wanted to know what the exact budget was. I kinda had a sense, but I just stopped adding the numbers together... it was too scary.
In the end, we ended up saving a lot on booze (we found out we could BYOB, and could return anything left over), so that helped a huge amount. So it all worked out... but I don't recommend the experience of losing control of your budget!
If I could go back in time and do it again, I would make sure to have a much stricter budget. But then again, if we did... maybe Bee wouldn't have fallen in love with weddings and she wouldn't have started this site! So I mentally chalk up our wedding budget as an "investment" in Weddingbee.com. :-)
Have you lost control of your budget? Or do you know exactly what you're spending, down to the penny.