Type-A Bees! How did you keep track of your budget?

• laura1206
• 2 years ago

hickoryhills :  it’s kind of what I have done on mine. I have one side of the spreadsheet with how much I can spend, the other with what I have spent and just make sure that if I go over in one area I take it off somewhere else. 

• duchessgummybunns
• 2 years ago

laura1206 :  This is how our 3 rows worked. I needed “Actual” to be $20K or less, and just watched it. Any time that total went over $20K, I adjusted a different column, or moved a payment (or portion of a payment – like gratuity portion) over to the “We Pay” column.

• BrideK2Wings
• 2 years ago

• Wedding: April 2016

hickoryhills :  We used WeddingWire for our website. They had a budget feature, or they use too. You just plug in the numbers for each catagory for the budget, then again for what was actually spent on that catagory. It does the math for you and lets you see what extra you have to allocate to another catagory. This was 2 years ago though.. the option may be different now. 

• 1111makeawish
• 2 years ago

• Wedding: November 2016

hickoryhills :  Here is a quick snapshot of our budget.  Literally all simple formulas like (ie c1-e1=e5) Hope it helps!  I’m super type A so organization has been key to keeping cool.

• 1111makeawish
• 2 years ago

• Wedding: November 2016

hickoryhills :  Hahah thanks!  We are doing brunch!

• ukbea
• 2 years ago

• Wedding: September 2018

You could have a budget column, and an actual column, then a third column which is “spend allocated” where if the actual is blank, it fills it with the budget, if actual has a figure in it shows that figure instead. Then sum up your allocated column, and take it away from your budget to show a headline figure and conditional format it red for overspend/green for underspend? 

Assuming budget was column B and actual was column C, the formula for the allocated in column D would be 

=IF(isblank(c2),B2,C2)

Then =SUM(D:D) to show “allocated spend” and (budget figure) – (allocated total). I’m not sure if my description makes sense 😂

• moon_river
• 2 years ago

• Wedding: October 2018

I LOVE the app ‘wedding plans’. It has a ring in a box as the icon. Also has an iPad version. 

It seemed kind of out dated at first but it works so well! There is a budget and a vendor function. I listed everything in budget to get a running total (in the beginning I would estimate expenses and then put in actual prices- making sure to label actual versus estimate) and then copy an expense to vendor once booked. Vendors shows the outstanding amount which is useful for deposits and installments. My budget shows expenses that haven’t been booked, which helps because I consider that flexible spending and can adjust accordingly 

• heatdisneybride
• 2 years ago

• Wedding: April 2019

You can find some free guides from weddings website the knot wedding wire etc on how much of your budget they suggest for each area. Check out barns and nobles for some wedding planners or even amazon. But definitely call around prices really vary depending on where you live and your area. I also made an excel sheet to keep track of what I paid for deposits on photographer vendors etc. but I found it hard to price venues because they all had their own preferred vendor lists. Excel or pages will have some basic spreadsheets that you can play around with. Try asking some friends if they are good with excel or pages maybe they can help you create something.

• ctbee818
• 2 years ago

• Wedding: August 2018

I used google docs.  What we did was set a budget, and then prioritized ourselves what was important, and decided what the maximum amount we were willing to spend on each thing to come to that final number.  Then the next column was how much we actually paid.  From there, I was able to make adjustments-so when my dress was $800 less than I budgeted, I was able to get the more expensive veil that I wanted even though it was over my initial budget. 

• catspajamas_beesknees
• 2 years ago

avprobeauty :  & 

ctbee818 :  AMEN to Google sheets/docs/drive – love that it’s not only free, easy to keep organized, and accessible from virtually any device. And it’s super easy to share Google files with others so they can be edited simultaneously…I’ve also loved using Google sheets for our guest list and all other notes so everyone’s on the same page. 🙂

• princessandthepear
• 2 years ago

• Wedding: September 2016

You didn’t specifically say this, but I assume you are talking about your wedding budget? The knot has a really good wedding budget tool. You put in your total budget, and it tells you exactly how much you can spend on each item to stay within budget. You can then adjust the recommended budget to fit what you actually spend. For example, maybe you want to spend 3K on your wedding dress instead of 1.5K, you can enter that in and then figure out where to cut back. 

I found it incredibly helpful, for budgeting and for planning what to do next. Good luck and congratulations!

https://www.theknot.com/wedding-budget/start?member_exists=false