Weddings are hard. The harder I work, the longer my list of things I need to accomplish gets. As we've discussed before, I don't have lots of money- and right now (due to my own personal choice) I'm unemployed because planning the final details of my wedding (which is only 24 days away folks!) , while working full time 6-7 days a week was just too much.
Due to my lack of funds- I always planned on a small diy wedding.....That's not what's happening. I'm still having my inexpensive wedding, but I've given myself some wiggle room. For example my budget is significantly less than I'm willing to spend, at $500. I have probably gone a little bit over budget by now and spent $600. oh no. My point is that by giving myself a tighter budget, I can analyze and decide if something is worth the money, and I try harder to find better deals so that I can get as much as possible for my cash- but if I do go over budget sightly, it's not catastrophic because I have a cushion.
One piece of advice I have, that I did not personally use because I didn't find it until after I was mostly done was that once you have your budget set, take the money and put it in a account set up with a debit card and ONLY use that card (aka THAT money) for all your purchases. That way it's easy to track your budget and you don't get confused and mixed up on what purchases were for your wedding, or where the money was spent- etc.
Have a solid plan FIRST: One of my biggest regrets is that I bought items before having a solid, well thought out plan. I bought cups for my drinks, bowls for my berries, plates for my cake, and cups for my jello- then realized I wasn't going to use jello. So now I had all these empty cups. I decided to put the berries in the cups, then I could use the bowls for vegetables. Well now I've decided to have sandwiches as well. If I use the plates for sandwiches; 1. I have nothing to put the cake on and 2. Why do the vegetables need their own bowl? See the problem? I bought a lot of things simply because I was just excited to start planning my wedding. Don't do that. Be smart and think it out completely before you buy ANYTHING
Pool your resources. Seriously guys- I wish I had done this sooner. I spent money on all this stuff; and then I got talking to my fiance and his mom. Turns out, he has a cousin who makes wedding cakes, a cousin who runs a horse drawn carriage business, a cousin who rents out decorations to brides, a close friend who runs a catering and wedding business...For real? All these people were more than happy to help me out. The caterer friend was willing to help with decor, food, thank you cards, invites, favors, grand exit, etc....if only I'd known. I could have saved myself so much money and got much nicer things. Live and learn right?
Its due to the pooling resources that my wedding has exploded: Professional cake, chandeliers, bistro lights, draperies for the ceiling, silver crushed fabric table cloths, chair covers/ sashes, back drops for the wedding arch, horse drawn carriage, wedding coordinator to make it all happen- my wedding isn't exactly small anymore.. But that isn't bad. I recently crunched my numbers and realized I'm actually UNDER BUDGET!! :D which means I can make some little splurges here and there (Nothing big, I only have two hundred twenty dollars left). Here's the thing though, I micro annalyzed my purchases. A lot of things I bought didn't go into my wedding budget.
Here was my system: Is this something I will use alot? Is this something I need? Is this something I would buy myself anyway? If I don't buy this now will I buy it later?
Items that were excluded from my budget: cake platters, apothacary jars, temple clothes, punch fountain, Jake's suit, etc. why? They were all items I knew I would use a million times over, and they were all things I had wanted long before the wedding. I also realized if I didn't buy them now, I would buy them later.
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