Whoa There Budget Buddy! Slow Your Roll!!

If everything goes the way we hope it will, we'll be $5k under budget.

I was $1.2k over budget. It was stuff like upgrading our menu and buying extra alcohol that really tipped us over but those were worth it

My original budget was $1,000. We’ll probably come in about $500 over once everything is said and done. I think what put us over are just little things I didn’t take into consideration originally. And we decided we could afford a honeymoon suite for the night.

We landed WAY under, but that's thanks to our families. We set ours at $10,000 but landed at about... $7,000.

Pros: My FMILs gift to us was her decorating the ceremony and reception and doing all the bouquets (she does this for a living). My dad who built our arbor specifically for us.

The Good: Photographer, DJ, Caterer, Dress (not including alterations) all came in under budget.

The Bad: Invites, Venue, Chairs for ceremony (all came in slightly over budget)

We’re a little under 3 weeks away and it looks like we’ll be around $5k over budget, so not too bad. Catering was more than anticipated but we’re also having a lot of food, so it’s worth it. We’re also paying for the boys Airbnb for the weekend. I’m so ready to be done with all the details and just enjoy the weekend.

Sigh. We are 6 months out and already over budget and having to rethink our venue. Main problem is we can’t get our guest count confirmed. Having everyone come from out of state and aren’t getting too many definitive yes and no’s this early out. Our venue has pretty drastic increase in F/B mins for the larger rooms and it’s looking like we’ll be over the max allowed in the smaller room (max of 60) but only by 10-20. But the larger room is intended for weddings of 200. So we may end up with some very expensive leftovers come April🤣

We're trying to keep it at 14k (without counting my dress which will come out to be about 8k with alterations) but it seems to me like we will over budget anyways ☹

So far, I'm maybe $1000 over what we initially planned. For us, it was just a bunch of little things we forgot are needed. We doubled the budget when it came to our wedding bands, but was money well spent.

Well we originally planned one budget, ended up significantly upping that budget, but we’re still going to be like $2-5k over not counting the honeymoon.

We didn't set an exact budget, just went for a ballpark.

We stayed right around where we wanted to be, give or take a couple hundred. It helped that we went with fake flowers, little decoration, and I got my dress on MASSIVE sale.

Our venue is a blank slate as well...I know i'll be over the budget my FH set. he actually thought it could all be done for 1500 LOLOLOLOL

Wow, $10k over?!? Fortunately it sounds like this isn’t a serious issue for you, for some this would be devastating. Did you set a realistic budget to begin with? I remember we naively thought we could pull it off for $x until we started connecting with vendors and getting quotes then we realized our initial number was totally off.

I think it all depends on what your budget was and what you wanted to accomplish with that budget.

I saved on photography, alcohol (bringing it in ourselves), invites, decor and planning myself, and catering (found a terrific caterer who was also inexpensive)

I went over my dress/shoe budget (originally 800) by 1600. Mostly by being indecisive.

Overall, I’m probably over budget by 1k.

10k! Holy Toledo! I've been really, REALLY trying to stay in budget but I keep seeing things I like that are just a ~little~ over and thinking "Itll be okay if I go over on this one thing, right?" Except it's not one thing. It's everything. Smdh
Heres hoping I keep it kinda under control!

View Quoted Comment Sounds like my FH... he said 2000.... I had to shut that down immediately... lmao

We never really set a firm budget... After getting a quote on the venue, I set the budget around 15K... that doesn’t include HM, paying on that separate... my venue will be the big ticket item and I’m DIYing majority of the wedding... i don’t plan to go over budget BUT I think if I do it will be due to video/photos...

View Quoted Comment Ours is the exact same. It was 60 guests or pay for 200. I decided to go with a Thursday night and the 60 guest room to save money. It sucks to take people off the list but when I started really paying attention, those people didn't really talk to me too much anyway.

We are WAY over what our original idea was. We said "We could do a wedding for $12k-$15k!" Then there was some disconnect in what the vision was. I wanted a NICE event and would have been fine cutting some people and making it more intimate. FH wanted a TON of people and was okay with the wedding itself being more casual. My thought process was, if we're spending that much on something it needs to be nice. SO we ended up incorporating both wishes. Our guest list is currently 262 and MOST of the details are to par with what I had in mind. This has caused our budget to also double. The goal is for it to be under $25k now. We have almost exactly a year to go. *facepalm*

We should end up $1000 under but we had a really small budget anyway. We saved by skipping things that we could do ourselves or just didn't mean much to us. It meant I did splurge on a few small things, but once I felt I was starting to lose control of the spending I would mention some of the purchases I was considering to get feedback and a reality check.

Technically speaking on paper we were about $2500 over budget.... That being said a good chunk (about $4500) whats gifted to us from family for different aspects sooo we personally came in under our set budget... lol all about how you look at it lol!