A wedding budget is an expense plan which the wedding planner is expected to stick with when planning for a wedding ceremony in order to keep control of the spending. It is important to state that creating a realistic wedding budget plan is one of the first challenges a newly engage couple will likely face. In fact, no matter who is paying for the wedding expenses, it is important to detail out all expenses in order to have any realistic chance of even sticking to a budget. Wedding day is one of the most memorable in the life of a couple and does not imply that you will have to empty your savings on it, hence, the need for a wedding budget.
The wedding budget is a simple document that does not require much funfare. It takes the format of a simple checklist where all wedding components are listed and assigned a cost factor. There are many formats used for wedding budget template, however, the most important thing is to ensure it captures the right information required for any successful wedding budget. Most basic formats are designed to have columns of income, contribution and expenditure. The income and contribution are classified as funds available for the wedding while the expenditure are classified as cost of certain components that make up the wedding all captured in such a way that shows the estimated and actual costs.
Wedding can be very expensive if budget is left unplanned. However, with a well planned budget, you are certainly going to come out of your wedding at a price you can afford. You can create your wedding templates in different ways using any good software application. The following steps will help you in creating a good wedding budget template
Step1
First of all, you have to determine what you can afford to spend on your wedding. Get a list of all sources of fund available to you. For example, your personal funds, contribution from family and friends etc. The total amount will give you the idea of what to benchmark your budget on
Step2
You can sue any application to create the template. For example, Excel is a good one to create this template. Open Excel program, click on new and get a new spreadsheet.
Step3
Save your new spreadsheet file with something like “Wedding Budget “. This will ensure you do not lose any data along the line.
Step4
Click on the second box in the top row. Label it Expense. Then you can now click on the next cell on the right and label the next few columns as Budget Amount, Estimated Cost, Dealer Estimate and final cost.
Step5
Refer to your original list of expenses and decide on how to arrange your spreadsheet. For example, you can decide to arrange by importance or by the part of the wedding the represent. Once you figure this out, click on the second box in the first column and start entering the expense label one by one till you capture all.
Step6
Estimate how much each of these item should cost and write them on the Estimated Cost Colum of the spreadsheet.
Step7
Divide your budget accordingly. Cut the budget where necessary as you look at the numbers allocated to the columns.
Step8
At this point, you should have come up with a budgeted amount for each item, click on the first cell under the budget amount label and enter the budgeted amount for the corresponding expense. Do that for the rest of the data and click “Save”. This means that you now have a budget.
Step9
When you get the estimates of each item from various dealers, enter each one under the dealer Estimate column.
1
Creating a working wedding budget could be tricky. It is advisable to leave up to 5 to 10% cushion for unexpected costs. If the money is not used after the wedding, then it becomes extra money which could be used to spend on extra splurge, without feeling the discomfort.
2
You have the option of using already made wedding budget templates available all over the internet if creating one will be difficult. However, in doing so, ensure that it suites your own peculiar situations in order to be effective.
3
It is important to first list all items needed in the wedding ceremony in order to capture all and put them in the budget. That means, you must be thorough enough to avoid mistakes.
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