While the warm summer is often a favorite choice for weddings, some love birds choose to get married in the cold months of winter.  While we’ve already discussed How Much Should You Pay For a Wedding? I’ve yet to give you a resource to help make it happen.

For those readers, I have prepared a free downloadable wedding budget document in Excel – Wedding Budget Spreadsheet (668).

Free Wedding Budget Spreadsheet

Features:

• Pre-set formulas.  All you do is type in your actual numbers.
• Includes categories for budgeted amount, % of total, actual amount, and % of total.  This allows you to see what % of your overall budget is going to specific categories.
• Completely customizable.  You can add and alter information at will.
• The wedding budget spreadsheet can be downloaded and emailed to anyone free of charge .

Wedding Category Budget Guidelines.

The following guidelines come from For Richer, Not Poorer

It is very important to remember that the key to any budget is the ability to say “no, it is not in our budget”.  While you can have the best wedding budget on paper, until you learn to set boundaries that budget will not be very helpful.  Even thought a wedding is a wonderful occasion you still need to respect your budget.

Thoughts on Controlling the Cost of the Wedding:

1. The reception cost will differ drastically based on cultural expectations.  Where you are expected to provide a meal, this number is probably accurate.  An afternoon snack sort of reception can minimize the cost dramatically.
2. 10% for music sounds way too high.  I cut that down to the 3% range and add the money to another category.

What do you think about those budget guidelines?  Do they seem accurate based on your experiences?

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