How to plan your wedding
I know there are so many questions that arise when you get engaged. First, Congratulations!! This is one of many exciting moments in your life and many more to come. But, What now? There are so many things you need to do to plan your wedding. For instances, finding the wedding date, the venue, your guest, how much can you afford to get married and many more. That is just the start of it.
Many brides to be get over whelmed with the fact of setting a budget. They even forget to add space for a wedding planner/coordinator. Don’t worry; I will help you understand everything in a short moment.
Planning a wedding is fun and stressful. I know I do it for a living. Not everyone can handle the whole planning by themselves and if you did, did you still hired a wedding planner to coordinator your day-of? Maybe not, wishing you did, right? You still need someone for the day-of. It helps to have that stress free feeling when you are focusing on one of your many happiest moments of your life.
Planning a wedding is like a full time job. If you already have a full time job, then planning your wedding will overwhelm you tremendously. If you work full time, then you go home and tend to the household and if you have children, the children, homework, laundry, etc. A wedding planner can help you do all your leg work for you. Send you the information and keep you organized.
Here is what I am trying to inform you: let’s go down the list.
Setting a budget:
First, you need to set a budget. Whoever is going to help plan your wedding or you and your fiancé is paying for the wedding, you need to price what you can afford. This is something that most brides get overly side blinded, because you are so excited on the fact on getting married, right? The little girl inside of you gets woken up and super excited and here we go down memory lane to the day when we all said how big your wedding will be and how many people will be invited and what you want it to look like. Phew! Yes, but as little girls we did not even think about how much all of it will cost. Now reality starts to hit you back to the year 2017 and you want to cry because now you have to figure out how much you can afford to have a wedding.
Lets first think about having a theme, yes having a beach wedding, beauty and the beast, thriller wedding, fall, winter and summer weddings, those are themes. These themes can be costly depending on what and how you want your wedding to look like.
So here you need to figure out what you would need for your wedding:
Wedding planner/coordinator an average can cost you up to $10,000.00 depending the size and budget a client might have. Each wedding planner/coordinator have several packages you can discuss which one will be great for you.
Venues you can choose to have your wedding in a church, hotel, venue, in a park, outside in your backyard, beach, etc. Each venue can vary on price, if you are going for hotels: the highest per person can be about $50 per head and some will or will not charge for the ballroom rental. Do you homework, or a wedding planner will either know or will find out for you. Some venues will or will not allow you to bring in your own food. So that will depend what you need.
The other highest cost in your wedding is you guest. It will depend on how many friends and family, coworkers, the person from down the street, you are inviting. The amount will control the cost of food in your venue.
Your dress is your next expense. You have to have a budget for every part of your wedding. So if you go look a wedding dress and colors you want and style can vary on your budget for a dress. So do your homework play around with prices for your wedding dress and give yourself extra room for error. For example, if you want a Vera Wang dress, make sure you add a few hundred dollars to cover overage of the price you set for your wedding dress. So if you set that you want to spend $2000 on a dress, put $2500 as a budget. Room for error or if you can only do $2000, then your dress should be around 1800 or less. You will be very disappointment if you can’t afford the dress of your dreams.
You’ll need to find a place for your bridal shower and rehearsal dinner, unless, your Mother-in-law to be or Mother , MOH, etc are going to take care of this for you. Either way, you’ll need some gifts for your bridesmaids and your fiancé his grooms. That is if you are doing a Jake and Jill. But either way gifts are in order for your whole court and parents.
The rest:
Cake your average cost for this can run you up to $450 or more depending where you go and how many guest you are having.
DJ your average cost for this can run you up to $2000 this varies.
Florist your average cost for this can run you up to $1600 depending on what you want and if you want flower decorations. But this can include:
Corsages, Bridal & Bridesmaid Bouquets, Ceremony Flowers arrangements and decorations, reception decorations and Table Centerpieces.
Photographer your average cost for this can run you up to $1800 and prints $250
Videographer your average cost for this can run you up to $4000
Transportation your average cost for this can run you up to $1000
These are just the few things to consider, we did not get to the grooms attire, invitations, save-the-dates, thank you notes. Decorations, and favors Etc.
So that will leave you with an average wedding cost in Connecticut can be up to $27,000 or more. I am sure you will be able to find ways to bring cost down and you will.. I am not saying that your wedding will be this much or higher, I am saying that it can get up this high if you are not careful with what your budget will be. We did not cover other expenses, like honeymoon, destination weddings etc. when you start to plan keep your options open and figure out how you can save money by using a wedding planner.
I am trying to give insight on how to add a wedding planner or coordinator to your budget and how useful a wedding planner or coordinator can be.
If you would like more information on my services, just click on to the pictures and it will bring you to my website or you can simply email me at info.mariscreativeevents.com
