May 22, 2018
You just got engaged. Congratulations!! Now, what's next?
The most important thing is to start with a wedding budget. Everything must align with the budget. If you make commitments without considering the financial impact to other areas of your wedding day, you create very stressful situations.
Let’s say your budget is $30,000. Great! The average wedding in the D.C. area is about $37,000, so you are in the ball park. What’s next? Contact a Wedding Planner to get FREE guidance on how this budget could be managed. Trust me, you need help, and a Wedding Planner has connections, money saving tips, and wholesale accounts galore to maximize your budget. If they are good, HIRE THEM while they are available.
Next, let’s talk guests list. DON”T SEND OUT A THING before having this discussion. You budget is broken down into categories and the biggest chuck is the venue. Once you see how much you can spend on a venue, that will drive the guest list. If your budget is $30,000 you can allocate about $12,000, or 40% of that to the venue, including the ceremony costs. Now, look at how many people can you feed on $12,000. break it down to cost per person. For example: if the cost per person is $76.00, you can invite about 150 people. If the cost per person is about $185, you can invite about 60 people. YOU DON’T GET MORE MONEY BECAUSE YOU INVITED MORE PEOPLE.
If you take this strategy, you will save yourself a lot of trouble when it comes to finalizing the guests list because you can’t afford to invite more people than you can pay for. It also begs the question, “Do I want to spend $185 to have this person at my wedding?”. Let’s be real, some guests will drop off the list with just this question.
SHORT ANSWER:
Budget
Preliminary Guest List
Planner
Venue (get cost per person)
Final Guest List
PEACE
