Budget and Planning Basics

Budget Blues Roundtable

A wedding coordinator leads brides-to-be in a chat about their weddings

I've been a party planner and wedding coordinator for years, but every time I meet a new bride I am amazed by the intensity with which she approaches each aspect of her wedding day. To get to the heart of the things you fret about most, I invited four brides-to-be to join me in a lively roundtable discussion about budgets-an extremely important and highly emotional issue.

Here's what they had to say, and how I counseled them.

Our Fab Panel

• Hope Landry, 27. Hope is getting hitched this May. She and her fiancé are sharing the cost of the wedding with her parents. She works as a makeup artist for Laura Geller, a high-profile wedding-makeup specialist, so she sees lots of outrageous weddings that she could never afford.
• Stephanie Dolgoff, 33. A Brooklyn native and freelance writer, Stephanie is planning a destination wedding this July in upstate New York. To avoid family involvement, she and her fiancé are paying for the festivities themselves.
• Stacey Sperling, 25. Engaged in May 2000, Stacey plans on getting married in May 2006. She's an student at York University, plus she works full-time and has a part-time job. Her wedding costs will be covered by herself, her fiancé, her parents, and other family members.
• Alex Sengerman, 32. This advertising salesperson at a london magazine is getting married in July. Her dad is covering the costs of her Saturday-night wedding in New London-up to a point: the same amount Alex's sister spent on her Sunday-night wedding in Leeds last year.

Getting organized

Stephanie: Not me.

Hope: Sort of.

Stacey: I wouldn't really know where to start.

Alex: You bet! And here's why: My sister got married last year, and my parents went into it without a budget. My mother spent whatever. About halfway through the planning, my father had a meltdown. So for my wedding, there was a budget at the start. I even made a spreadsheet. My fiancé would feel better if he were contributing more, but now that I've shown him the costs, he's okay with it.

Peter: I'm sure the rest of you have a final number in mind, but you probably haven't actually tallied items or put together a spreadsheet. If you want to end up on target, you must keep track somehow. Check out our spendsheet to help stay on track, or the book I've just co-authored, The Wedding Kit for Dummies (IDG Books Worldwide). Some of you are too close to the finish line for this advice to help you now, but you can still learn a lot about budget control.

Stephanie: My fiancé and I are making choices based on what we know we can spend. It's like if you are shopping at Old Navy rather than at a high-end department store, so you're never going to rack up a major bill.

Alex: Well, I don't agree with that analogy. I can go into Old Navy and spend a lot of money by racking up a bunch of inexpensive purchases.

Peter: The way we approach budgets and spending is based on what we were taught about money when we were kids. Couple that with the emotions that are brought up in planning the biggest day of your life, and you're traversing a minefield.

Stephanie: That's exactly why my fiancé and I have taken control of the money and spending. That way, there is no melodrama.

Peter: My advice on the subject: If your parents are paying for any part of your wedding, do your best to get their contribution in a lump sum as soon as possible. You'll be far happier—and you'll have fewer arguments. Why? Because money is power in our world, and it is much better to keep the decision-making process in your hands. Money doled out in bits for flowers or catering or transportation will result in endless discussions. (The four nod in agreement. They know it's better to get a gift certificate than a sweater.)

Picking Priorities

Peter: How do you determine how much you'll spend on each item?

Hope: Well, we're trying to check at least three sources for each thing. We figured out a date that we liked, then we tried to get an estimate of what reception-people charge. Then we looked for a middle ground and said, 'Okay, here's the cheapest, here's the highest. We'll probably come out somewhere around here.' But we're padding our budget with a little bit more, figuring there are incidentals.

Peter: It's smart to give yourself a cushion, just as long as you don't go above that figure. But this isn't the most efficient way to keep costs in line. Whether your wedding is modest or extravagant, keep a list of every dollar spent-whether it's on party favors or thank-you stationery. Every choice you make has to be accounted for. Every time you select the more expensive option in one area, you must balance it by being frugal in another. To make sure you come in on budget, you must prioritize when making decisions. How do you envision your wedding? What's most important to the both of you? What doesn't matter?

Alex: You know, there are always ways to get around every problem. One can rent a fabulous wedding dress, for example.

Peter: Yes you can, but as I said before, many of your financial discussions have to do with what you thought about your wedding when you were a little girl. You're also shaped by all the other weddings you've been exposed to. If you've always had dreams about buying your dress with your mother standing by weeping, you are not going to be happy in a rented gown.

Hope: That's so true. In my line of work, I have been exposed to such unbelievable weddings. So part of me does want that. It's difficult to settle for less.

Peter: So it's worse than being influenced by what you see in the movies or on TV, because this is her peer group, this is reality.

Hope: If I didn't see any of these things-the incredible flowers, dresses, food-my expectations would be far less than they are.

Peter: I know what you are talking about. I think that after all these years in the business, having seen everything, if I were to get married again, I'd have to elope. I wouldn't be able to afford a lighting specialist and a calligrapher and fireworks and...

Stacey: You have to know your limits. That's why with my dress, for example, I'm only going to try on things I can afford. I certainly don't want to try on a $10,000 dress that I love, but can't afford. Then I won't find anything else that will make me happy. Then there's the whole other problem of getting caught up in other people's priorities.

Sticking to Your Guns

Peter: You've all indicated that family and friends have strong opinions on how your weddings should be. It's easy to lose your financial track if you plan your wedding by committee. There is something so magical about weddings that everyone wants to be a part of them.

People would never dare to be as opinionated about how you are decorating your apartment or other aspects of your life. With weddings, relatives and friends have their own issues about how their weddings should have been or fantasies about their future nuptials, so they can't help but share with you.

(The brides all have that tell-me-about-it look in their eyes, so I keep going.)

But once you determine what it is that both of you feel strongly about, the next step is to gently inform everyone who is foisting their opinion on you that they are not paying.

Stephanie: Correct, but not in a hostile way. You might say, 'That's such a great idea, but you know, I think we are going to go this route.'

Lots of Legwork

Stacey: It's not just family pressure to have certain things. There are so many extras that build up. For example, I wanted suede yarmulkes, but satin ones are cheaper. So I'd have to spend more than I'd planned to buy the suede ones. I started thinking, Do I really need to get suede ones? That's eight dozen yarmulkes, which will add up to $200 dollars more!

Alex: Or you could go to the Lower East Side and get them wholesale.

Stephanie: Or make it BYOY. (Laughter)

Peter: Trust me, it's not that wedding coordinators know any secrets that you don't. It's just that we spend a lot of time and energy on things that you may not be able to, or don't want to. Stacey, you're in grad school and juggling two jobs-either you do without the suede yarmulkes, or you find time to get them for less or ask your fiancé or mother to do it, or you pay the $200. You must all do that kind of thinking with every item in your budget.

Stephanie: You can also rely on married friends to make things less painful. A close friend who just got married interviewed every photographer in town. So she's cutting it down for me, knowing my price range and style.

Alex: Friends can be very helpful. Everyone who has just gotten married is bursting to share their newly acquired knowledge.

Peter: Yes, everyone thinks they want to be a wedding planner!

Cash Clashes

Peter: Since even the most well-prepared couples experience some tension about where the money goes, I want you to come clean about any wedding-budget issues you've had with your future spouses.

Hope: My ideas of what we must have are based on the lavish weddings I've worked at. That's caused my fiancé and I to disagree on some things. I've tried to explain to him, it's not snobbery, it's just that I've seen how beautiful a wedding can be.

Stephanie: My fiancé makes less money than I do. He feels strongly, though, about sharing the costs, so it has limited the amount we are spending. Luckily, our overall vision of the wedding is not so different.

Stacey: We are still so far away from our wedding, we haven't had the chance to disagree yet.

Peter: Let's wrap up with a truism: One of the most common things couples fight about is money. So if all of you can survive planning a wedding with your relationships in good shape, you've gone a long way towards having a wonderful marriage.