A common issue that brides experience with keeping their wedding budget on track is separating their own desires from the wants and expectations of their parents, siblings and friends.

Having doves released after you are pronounced husband and wife may be a great symbolic and romantic idea, but is that the one moment that you and your husband will treasure in years to come?

Are you constantly asking yourself whose wedding is it anyway?

If you are paying for your own nuptials and want to ensure that you stay within your means then you must muffle the sounds of those who have great suggestions for your wedding budget but are not providing any financial support.

Here are three steps to ensure that your wedding mirrors your own dream nuptials and not someone else’s vision of love.

1) Discuss what is most important to you and your fiancé on your wedding day.

Identify your top 5 must haves and plan your budget around those things. Your top 5 will be non-negotiable and will not require discussions with anyone besides the vendors.

Is it your dream to have a garden wedding near a lake? Then a lakeside wedding location is one of your top 5’s.

2)    Request information on preferred vendors that your family and friends have used, but decline helpful offers to assist you with meeting the vendor and assistance with the selection process.

• Because you have identified you top 5 in the previous step, your remaining tasks may involve requesting the help of your family and friends to complete.
• Do you want to have a soloist, but haven’t found a singer with a voice like Mariah Carey? Engage your family and friends to assist with finding a phenomenal singer while providing them your specific budgetary needs.
• Acknowledge to your bridal planning team that you are looking for suggestions for your nuptials; but you and your fiancé will make the final decision.

3)    If financial support is given, request that it is either given directly to the vendor once a payment is required or deposited to your wedding account.

• When financial support is given, it sometimes comes with “helpful strings”. To alleviate this concern you can provide two options to your benefactor.
• Option 1 – The Vendor Payment - A deposit is required with most vendors. The benefactor will give that initial deposit directly to the vendor for payment.
• Option 2 – The Wedding Account- If you and you fiancé created a wedding account to save and pay for the wedding then any funds given by your eager family members or donor will be earmarked for that account.

The excitement of a wedding combined with the stress of planning this celebration can cause a bride to become overwhelmed.

If you remember to rank your wants and align them with your wedding budget, when it is all over, your wedding will be all that you dreamed of because it incorporated the things most important to you both.

Use this free wedding budget worksheet to help keep track of your expenses.

Budget Bridal Tool – Free Wedding Budget Planning Worksheet

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 7:15 am and is filed under Cheap Wedding Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.