Ask the Experts: How to Build a Wedding Fund Without Putting Your Life on Hold

Planning a wedding can be stressful, especially when it comes to the cost. As soon as you get engaged, there are a number of expenses to consider. The cost of the venue, the catering, the photography, your outfit, the flowers for the ceremony and the reception, the stationery, and a host of other expenses can all add up before you have even finalized the guest list.

Building a wedding fund does not have to mean that every other financial goal is put on hold until the big day. There is no reason why your wedding should have to be viewed in isolation as part of your overall financial life.

Building a wedding fund does not have to mean putting every other financial goal on hold until the wedding is over. Instead, you can treat your wedding as one part of your wider financial life, building up to the wedding as you go along.

How to Build a Wedding Fund Without Putting Your Life on Hold

Photo by Krisandra Evans Photography – full wedding here

Start With the Wedding You Can Afford

First, think about the sort of celebration you’re going to want. It’s unlikely to be a huge, formal do with flowers and all the rest, and even less likely to be a sparse, take-away sort of affair. Instead, plan for the sort of celebration that will, to you and your guests, seem the proper thing. Then, work out how much that is likely to cost, and compare it to your income. Be prepared to make cuts elsewhere to afford the things that really matter to you, and try to create a realistic budget that will fit around your existing commitments.

You need to decide where you can splurge on your wedding and where you can keep costs down. This can be completely opposite to another couple. If you want to ensure you have the best ever photography on your wedding day, then you may choose to keep costs down on your wedding flowers or wedding venue.

By now you should have a rough figure in mind of what you can afford for the wedding, and then you can compare it to your current income, your fixed expenditures, and other payments that you are currently required to make.

photo by Anna Holden Photo – full wedding here

Keep Your Wedding Money Separate

By having a separate account for your wedding funds, you can make it easier to manage your money, keep track of your spending, and stay on budget for your special day.

Having a separate wedding fund can make it much easier to track your progress, see how close you are to your target, and check whether your monthly savings goal is realistic.

If your wedding is still several months or more away, you may also want to think about where that money is kept. A high-interest savings account can be a practical option for funds you do not need to access immediately, allowing your wedding savings to remain separate from everyday spending while potentially earning interest until you are ready to use them.

It really doesn’t matter what kind of account you use for a wedding fund—the main thing is to have a fund dedicated to your wedding. That way you won’t be accidentally using money that you meant to spend on something else. Also, it will be easier to keep track of your progress toward your target. And if for some reason you do end up using some of the money for something else, at least you’ll know that it was meant for your wedding.

photo by Sheena T Photography – full wedding here

Set a Monthly Target That Leaves Some Breathing Room

Now that you know about how much your wedding is going to cost, divide that number by the number of months you have left until your wedding date.

This will give you an idea of how much you can realistically save every month. Note that this does not need to be the same as your monthly savings target for the wedding. The easiest thing to do is to extend the amount of time that you have to save for the wedding.

Then subtract money for regular bills, debt payments, grocery shopping, car payments, insurance, and other normal spending.
Instead of creating a lot of stress around the savings for the wedding, it might be better to extend the time frame, cut back on the funds for the wedding, or do a combination of both.
Also, by leaving some room for errors, unexpected bills will be covered by the wedding savings instead of having to dip into your emergency fund or worse, into other savings accounts.

Photo by Brittany Bender Photography – full wedding here

Decide Where You Want to Splurge

One of the biggest wedding budget pitfalls is trying to make every detail of your wedding luxurious. That is going to end up costing you a lot more than you initially planned for.

Choose the two or three elements of your wedding to be luxurious. The rest of the money can be spent in other areas, and you can keep your overall costs down to meet your wedding budget.
This can vary from couple to couple. For one couple, the photographer and food might be the most important aspects of the wedding, while for another, it could be the dress, the band, and the outdoor setting.
Once you have decided on the areas where you wish to spend a bit more money on your wedding, you can then look at ways to reduce costs elsewhere to fit within your wedding budget.

Simple things like using a plain table setting, digital invitations instead of printed ones, seasonal flowers instead of expensive ones, and simple wedding favors instead of expensive ones can help to reduce costs of the wedding without compromising on the experience that your guests are going to have.

photo by The Adamkovi – full wedding here

Protect Your Emergency Fund

Your emergency savings and your wedding savings serve completely different purposes.

These two funds serve very different purposes. Funds saved for your wedding are to pay for a planned expense. An emergency fund is there to handle the unexpected expenses that life can throw your way, like an unexpected home repair bill, an emergency trip, job loss, etc. – a large, unexpected medical bill, for example.
Using an emergency fund to pay for your wedding is going to solve your short-term budgeting problem but leave you exposed in the future to large, unforeseen expenses.

When your original wedding budget starts to increase (even when it is part of your overall budget), it is better to reconsider your wedding plans than to use your emergency funds to pay for your wedding expenses.
For example, rather than reducing the number of guests, you could choose to serve a simpler menu, change wedding suppliers, simplify the wedding decorations, or even put off purchasing that special item for a few months.

photo by Lucy Lloyd Jones Photography – full wedding here

Give Yourself a Small Fun Budget

Saving for a wedding does not have to mean spending nothing for a year.

All of the money that you spend while you are saving for your wedding needs to come out of your regular spending money. If you don’t allow yourself any fun money at all while you are saving for your wedding, then you are going to get very tired of saving for your wedding after a few months.

All of this is to say, giving yourself a small fun budget is ok. Save for the wedding, but don’t be so strict that you feel like you can’t have any fun while planning the wedding. This will help make saving for the wedding so much easier and will keep you from getting so frustrated with your budget that you abandon your plan after 3 months.
You are still living your life while planning the wedding.

photo by Pedro Filipe Fotografia.– full wedding here

Revisit the Budget as Plans Change

Wedding budgets are rarely perfect from the start.

You may find that your dream photographer costs more than you anticipated, but in actuality another photographer that you speak with is in your budget. The guest list may have changed, and things that were once so important to you and your fiancé are now things that you just don’t care about anymore.

Remember to review your budget from time to time and to shift funds between the different areas of your budget as necessary.
So save as much as you can, but don’t be afraid to shift the funds to other areas of your budget, should they become more relevant.

Saving for a wedding is not about trying to hit a perfect number for the wedding, but rather it is about being able to have a wonderful celebration for your special day and then continue on with the rest of your life without too much financial stress.
A thoughtful wedding fund allows you to make decisions based on what matters most to you while protecting the rest of your life.

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