Once you’ve agreed on the rough date, location and size of your wedding, you can start creating a budget that you can use throughout your wedding planning process. Follow these five simple, yet elegant steps to a budget that you two will both find realistic, and can cover the things you care most about for the Big Day:

1. Take that First Look

Most weddings are paid for by more than one person, and all of them involve multiple decision-makers. It’s smart to involve those “interested parties” early in the wedding planning to set realistic expectations and avoid misunderstandings later.

If you don’t routinely discuss personal finance management with your fiancé, parents, or in-laws, try bringing up the topic by explaining that you would like to look into creating a budget for the wedding to keep you from overspending. This should open the lines of communication.

Your goal from this step is to gain an understanding of the total budget you’ll have to spend.

2. Look for Chemistry

With your total budget in mind, use a comprehensive wedding budgeting checklist to guide a heartfelt discussion of each of your priorities for your wedding. Of all the items and services you could pay for (The Knot has a comprehensive list) which are most important to you?

3. Forsaking all Others

Now you’re ready to start estimating costs…and getting creative. Get information on what others have paid, in your city, for the items you’ve decided are critical to your Big Day.

If you’ve found that you’re already over your budget (and most of you will), it’s time to prioritize again. Some couples find it helpful to work from a sample budget. Here is the breakdown by category:

• Ceremony 3%
• Reception 48%
• Attire 10%
• Rings 3%
• Flowers 8%
• Music 8%
• Photography 12%
• Transportation 2%
• Stationery 3%
• Gifts 3%

Mint Tip: In our next blog post on smart wedding budgeting, we’ll cover some smart and unexpected ways to cut costs. You can save $100’s by taking a fresh approach to wedding attire, décor, entertainment and details.

4. Commitment

Armed with your (now) very short list of key expenses, you’re ready to get estimates of the approximate costs of each. Search Engines, recent brides and grooms and community websites are great sources for vendor suggestions. Contact those that meet your requirements, detail your needs and get their quotes. Assign the prices you find to the items on your list. Allow for some extras: tips, taxes, and a buffer for unexpected items. Total these up to determine how close or far you are from your overall budget. Still have a gap? Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you’re comfortably within your limits.

5. Engagement

Once you have your preliminary budget, good personal finance management dictates that you continue to use it as your working plan. Record each expense as you incur it. If you go over your budget in a given category, be sure to subtract the same amount from another category. If you come in under budget in any category, we recommend that you bank that savings against any future surprises. If those surprises don’t come, you’ll have some seed money for your first savings or investment account as a couple.

Mint Tip: You have several options for creating and monitoring a wedding budget in Mint. All of them free you from tedious tracking of receipts.

Some couples like to open and fund a separate account just for wedding expenses. Open a new Mint account just for that “wedding expenses” account and you’ll be able to budget by category for all of your expenses. Then sign up for Mint alerts to get email or text messages when you approach or exceed your specified budget for any category.

If you prefer to spend from an existing account, you can Label your wedding expenses and use Mint’s Search function to create a separate list of all your wedding costs.

More tips on how to use Mint.com for wedding budgeting in our third post, coming soon.

Mint Asks: Are you already using Mint to manage your wedding budget? Any tips to pass along? A pair of Mint t-shirts to anyone sending us wedding pictures from their Mint-managed nuptials!

Related Mint Tips:

Online Budget Management
Online Personal Finance Management
Expenses Software
Free Budget Online

Americans are drowning in debt. We’re falling behind on our credit card payments, our car payments and our mortgages, largely because we’re not taking our personal expenses management seriously enough. Foreclosure rates are skyrocketing. Borrowed funds now equal 138 % of annual household income, a sign we have taken on way too much debt.

THE DEBATE:

With the dreaded “R” word hanging over our collective heads, who can stop our country’s slide into debt? Is it the government’s job to stop the insanity or is it our responsibility to clean up our own messes? Shouldn’t we blame our debt issues on our inability to handle our personal finance management obligations?

COMMENTARY:

The stock market is down, and we’re seeing more and more unfavorable news on the economy coming to light these past few months. It doesn’t help that the financial sector has been reporting earnings well below analyst’s expectations, as a result of consumer credit problems and loan write-offs.

Much of the downtrend has been attributed to the subprime mortgage crisis and uncollectible loans that proliferated during a time of loose credit and high spending. Credit losses have been worsening for brokerages, banks and financial institutions as they write off bad loans and suffer through trading losses during a period of economic contraction. Bank of America, for example, reported an earnings plunge of 77 percent this week, after stating that they are reserving over $6 billion towards bad loans.

Financial institutions are in this situation because they are writing off bad debt that their customers have run up. What we’re witnessing now are the consequences of poor personal expenses management by consumers and investors across the board.

This is an example of how our collective personal debt has done a number on our economy.

My opinion? Our personal debt is our personal responsibility. It’s not the government’s job to bail us out from our credit card or mortgage debt. The real questions are: “Why are people in this country so far in debt?” and “What principles of financial responsibility should people be following to avoid such debt?”

At first glance, these questions would not appear to have easy answers. After all, Amazon.com lists over 10,000 books written on the subject of personal finance. It’s confusing, and personal finance management is not something they teach in school.

In reality, all of personal finance can be distilled into three basic principles:

1. Spend less than you earn: live beneath your means so you can save.
2. Make the money you have work for you: invest what you’ve saved and watch it grow.
3. Be prepared for the unexpected: have the right kinds of insurance, and diversify your assets.

Misapplication of these principles leads you into debt; successful application leads you to prosperity.

Most people get into trouble with the first principle, “spend less than you earn.” We each typically have 2-3 spending categories that are represent significant dollars and significant temptation. For lots of people, those include overspending on Housing, Cars, Monthly Services (cable? phone?) and Dining Out. The good news is that if you can make the tough decisions to cut back in those few areas, and have the discipline to stay under some lower budgets, you can make a dent in your debt, start to save and move forward with your financial plans.

Mint Tip: I designed Mint.com to help you readily identify your problem areas, suggest lower cost products and services, and give you all the automated tools available (web and email and SMS text alerts!) to help you keep on top of your money. And with minimal effort required (five minute set up) and for free. Mint is personal expense management made easy. I hope you’ll check out our online budget tool right now.

 
Further Reading:

Budget Planner
Create A Budget Online
Financial Budgeting Software
Budget Help