Create Your Own Wedding Budget Template

Even if you're not a Microsoft Excel wizard, you can quickly create your own wedding budget template. Although finances are probably the last thing that you want to think about as you get ready for your big day, a wedding budget template can help you to keep track of where you are spending money. Creating your own wedding budget template (versus using someone else's wedding budget template or spreadsheet) will also enable you to see how the wedding budget will vary based upon the number of guests that you have or which venues that you choose. Here are some steps for getting started in creating your own wedding budget template.

On the main page of your wedding budget template, list all of your intended wedding expenses. These will be different for everyone, but standard wedding budget template expenses include reception cost, flowers, wedding apparel, photographer, videographer, and limousine. Every time that you buy something or think of something that you intend to buy, add it to the wedding budget template. If you are in the preliminary budget planning stages, you can add expected costs for each item by looking at national or regional averages or by adding costs to the wedding budget template whenever you receive price quotes from potential vendors.

Set aside another page of your wedding budget template for considering how the reception cost will vary based upon how many guests that you invite and where the reception is held. Contact the reception sites that you are interested to determine the cost per person for each site. Note that every site figures in tax, tip, and other "extras" such as champagne, cake, and appetizers separately, so make sure that you are comparing the real cost per person for each venue. In order to do this, create columns in your wedding budget template for each separate piece of the reception costs (i.e. open bar, floral centerpieces, table linens, cake, tax, tip, or any other separate reception cost). You can add these costs in your wedding budget template to come to a total cost per person.

Next, use the wedding budget template to consider the total reception cost depending upon the total number of guests that you expect. Use the total cost per person that you have found above and multiply by the number of guests that you intend to have. Since a large part of the wedding budget will depend upon the reception cost, creating this piece of the wedding budget template will certainly help you in deciding the guest list and reception venue. You can insert this reception cost into the "main page" of the wedding budget template to see how it fits with the rest of the budget.