Handling thousands of dollars of your clients’ money is a huge responsibility. It’s important to be knowledgeable on what things cost, how to save money, and how to compensate if your clients make bad decisions.

Here are the two main reasons for having a wedding budget from the start:

• The budget serves as a roadmap for both you and your clients when it comes to making selections for their wedding. This is why you want to create the budget estimate BEFORE doing any planning or booking of vendors.
• It protects you from being accused of “forcing” your clients to overspend or accused of making vendor recommendations that are out of the budget.

When creating the initial budget for your clients, start with these 4 things in mind:

1. The amount they want to spend on the wedding
2. Their priorities for the wedding
3. Your knowledge of what things cost in your market
4. The guest count

If you are new to event planning or recently started working in a new market, take time to familiarize yourself with local market pricing so that you can fine tune what you recommend each of your clients spend, based on their priorities and budgets.

Don’t be afraid to ask vendors what types of budgets they work with. Most event professionals are more than happy to help you understand how they charge for services or products so that you can budget accordingly for your clients.

There is a significant difference in planning a wedding with a $10k budget versus a wedding with a $100k budget. Since your clients will have different priorities and budgets, you will need 
to align yourself with vendors in various price ranges.

Once you know your client’s ideal budget, priorities, guest count, and what things cost in your area, you can begin plugging in numbers and updating percentages in the budget spreadsheet template that is part of The Complete Wedding Budget Guide for Wedding Planners. If you use event planning software, you can use the budget feature to determine an overall budget estimate based on the details of the event.

Once you have the budget estimate created, take time to review it with your clients so they understand why and how you came up with the budget numbers. As a planner, you want their approval on estimated budget amounts BEFORE DOING ANY PLANNING so that everyone is on the same page. Once you have their approval, you can use it as a guide during the planning process.

To become an expert on creating and managing wedding budgets as a professional planner, download the Complete Wedding Budget Guide today.

This educational guidebook includes how to get started with wedding budgets, setting ground rules with your clients regarding the budget, setting budget priorities, setting expectations with clients, wedding budget busters, wedding budget boosters, communicating the budget to vendors, creating the budget estimate, and more!

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