💍When Finance Meets Weddings
Want to have a big fat wedding? Here's how you can plan your wedding smartly without splurging last minute!
Is your Instagram also full of people getting married? Every time you refresh the app, someone new is going off for their honeymoon?
Yes, the wedding fever is here. Three million weddings are taking place this wedding season. And we're jumping on this ship too.
Today, let's help our hero couple Naina and Bunny plan their wedding. Yes, financial wedding planners should be a thing!
PS: We've also prepared a checklist for you to budget and plan your wedding better (link at the end of this blog).
⛪ It's All About the Venue!
Naina and Bunny have very different ideas about where they want to get married.
Naina wants a quiet and simple wedding, while Bunny wants a full-time three-day destination wedding.
Now, the wedding venue is the biggest cost they will have to incur.
If they go the Naina way, they could spend more on food, decorations and even their honeymoon.
But if they go Bunny's way and have a full-blown destination wedding, they could have to cut down on food costs or the decorations.
A small AC banquet hall (for 100 guests) in Mumbai will cost Rs. 25,000 per day. But renting the Leela Palace in Jaipur for a day costs Rs. 6,75,000!
What do we suggest?
The best of both worlds: choose a destination that is off-beat (and cheaper) and a wedding date that doesn't fall during the peak wedding season.
So, for all of you taking notes: Plan ahead and save to fulfil all your wedding dreams. And make sure you and your partner are on the same page!
🏨 The Accommodation
No matter where Naina and Bunny are getting married, chances are there will be a couple of guests coming from out of town. These guests will need to be accommodated during the wedding.
And if they're having a destination wedding, they will have to accommodate all the guests. Plus, there's the cost of transportation to and from the airport or railway station.
For all of you taking notes: plan the logistics in advance. The best way is to maintain an Excel sheet of the arrival dates of your guests, the duration of their stay, and their departure dates.
Keyword alert: book in advance. The more you delay, the more you will have to pay.
💡 The Decor
This is the most exciting part for our power couple. Both Bunny and Naina have tons of aesthetic ideas pinned on Pinterest and Instagram. But truth be told, they have gone a little overboard with their dream decor. And here we are to bring them back to reality.
Naina wants the whole banquet to be decorated with fresh flowers whereas Bunny wants it to be a full-of-lights decor. Now, using artificial flowers instead of fresh flowers and fabric will help save a lot. Plus, sourcing the decor from local artisans and craftsmen will add a quirky touch to the wedding for a fraction of the cost. About 7% of the budget can go towards decor.
For all of you taking notes: budgeting is the best way to rein in your spending!
🥗 The Menu
Let's admit it. Most of your guests will be attending your wedding just for free food. To make the wedding memorable and worth the money, the food has to be gooood.
Now, a Rs. 1,800 plate may be affordable for 50 guests but a Rs. 1,200 plate could be expensive for over 1,000 guests.
Our suggestion for Naina and Bunny: All in all, food and catering should cover not more than 45% of your budget.
🤵 Wedding Wardrobe
Now, Naina has always wanted a simple wedding. But her wedding wardrobe dreams are not so simple. She wants a Manish Malhotra lehenga.
Well, well. Seems like she forgot to account for the makeup artist and hairstylist. Not just for herself, but for the entire family!
Our suggestion to Naina: Your wedding wardrobe and makeup shouldn't cost more than 8% of your budget. Do you really need that Manish Malhotra lehenga?
For all of you taking notes: You could get designer lehengas on rent for a fraction of the actual price. After all, you are not going to repeat your wedding lehenga, no?
✨ All that Glitters
Naina doesn't usually wear jewellery and only wants it for the wedding.
Perfect, we have the best solution for her: rent jewellery for the D-Day! This will save up expenses that can be spent elsewhere.
For all of you taking notes: Telling your parents you want to rent jewellery could be a challenge as parents view this as an investment. So, try to convince them that this investment would be better in the form of a gold or silver ETF or even sovereign gold bonds. This will save up cost on making charges with uncompromised purity.
🎁 Gifts, Gifts, and Gifts!
Can you even imagine an Indian wedding without gifts? But gift expenses seem tiny to Naina and Bunny so they haven't planned for it yet.
Well, we're here to help them.
For all of you taking notes: plan out the tiniest of your expenses so you do not end up splurging last minute.
👰 Wedding Invites
Well done, we're all set with Naina and Bunny's power wedding!
Now we just need to accommodate wedding invites. Invites can cost a pretty penny if you're sending a wedding favour too. So, you need to decide what favours you're going to send, how many people you're sending them to, and the logistics of these invites.
For all of you taking notes: Use Canva to design your wedding cards. Or get a creative friend to do it for you! Even better: send an e-invite!
👀 The Invisible Costs
Finally, we also need to allocate 5% of the wedding budget for hidden expenses like mehendi designers, holy men, electricians, yada yada.
Here’s the wedding checklist you can use to track your wedding budget. And here's what the wedding budget allocation should look like according to us:
Make sure that finances don't get in the way for the special day of your life!
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See you tomorrow :)
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In my view, a little half-baked research it is. If you could get a 100pax hall in Mumbai for 25k a day, or rent Leela Jaipur for 6.75L a day - then you are a genius negotiator or you have serious connections.