You’ve found your soulmate, and the only thing now is to live happily ever after. But first, you’ve got to celebrate and have the wedding of your dreams, and planning the D-day is not as easy as eating your wedding cake. The most commonly asked question as couples decide to get married is “How to budget for my wedding?”. This article will be a starting guide for you to plan the budget for your wedding and help prioritize what’s important and what you can let go.
What is the average cost of an Indian wedding?
The real answer: It can cost as much as you want it to cost.
Expenditure for weddings is fully based on the choices made by the couple and their families towards the big day. A simple temple wedding with limited guests can be done in INR 5 Lakhs and a big fat Indian wedding in a palace can run into crores of rupees. Understanding the needs of both the families and the vision they have for the wedding can help determine how much your wedding is going to cost.
Who pays for the wedding?
First things first, understand who all are involved in financing the wedding. In India, it is customary for the bride’s family to pay for most of the wedding celebrations, but things have changed in recent times. The most common trend these days is for both families to split the bill, or sometimes the couple themselves take on financing the wedding. Whoever is footing the bill needs to be prepared beforehand to keep the finances ready and hold a little extra buffer for emergencies.
What are the major costs involved in a wedding?
Excluding the cost of jewelry, the main cost involved in the wedding is that of hosting your guests and feeding your guests. Both these factors first involve determining the number of guests who will attend your events and the number of events you will have at your wedding.
Venue:
The venue you choose should be able to accommodate the number of people you are inviting. If you are hosting out-of-town guests or if you choose a destination wedding or a wedding on the outskirts of the city, then planning for the accommodation of the guests gets added to the cost of the venue itself. If it is a hotel, then you pay for the food of the guests and in some cases, an additional charge for the banquet hall/garden where the ceremony will take place. If it is not a hotel, then the venue charges and catering charges will be separate.
Keep in mind that, the more plain the venue, the more decorations you might need – and decor costs are high! An open venue with a lot of greenery would need little to minimal decoration and a traditional convention hall would need a little floral work to make it celebratory. Therefore, the cost of decor has to be kept in mind while choosing the venue.
Catering:
Catering costs vary from the kind of cuisine you choose to have, to whether it’s a buffet or a dining set up, and to the number of guests that will be served. Remember, the more the number of people, the lesser the per-head cost of catering, as it is less expensive for the caterer to prepare food in bulk. A banana leaf meal is much less expensive than a buffet meal, and a vegetarian meal is also much less expensive than a meal that involves non-vegetarian food. If the style of events you have are varied, you can choose different caterers to serve specific cuisines but know that giving the entire contract of the wedding to one caterer helps in negotiating the price at the end.
How much does wedding photography cost?
After spending a lot on the best venue, choosing the most extravagant menu, and picking the perfect dress, photography is one item that many tend to ignore. A lot of couples and families fail to see that investing in a good team to photograph your emotions on the day of your wedding is probably more important than everything else on the list. The average cost for photography services at your wedding depends on two main factors:
- The number of events: More events = More expense
- The kind of pictures/videos you want: Portraits/Candids/Drone Shots – the list goes on.
The number of guests or the size of the wedding also makes a difference to the photographers, as a large crowd that must be captured would mean a larger crew to shoot them.
The average cost for photography at a wedding can begin from INR 1lakh to INR 20 lakhs depending on the specific services chosen and the experience of the photographers.
How expensive are Make-Up Artists for my wedding?
Welcome to the world of glamour where brides cannot justify to their fiancé or father why wedding make-up is as expensive as it is. You can always talk about the products used and their worth, but it’s highly unlikely that they would see value in that. But having said that, make-up does play a big part in your budget nowadays. Make-up artists can charge anywhere from INR 20,000 to INR 2 lakhs and more per look. Their price depends on the years of experience they come with and the kind of make-up services they provide.
Apart from make-up for the bride herself, there is often a second team of artists who are hired to tend to the immediate family. It’s best to ensure that two different teams are there as the bride would need at least 3 hours to get ready, which would cause a delay for the rest of the family.
Where can I reduce costs for the wedding?
A few pointers that can help reduce the costs of the wedding:
- Book your venue in advance and ask them for early bird pricing.
- Divide your guests. Invite different sets of guests for different events so the overall number reduces.
- Do your own makeup or pick a less expensive MUA for smaller ceremonies.
- Do an intimate ceremony for the wedding with just family and throw one party for other guests at a later date.
- Choose a simple menu – do not go extravagant on desserts or drinks.
- Choose a wedding date in the off-season to get good deals from vendors.
- Pick an open venue so your décor costs are reduced.
- Hire jewelry on rent for ceremonies instead of purchasing them.
- Hire freelance photographers for smaller events and pick an experienced/expensive one for your main events.
- Find a wedding planner and tell them to plan within your budget.
Do I need a wedding planner?
People often assume that a wedding planner is an additional cost on the wedding budget and choose to plan their wedding themselves. Here are 5 reasons how your wedding planner may come in handy in reducing your costs:
- They get the best deals from the best vendors. Getting good deals from vendors is often the best way to reduce costs at a wedding. Since wedding planners have a working relationship with most vendors in the industry, they can talk you up to get a better deal than you could have if you went directly.
- They know what to prioritize. Do you need to get that extra light? Do you feel that you should get a rainproof cover? Does the venue provide extra mattresses? These questions pile up stress and finances – they know how to handle these better than you can.
- They have a plan B for everything. If Murphy’s law of “Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong” comes true at your wedding, then next to God, only a wedding planner can help you save money and manage the show.
- They have way better logistical and organizational power than you can imagine. Hiring a wedding planner means hiring a team of people who have designated tasks. If you plan the wedding and assign tasks to your family members and they forget on D-day, then who’ll save the day?
- In the unfortunate scenario that your wedding needs to be postponed or worse, canceled, wedding planners will be able to help you get the most refunds or reduce postponement fees by a large amount since they work with the same vendors every day.
If you’d like to validate these points, call us and we’ll tell you more about it.
