I'm a Budget Wedding Planner. Ask Me Anything.

Well, hello lovely humans, and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer, and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way. Because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is actually a audio recording of one of my most popular YouTube videos. I don't know about you, but sometimes I just need to sit down and and be able to process through the audio without the distraction of a video. So we decided to take this sweet little nugget and turn it into a podcast for you. I hope you find this helpful, my friends. How do I stick to my wedding budget? I swear, every time I get this question, I feel like either Dave Ramsey or that guy Caleb who yells at people for using credit cards. Hi, my name is Jamie Wolfer. Welcome back to my channel. I'm your online wedding planner. I specialize in budget weddings. And today we're gonna be answering 10 of your questions and this is one of them. Now before we jump into the meat and potatoes of today's video, if you have not done so already, jump on down there and subscribe. There is so much budget wedding planning goodness that is on this channel and I put out a new video each and every single week. I'd love to have you stick around. I hope you plan easy, stress less, because you deserve a stress free wedding day. So go subscribe right now. Okay. How do I stick to my wedding budget? You just. You do. You don't spend money outside of what you have allocated. Question number two. Okay, no, let's dive into that a little bit further. First of all, the best way to save money is to not spend it. My mom's always told me that my whole life and honestly, it used to annoy the living tar out of me and now I get it, so there's that. Secondly, the word budget gets used for two completely different things. One, budget when you have a number, an amount, the full amount that you want to spend. And two, how that number is allocated across your different vendors. That same term budget is used for both of these concern is that you only have this one where you're like, I have a budget of $10,000. And I'm like, cool, what are you doing with it and you're like, I don't know. I'm not spending more than $10,000. That's where you need an actual budget that's going to work for you where you can plug in your numbers. I have one in the master plan. It's my online wedding planning course that I walk you through. I also jump on live time to answer questions just like this over there. I'm going to go ahead and link it right here on the description box down below if you want to take a look at it. It's super inexpensive. Why? Because I specialize in budget weddings and I know how much you have to spend, so I'm here for you. So the reason that so many people don't stick to their budget, and we did a video about this a little bit more recently, is because they don't have a functioning breakdown and or spreadsheet of what they should be allocating to each category. I'm considering getting a used dress to save money and also for environmental reasons. That's right. However, my family is very eager to go dress shopping with me. Any advice? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So there's no harm in going dress shopping just to try stuff on. In fact, I highly recommend it because you might have an idea of what you want. And this is very common when it comes to wedding dress shopping, where you're like, this is a silhouette. I want to. This is the detail that I want. I want lace, I want this, I want that. And then brides will go to put the dress on and go, wait a minute, I fell in love with that silhouette. I didn't think I wanted lace. And now here we are. So I think it's a fantastic idea to go dress shopping anyway so you can get a better idea of what you like on your person. Because it's one thing looking at Pinterest or a bridal magazine, and it's completely different experience having it on your body. So I still recommend doing this, plus free champagne and a fun day out with your family and friends. Like, why not? Unless you don't want their opinions and you don't want to do this with them. And then you can tell them that I said that you shouldn't go try on dresses that are super expensive because then you might be wooed into wanting to buy them. And we don't want that. Right. We're trying to be environmental and budget friendly. You can use that as your reasoning. However, I think that you have enough willpower to go and do that. I think you'll be fine. But if you don't want to do this. You can say, hey, that wedding planner on the Internet gave me this advice. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to. And you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jamie? Actually, yeah, that, that makes a of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions. Guess what? You need to join the master plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over 10 lessons that walk you through planning your wedding with videos and spreadsheets and other detailed resources. Along the way, join me and my virtual clients over in the master plan and get all your wedding planning questions answered. Literally thousands of couples have gone on this journey with me, and I'd love for you to be next. Check it out@wolferandco.com tmp that's wolferandco.com tmp Listen. Wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual worst. And the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision, and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget for you and your partner, head on over to weddingpriorities.com. question number three. How do I plan without a set budget up front? Ha. I hate that for you. My parents contributed a small number with the phrase, but if we can do more over time, we will. And I'm just not sure what to bank on, how to plan accordingly. That's because you can't. That's because you can't. This is gonna be uncomfortable, but you need to have a conversation with them about it. If this is like make or break for your wedding budget, if you feel like, you know what, we got this, we can, we can pay for the whole thing ourselves. It doesn't matter. We're just going to go full steam ahead with the budget amount that we have set aside. And then anything they give to us or contribute towards the event, we will consider it icing on the wedding cake or dessert table if that's what you're doing, which I do highly recommend. But if your budget is less than $15,000, $10,000, then any sort of contribution could be a game changer between the photographer you book, the type of catering you get. So this would be a situation where I would recommend downloading our Hard Money Talks guide. Yes, it's literally how to sit down and talk with family members that may be contributing to your event. And it gives you little prompts of what you can ask and how to have the conversation. You can literally hold it the whole time if you want to, or just take a glance at it ahead of time and use that as a frame of reference to have this conversation with them. I'm going to go ahead and link it right here and down in the description box below in case you want to watch the rest of this video and get back to that later. But it is important to have this conversation because you are quite literally stuck without knowing and it feels a little crippling. So you either need to make the decision of we will pay for this event all on our own. Whatever they gift to us, they gift to us. And we will use that maybe towards a honeymoon or towards something else that we can splurge on. But if it is, if your event is contingent upon whatever amount they could be contributing, then you do need to have the conversation with them. Question number four. This is going to be super niche. Great, fantastic. Bring it on. I'm sure it's going to help so many people, but we are doing a micro wedding with a private ceremony followed by dinner with friends. Dinner is the thing. No dancing or anything like that. It will be a five course dinner with about 25 people. We are planning to have a Polaroid camera and a few guests speak. But what else can we do to make a long dinner fun and interesting in a limited restaurant space? Thank you. Love your content. Thank you. Love your question. Nothing. Have you ever gone out to dinner with friends and needed entertainment? Your friends are the entertainment, you're the entertainment. I think a lot of couples get really caught up on this, need to just inundate their guests with entertainment. Like here. Yard, games, music, all the stuff, all the things. Here's a photo booth, here's this, here's that. And while I do love a good lawn Yahtzee on someone's wedding day, it's not necessary. And I will always go back to this one wedding, this one reference that I have where they had no dj, they had no dancing, there was no photo booth, there was like a little trio of friends, a little gaggle of humans. One was playing a stand up bass, the other one was playing a guitar, I think. And one, I don't know if they were singing and shaking a little maraca thing, but it was like quietly over In a corner. They wouldn't, they weren't even mic'd up. There was no amplified sound at all whatsoever. And these guests milled about for three hours. The musicians weren't playing for that long. They were just simply engaged in conversation. They didn't need anything, they didn't need dancing. They just walked around and talked with their friends and their family. So in a situation like this, I really don't think there's much that you need to do to cultivate this experience for them. You said five course meal. Also, if you need a 26th person. I love food. So I will happily sacrifice an evening if you would like for me to come enjoy the five courses alongside all of your loved ones. I'll blend right in. You won't even know I'm there. But when you go to Thanksgiving, you know, you don't really need to hire a stand up comedian to keep everybody entertained. You just gotta wait till Uncle Sal has his second beer and then all of a sudden the material just writes itself. Don't feel the need to overproduce what is already a beautiful and simple evening and simply let people enjoy their conversations together. If there's anything that you want to do, I would say, is there a separate space where you could have a standing time, right where people are kind of done sitting, they've eaten the five courses. Is there a patio that you guys could migrate to if you want to? Because sometimes if it's in a really limited space, there isn't much walking around room. So I'm not quite sure what that space looks like. So that would be the only consideration I would think that you might want to toss in there either as a pre dinner cocktail hour or post dinner, you know, whiskey, cigar time, if you're into that kind of thing. But again, we're not producing anything, we're just creating. We're cultivating spaces where people could just organically hang out. And I promise you, I promise you, they will truly enjoy themselves. Question number five. Oh, I love this one. What is the biggest budget killer? I did a video on this. It's kind of old, so you might not have seen it. It's your guest list. Number one way to kill your budget is to have a giant guest list. Now I'm a big fat Hypocrite. I had 140 people at my wedding. We spent $8,500 on our wedding, or 8,000, I don't know. We got married a long time ago and I did not keep receipts. But I do know it didn't go over 8,500. So it's somewhere in the neighborhood of that. So I know that you can have a larger guest list and a lower budget. However, going the most traditional style wedding, where you're hiring a florist, hiring a caterer, hiring someone to do desserts and bar and rentals, then your guest list is going to have the largest impact on your overall budget because it's going to be the chair they're sitting in, the table they're sitting at the tablecloth for that table, the centerpiece, the plates, the utensils, the glassware, the drinks they're consuming, the food that they're eating, the appetizers, the desserts. The cost per person is going to be the most impactful part of your budget. I'm going to link that specific video right here because it really does truly break down all of the ways your guests affect your budget. Again, it's still totally feasible to have a budget wedding with a large amount of guests, but you will probably not be able to book all the traditional vendors through the traditional means. Question number six is, I've never had a question like this. For our evening wedding, we're likely going with dinner, followed by the cake cutting, with the cake serving as the dessert. How do you ensure your guests will have enough food but with enough room for cake after dinner? I don't want my guests to feel like there wasn't enough to eat, but also don't want them to be so full after dinner that they won't eat the cake. This person's clearly never heard of a dessert stomach. Okay? That's a separate stomach. According to my husband and all of my children. I'm not personally huge on sweets, but they, they do have a second stomach for something like this. Second of all, we don't need to manage our guests eating. We just don't. I. I don't think you should underserve them in any way at all whatsoever in the hopes that they will eat cake. You guys know what's coming, don't you? A lot of cake gets thrown away because a lot of people don't like cake. And that's why I usually recommend a dessert table if you're trying to please a myriad of palettes. Because while I would probably never really touch a wedding cake if someone had a raspberry tart or a lemon tart, you know, anything like super fruity and vibrant and bright, I would totally go after that dessert. Which means you're now catering to a niche section of your guest list who probably wouldn't have eaten the cake anyways. There are a lot of people who will not eat the cake. But if you are heck bent on having cake be your only dessert option for your guest list, make sure you are not doing it for every single person, because, again, not everyone's gonna have it. And if you really want to ensure that people eat it, have it served table side immediately following dinner. Is that normal? No. But if you're putting the cake directly in front of them and toasts haven't happened yet, then there's a higher likelihood that if they're still sitting there or a little bit bored, they see cake in front of them, they might stuff their face with it. If the goal here is to make sure people consume as much cake as possible, literally place it in front of them. Don't let them go off to dancing. Don't let them go off to do anything else. Okay. Order correctly, place it in front of them. Now, there's a couple issues with that. You. Who's cutting them, who's plating them, and who's putting them in front of your guests? Just food for thought. Okay. Traditional catering. Yeah, of course, they can totally cover this, but if you don't have a traditional caterer, then you should probably figure that out. Okay, another catering question. When telling the caterers a guest list, do we have to create a separate list for the vendors we're planning on feeding our vendors? Amen. Sorry, I get spicy, but I don't want to cause confusion with how many guests or vendors there will be or have too little food or drive up the prices unnecessarily. Okay. Couple different things. You can tell your caterer that we have this many guest lists and this many vendor meals, and the caterer will be like, cool. Got it. Sometimes it's a completely separate meal for the vendors. This all depends on the caterer. It could be like a really soggy sandwich and some chips and like a lukewarm Lacroix. And other times, it's the same exact meal as what your guests are getting. So once you pass that information off your caterer, you're off the hook. You don't really need to do anything else with that. But as far as having too little food or driving up the prices unnecessarily, that's speaks more to a lack of faith in the caterer or a lack of knowledge in the system and how it works for them. Because you could straight up ask them, hey, how do we make sure we don't run out of food? What does that look like? What's Your process look like? What's your math look like? You're totally allowed to ask these questions because you should feel confident and have total faith that they're going to pull this off for you. And then the flip side of that is driving up prices unnecessarily. Again, same questions. How do you make sure you have enough food without too much going over? What do you do with the extra food? If we bring to go containers, can we take that home with us to then it gives you a little bit more peace of mind that you're getting the best bang for your buck when it comes to your catering. What can I do to reach more vendors? I live in a very small town and my options are few and far between. I literally cannot find a caterer for under $10,000. I'm about to break down and ask friends or people that I know aren't coming to the wedding. Is that weird? Hi. I didn't invite you to the super awesome party we were having, but can you just dish out the food for us? Possibly clean up after? I just can't. Okay. I'm so sorry that I'm laughing. I'm sorry. I would import one from a neighboring big town. I would call a food truck. I would, y'. All. You can get crafty when it comes to catering. Is there a place that does drop catering like Chipotle or Jimmy John's? Is it traditional? No. No, it's not. Not at all. Whatsoever. And you'll still probably need to bring someone in to do that cleanup afterwards. There are service staff that you can hire, and usually in situations like this, uh, even if you are in a small town, you might be within an hour and a half or so of a larger city that has a bartending and service staff company. So you could hire someone to come in and take care of that for you, broaden your scope. Especially if you're in a small town and all the caterers are like super bougie. See if anyone will come in. See if you can bring in a food truck. There are ways that you can get creative with this without having people you know and love watch your wedding from the catering kitchen. Question number nine. My soon to be fiance and I do not want to do a first look at our wedding. That being said, all the pictures will have to be taken after the ceremony. How much time should that take without making our guests wait super long for the reception to start? We are worried our guests will be waiting too long during the cocktail hour and that this will make us anxious while taking our Pictures. Okay. I love that you're really breaking this down to like, what's the core issue here? You don't want to be anxious during picture taking. That's. I'm really glad you're aware of this. We've had this happen with a couple once because the DJ decided to start playing dance music, like getting people on the dance floor and the crowd is cheering and having a great time. And the poor couple is like off doing portraits close by and could hear everyone having fun and kept getting distracted and wanted to go join them. Yeah, that DJ angered me. And it was not just that one thing, but watching their faces and being like, I don't want to be doing these photos right now. That's not what I want. First and foremost, let me just say that your guests attention span when they're being fed, when they have something to drink and there's background music is a lot longer than you think it is. It might be affected by things like the weather. So if it's super hot or super cold, the desire for a small talk with a great aunt you you haven't seen in seven years starts to dwindle a little. So if you are getting married in the super hot or super cold months, I'd pay attention to that. But otherwise, having a cocktail hour up to an hour and a half is perfectly normal. Just make sure there's enough appetizers to last throughout the entire thing, enough beverages, and honestly, guests will pretty much just enjoy themselves. Now, to assuage any concerns that you have, if you're like an hour and a half sounds obscene. There is no way I want to take that long. I have had many a photographer make cocktail hour a single hour work where it's 20 minutes for family photos, 20 minutes for wedding party, and 20 minutes for you and your honey in your portrait session. Is it tight? Yes. Would I recommend bumping it to at least an hour 15? Yes. It does not have to be a tight hour. It totally doesn't. I promise you your guests are doing a lot better than you think they are. And then last but not least, question number 10. How do you stop self doubting when you've selected a vendor? Okay, I'm glad this question made the cut on this. And I want to get to you before you book vendors. So if you've already booked them and this is your question, I'll get to you in just a second. A sec. You avoid creating opportunities for doubt by researching effectively ahead of time. And those of you that are already experiencing this, you're like that doesn't help me. I know this is for everybody else for just a moment, make sure you take your time researching your vendors. If you don't know what order you should be booking vendors in my checklist, the ultimate wedding planning checklist, it's literally the first link in the description box down below and it will tell you exactly when you need to be booking each and every vendor. You need to take the time to ideally find three to five vendors per category. Anything less makes me a little bit nervous. And yeah, you could go a little bit more than five if you want to, but you don't have to. That way you have a good idea of here are the services and here are the costs and here are the personalities of the different vendors. Who has the perfect intersection of all three of those? If you don't know how to interview a wedding vendor or the right questions to ask, you should come join me in the master plan. I literally have a digital download for every single vendor. So you know the exact questions to ask and the answers to look for. Again, I'll leave that down there. So if you've done the proper amount of research and you book them and then you start getting nervous, you can go back and remember I went through all of these different things and this vendor hit all of these different points for me. I was confident making that decision because of these reasons. These reasons still stand. And if you just jumped in and you didn't do a bunch of research or for whatever reason, you were just sitting on the self doubt choo choo train. I don't know why we're calling it that, but we're committed at this point. Then I would write down a list of reasons why you picked them up. Even if you didn't take your time, even if you didn't do your research, why did you pick them? What was the reason? Did you love their photos? Did you love their price point? Did you love their photos and their price point? Secondly, talk it out, Go talk to your fiance, go talk to a parent, go talk to a friend and be like, I am experiencing this and I just need to know if I'm crazy or not. Thirdly, maybe you need to assess if something changed. Where did the self doubt come in? Was it because you spent too much time on Pinterest? Again, not to call you out, but is it that? Or is it now that you've had a couple interactions with them and you're like, those aren't red flags, they're not orange, but they might be yellow, maybe a little yellowish. And now I'm starting to second guess my decision. And sometimes verbal processing can really help you with that. So try to assess whether these are justified or not based on why you picked them and if anything's changed since then. And you probably figure that out by writing it down and or talking with someone. That's what we have for today's video. Guys, thank you so much for watching. What's a question that you have for me? If we like this format, I'll keep doing this. Yeah, I mean, sure, it's a little random and all over the place, but these are all fantastic questions that I know. At least two of these helped every single one of you. At least two, right? Okay, let me know. Your questions are down below. I'd love to hear from you. If you haven't done so already, jump on down there. Hit that like button. Especially if you like that I'm answering your questions specifically. And subscribe to this channel for more tips and tricks for the modern day bride. And until next week, bye guys. If you are struggling with wedding planning and you have questions and you just need someone to listen and to chat with, come join us in the master plan community over at the Master Plan Wedding. I would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, subscribe, Jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a five star review so we can let the podcast people know that Jamie knows what she's talking about sometimes. And until next time, bye guys.