A wedding budget calculator is an easy-to-use software package that sets users up with tools to plan their wedding expenses. This helps to plan your services and ensure you stay on your budget. You can easily point and click to set up planning for wedding invitations, flower arrangements, transportation, clothing, food, and location expenses.

Your wedding budget calculator of choice should plot and graph your expenses in a manner that lets you analyze what fits, and what will push you over your budget.

• Portraits, videos, album costs.
• Music equipment and band expenses.
• Groom and bridal attire.
• Bridesmaid dresses.
• Catering and other food costs.
• Flower bouquets, corsage, and accessories.
• Transportation to and from event.
• Wedding cake.
• Invitations and thank-you cards.
• Miscellaneous expenses.

Proper, trusted wedding budget calculators will take into account all traditional expenses and allow for costs that are unique to your wedding. Don’t forget things like bachelor parties, bridal showers, and paying for guest expenses (if you plan on doing so). By no means are wedding budget calculators only useful for the couple who plan on being wed: Often times the parents will have to utilize this tool to account for whichever portion they plan on taking care of.

Wedding planners use expensive versions to put cost proposals together for their clients. However, there are plenty of more affordable options that you can use for yourself if need be (we are discussing a “budget” after all). Some people need to take care of this sort of planning themselves to cut costs, and save money used to hire planners for other parts of their wedding.

Budget Considerations

Dresses

You can use wedding budget calculators to streamline various expenses. For instance: Many brides will go “over the top” with their wedding dress choices–by getting a few desired dresses (and their price) you can input them into your calculator, along with other items and find a happy middle ground that will allow you to stay on budget. Try going to a new designer, with a few trusted references and having them make you something affordable–they will often try harder to get your business, in an effort to grow their reputation. Keep in mind professional planners will always try to get you to choose the more expensive options first, as they usually have deals going with design companies, that give them further profit, on top of the costs they charge you. Having knowledge about fabric costs, name brands, and alternatives gives you the power to save thousands of dollars.

Food

By using wedding budget calculators you can plug various food and cake options in, to see what works, and what is way too costly. Again, as with dress design: You can find affordable catering options with companies that want to build a name, and won’t charge you three times as much as the next company–simply because they have an established reputation.

Invitations

Many people go over-board right from the get-go, by purchasing extravagant invitations, with expensive prints and paper–only to realize that they’ve went over-budget and cannot afford to do other, more important things with their wedding arrangements.