Wedding budgets have always been stressful for a lot of people. You have to know what the extra’s are, on which you could be spending. There are a number of minute expenditures which the families do not take into consideration. These expenditures can be anything ranging from rental transports, photographer overtime to wedding dress alterations cost. The wedding is the most important day of both the groom and bride’s life. After which you have the honeymoon, nobody needs the stress of more money being dished out from their pockets. Be prepared and know what you are missing out, in the list provided below.
1. Expenses for the wedding band
Before finalizing the musicians, like an orchestra or a DJ, you need to specify your details to them, so that they know where they would be working. Let the musicians visit the wedding hall to finalize what instruments would be required. To get good sound effects you can request the musician to add additional speakers and woofers. The band expenses would include the cost of the musician and a small cost of the equipment used to play music.
Tip: Do not give the entire sum of money before consulting the wedding planner.
2. Postage of wedding invitations
Wedding invitations need to be posted, couriered or shipped which could be a slight hindrance. Thus, you need to spend money on each wedding invitation. The expenses of wedding invitations should include everything from the printing of invitation cards to their mailing expenses. Choose an invitation that saves on your postal expenses, for example, you can avoid huge, awkwardly shaped and over sized invitations as they will help reducing smaller expenses. Prefer choosing simple and elegant cards to cards with leaflets.
Tip: Before you plan to choose your wedding invitations, you need to consider its postal expenses.
3. Alteration expenses for your wedding dress
You would spend hundreds of dollars buying a pretty wedding dress. As your wedding is a once in a lifetime occasion, you would want your wedding dress to be just perfect. However, buying a fitted wedding dress from a store would cost you a lot. Just adding a zipper would make a huge difference to cost of your wedding dress. You can get your dress altered though. Inquire about the alteration charges of your dress at the store itself. Get your dress altered at the store, if you find it reasonable enough. If required, you can get it altered outside to save huge on the alteration expenses.
Tip: Get the alteration from the place you bought the dress, they tend to charge less.
4. Overtime of the photographers
Timing your wedding is not really possible, however you can estimate the time by being a little realistic and including the hours spent at the beauty salon. The photographers are booked for a few hours and soon as those hours are over, they charge overtime per hour. To reduce that cost you need to estimate your time accordingly and book them. Just including an hour or so as overtime and adding that amount to the budget of your wedding would be a prudent option.
Tip: Always give an hour extra when calculating the charges with the photographer, in case you take more time.
5. Charges applied on delivering welcome bags
While booking the hotel, confirming all the charges and expenditures is important. Delivering welcome bags might not really cost a lot, although the hotel might not inform you about the charges in advance and just add it to your bill. Confirm the cost for delivering the welcome bags to the rooms of your guest. If the delivery charges are very high you can hand the gifts over to your guest at the rehearsal dinner.
Tip: Always ask for a bill before hand if possible, or a rough outline of your costs.
6. Charges for rental items
You might find that renting is cheaper than delivering items. Confirm with the rental transport companies if the the packaging and shipping charges are included in delivery. If you think they are costly, you can look out for more options before taking the final decision. At times you might find companies with expensive rental charges might not charge you for the delivering the items. You must also know that the everything you get delivered would also cost you money, so make sure you ask for all the information before hand.
Tips: Delivery charges should be asked about while placing order’s.
7. Paying taxes
Paying taxes is an important part of wedding expenses. While calculating the expenses you might forget the added taxes on the items. Bear in mind, that the taxes differ with everything starting from the wedding dress to the wedding venue. To avoid piling up of taxes, you can pay off the entire amount of the wedding in a lump sum or you can even get your wedding arranged, during the winters when the vendors have fewer wedding to cover up their bills.
Tip: Small things like taxes of gifts also should be taken into consideration.
8. Fees involved for cutting the cake
Using the site bakers would be affordable, as they will include the charges of the cake into the bill. However, if you would want to get a cake from an outside baker, you need to confirm the cake serving charges from the venue staff. The cake serving charges of the venue staff might prove to be more expensive. You need to confirm the serving charges with the management before booking a cake. Sometimes there are two cakes at the wedding.
Tip: Make sure you ask if the cake is allowed to be cut and what is the cost.
9. Cost of the coat check person
A good approximate total of the guests who will attend your wedding may or may not be of great help. The union usually decides on the number of people working as coat checkers and the money that they will be paid as coat checkers. In this case a wedding in the summer would be beneficial as you would not have to have a coat check person. You could have the wedding in the open if it is in the winter, in that case you would not require a coat check person yet again.
Tip: Ask if the hotel is adding charges for the coat check.
10. Service charges
There are some common misconceptions regarding service charges. Many people feel that these are the tips for the event staff. Service charge is the cost paid for hiring staff to serve the guests. To get an approximate idea of the total cost of the venue you need to add the service charges to the projected charges. Most of the time this point goes unnoticed.
Tip: Add the total cost to your wedding budget so that you may not end up in great surprise with a huge bill.
