The wedding costs nobody budgets for

Every wedding budget I have seen starts the same way. Venue, catering, photography, dress, flowers. Five big numbers, added up, compared against what the couple has. It usually works out on paper.

Then it doesn't.

The overspend almost never comes from the five big numbers. Those get negotiated, compared, and worried over for months. It comes from the twenty small ones nobody wrote down, which arrive in the last six weeks when there is no time left to say no.

The ones that get missed

Postage. Not the invitations, the save the dates, the thank you cards, the replies you paid return postage on. A hundred and twenty guests and you are into three figures before anyone has replied.

Alterations. The dress price is the dress price. Two or three fittings are not in it, and neither is the veil, or the shoes you will change into at nine.

Vendor meals. Photographers, videographers and the band usually have a clause about being fed. At forty a head for six people that is a number, and it appears on the catering invoice after you thought catering was settled.

Overtime. The band plays until eleven. Everyone is having a good time at eleven. The half hour extension is the most expensive half hour of the day and it is decided by someone slightly drunk.

Then the ones that are barely costs at all until they are: parking, corkage, cake cutting fees, the extra night in the hotel because check out is at ten and you got to bed at three.

Why this happens

Big costs get decided early, when you are still being careful. Small costs get decided late, one at a time, when you are tired and the wedding is close and forty pounds does not feel like a real number next to the twelve thousand you have already committed.

That is the trap. Forty pounds twenty times is eight hundred pounds, and nobody ever sat down and agreed to spend eight hundred pounds.

What actually helps

Write the small ones down first, before you book anything. Not because you can predict them all, but because the exercise changes what the venue number is allowed to be. If you know six hundred is going to disappear into postage, alterations and vendor meals, you plan the venue around a smaller number and you are not surprised in April.

The second thing that helps is a running remaining figure rather than a total spent figure. Total spent tells you what happened. Remaining tells you what you can still say yes to, which is the decision you are actually making every time.

I would rather see a couple budget nine thousand honestly than twelve thousand optimistically. The nine thousand one usually comes in under.