Budget goodies for my lovelies!!!

If you are anything like me, you might find this helpful. I looked around at SOOO many websites trying to find a realistic budget to work from, and all I found were calculators that told me to plug in a grand total and they'd tell me what to do with it. This did make things easy since I:

a) wasn't planning to use many items they included
b) had no idea what was a sane number to use.

Never-the-less, as I researched, I found out how much some expenses would reasonably be in my area, and I kept plugging in figures until it gave me that number for that item. Here's a list of some of the calculators that I found most helpful. I highly recommend these - they're not law by any means, but they give you such a good place to start:

Our Dream Wedding
This tool is my favorite one because it has all of the features I could hope for: you enter a budget, total guests invited, total guests expected to show, bridal party size, AND your area code; you can eliminate any fields you don't want to include in your budget and it automatically recalculates the remaining balance in to the rest of your budgeted items; and if you want to spend more or less on an item, you can change it manually and it will recalculate the rest. It also has a fairly inclusive list, so you won't forget anything. I <3 The Knot
If you have an account with theknot.com, try their calculator. I'm not a huge fan of it - you can eliminate any items you don't want to budget for, but it won't recalculate the remaining money back in to your budget, and it doesn't let you manually change any of the figures - but you can keep track of your spending as you go along. Convenient, if you already use them for other features.

Out of the Ordinary
With this calculator, you can change the percentage that you want to spend on different items, instead of the dollar amount, but it can be a little frustrating to navigate sometimes. Still a worthwhile tool, though.

I could list a few others, but they're actually pretty lame-o.

So, I know I just told you that using budget calculators sucked, and led you to believe that I'd give you something more useful. Well, they do (kind of). And, I will.

Use the calculators... they are your friends once you know what the hell you're doing. But, in addition to that, I'm going to provide you with something to help you even more:

My own budget.

But, not today. I'm still working on a realistic figure, and I eventually have to present this figure (with the FFG) to our two sets of parents and see if they think we're sane. Then, once everything is etched in stone, I'll share all of the dirty details and let you in on every gruelling moment of trying to stick to it. If all goes well, I'll share a final total with you in about a year. If not, I'll share a much smaller final total with you in a few months, once the FFG and I get home from Vegas.

I'm kidding. He hates Vegas. We'd find somewhere more romantic to elope.