What belongs in a wedding budget, including the parts nobody lists

Wedding budgets do not go wrong on the venue. They go wrong on the forty small things that were never on the list, each too small to argue about and large enough together to be a second photographer.

The big lines, roughly in order of size

• Venue hire, and whether it includes tables, chairs, linen and staff — or is a room and a bill for everything else.
• Food and drink, per head, with the service charge and corkage read before signing.
• Photography, and separately video if you want it.
• Clothes, alterations included, for both of you.
• Flowers, split between ceremony, tables and the parts that get carried.
• Music: ceremony, drinks, evening. Often three different bookings.
• Cake, stationery, rings.

The eleven that arrive later

1. 1Postage for the invitations. Real money, once you count save-the-dates and RSVPs.
2. 2Alterations, twice — most dresses need two fittings, and the second is not free.
3. 3Hair and make-up trials, and the travel for the person doing them on the day.
4. 4Overnight rooms for you, and often for two sets of parents.
5. 5Transport between venues, including the awkward gap for guests.
6. 6Suppliers' meals — most contracts require you to feed the photographer and the band.
7. 7Corkage, cutting fees, and anything the venue charges for a thing you brought yourself.
8. 8Décor you assumed was included: candles, table numbers, signage, easels.
9. 9Wet-weather plan: the marquee side panels or the gazebo you do not need until you do.
10. 10Tips and thank-you gifts.
11. 11The dress after the day: cleaning and boxing, which is a bill nobody has ever budgeted for.

How to hold it together

Three columns, not one: estimated, booked, paid. Estimated is your guess, booked is what the contract says, paid is what has actually left. The gap between the first two is where the budget really lives, and the gap between the last two is what tells you what is still owed the week before.

Add a deposit column with dates. Deposits are the reason a budget that balances on paper still empties an account in March: half the suppliers want money at booking and the rest want it six weeks before, and nothing about the total tells you that.

Then keep a contingency of about ten per cent, written into the budget as a line rather than left as an intention. A contingency that is not a line gets spent on chair covers.