Unexpected Wedding Costs You Might Forget to Prepare For
When drawing a wedding budget, you are likely to give your attention to big expenses such as venue booking costs, decorations, transportation, hotel accommodations, food, video and photography, and entertainment. Putting together a great wedding takes more than just accounting for these big expected expenses. You must also account for unexpected costs that may arise out of nowhere. Some of the unexpected wedding costs you might forget to include in your final wedding budget:
Unplanned Beauty and Styling Costs
The beauty treatments you may need on your wedding day may include more things than you have included in your budget. If you hire a stylist, you may want them to stay around for the entire day to touch you up when necessary. If they are being paid by the hour, the final costs may be more than you have budgeted for.
Pre-Wedding and Post-Wedding Celebrations
Your pre-wedding celebrations may eat up more money than you expect. Things like clothing and beauty treatments for pre-wedding events should be accounted for. If you have a destination beach wedding at a luxury resort for couples, you should also account for post-wedding expenses since some of your guests won’t return home until a day or two after the wedding.
Postage Costs for RSVP Cards
Depending on how big your guest list is, postage expenses can be a significant cost. The $2 you will spend on an average postage stamp will quickly add up to a 3-figure expense. When you are trying to put together a great wedding, every dollar counts.
Overtime Expenses
There are instances when your wedding organizers and other service providers helping you put your wedding together will work overtime. If they are being paid by the hour and they have higher overtime rates, you will have no option but to dig deep into your pocket to raise the money they’ve earned for an honest overtime work session.
Alterations to Wedding Clothes Including Wedding Dress
When you order a wedding dress plus suits and dresses for the groomsmen and bridesmaids respectively, you might want to make alterations to the dresses and suits so they fit perfectly. Very few stores will make the alterations for free.
Transportation Costs for Rented Items
When renting items for your wedding, you will quickly find out that some rental companies require customers to cater for the transportation of the rented items to the venue of the wedding. This is a cost most wedding couples forget to include in their wedding budget. Remember, also, that you will have to transport these items back to the rental company after the wedding.
Tips
Tipping etiquette is often very complicated and nothing is cast in stone. When working with various service providers, you will be helped by various professionals employed by the person you’ve hired – if they run a big enough operation. It is always a good idea to tip these people whenever they put in extraordinary effort or when the situation warrants.
Breakdown Costs
The typical wedding budget will include setup costs but will not cover breakdown costs. Labor isn’t free whatever the job is. Bringing down your wedding set up, dumping litter, and transporting wedding equipment to whatever establishment you got them from costs money.
Guests Who Don’t RSVP
If you have only accounted for guests who’ve confirmed their attendance, you are likely to have a few extra heads you haven’t accounted for show up to your wedding. Some of these guests could have forgotten to RSVP while others just didn’t care to. It is totally unfair but you will have to deal with it anyway.
Feeding Hired Professionals
You will probably hire various professionals to help you on your wedding day such as photographers, a wedding planner, a band, caterers, beauticians, and stylists. These are mouths you will have to feed on your big day. While you are not obligated to feed them as per the contract for services document you will sign when hiring them, it is good etiquette to serve them food along with your invited guests.
Necessary Extra Décor
You can’t really estimate with total accuracy how much your decorations will cost before the décor is done. As the décor takes shape, you may discover that some items aren’t enough, that you bought more of one type of flower than you needed and less of another or that some items have been spoiled and need to be replaced.
Hidden Costs
There are several hidden costs you may have to incur on your wedding day. You may discover, for instance, that a price that had been quoted for you did not include the required sales tax. When cancelling an order or booking in favor of another option, you may incur cancellation fees. All these costs can add up pretty fast to become a significant portion of your total expenditure.
Your wedding day is supposed to be one of the best days of your life. You don’t want to spoil it because you forgot about a small detail. While you’re planning your wedding, be sure to cover and prepare for any possible expense. You will be more at ease knowing if something pops up – you will have a plan.