Building a wedding budget you'll stick to

Every wedding budget starts the same way — venue, catering, photography, the three biggest checks — and every wedding budget breaks the same way, in the last two months, on the things nobody put a line item next to.

Alterations. Delivery and setup fees on rentals. Overtime for a band that runs past the contracted hour. Postage on invitations heavier than a couple expected. None of these individually breaks a budget. Together, unplanned, they routinely add ten to fifteen percent on top of the number a couple thought they had settled.

The fix isn't a bigger budget. It's building the ten to fifteen percent buffer in from day one, as its own line item, so the real total is the number you plan around instead of the number you discover in month eleven.