Read this before spending a kobo on your wedding or starting to make a budget. We answered over 10 common wedding budgeting questions from Nigerian couples. This post could save you a lot of money and time, and also give you a roadmap on how to make the amount of money you have to plan your wedding work better for you.
During wedding planning, many Nigerian couples have unanswered questions about how to budget for their weddings and how to make it work, especially if they are short on cash. Because typical Nigerian weddings are known to have hundreds of guests, today’s young couples are afraid of huge wedding costs which are way bigger than their one year salary (in most cases).
Many Nigerian men are afraid of making a move from engaged to fixing a wedding date, for fear that they may never be able to save up enough money. Many engaged couples that write us are eager to get married and asking for ideas to help them have a wedding in the budget they have.
Maybe you too have some questions; this post is where I provide answers to frequently asked wedding budget questions Nigerian couples have asked us. Let’s help you figure out how to have a decent wedding on any budget.
On this blog, we are usually asked by our readers planning for their Nigerian weddings, especially the men who are eager to make the next move (from engaged to married) but stuck on how to make their wedding budget work.
After getting replies from happy readers who used our tips and advice to move forward, we thought to write a post with our answers on the 11 Frequently Asked Questions about budgeting for weddings in Nigeria. Read on.
Common Wedding Budget Questions (and My Answers)
Examples of some of the questions we get from our readers, asking wedding budgeting questions include: ‘I have N400k for my wedding, I need ideas to make it work?’; ‘how should I ask my parents to contribute to my wedding?’; ‘my friend did her wedding with N250k, can I also do the same?’; ‘will N300k be enough for a wedding in Nigeria?’.
Those are just a few of the regular wedding budget questions we get asked (always). It’s time to answer them and other related questions in this post. Hopefully, you may also find yours answered.
Q1. How Much Does a Nigerian Wedding Really Cost?
Nigerian weddings cost between N500k and N15 million, depending on the income class the celebrants belong to. There isn’t really a single average Naira amount for how much Nigerian weddings cost because over 90% of Nigerians are between mid and micro-income earners, and within each earning class there are further diverse classes.
So, Nigerian couples just plan their weddings according to their affordability, without asking what others are spending. As long as you keep your number of guests within your wedding catering budget, and also keep away uninvited guests, you will be fine.
Q2. How much should I spend on my Wedding?
Unless you tell me how much your monthly salary is, and how many people you want to invite and how much you have in your savings account, I cannot tell you how much to spend on your own wedding, but I can tell you to budget your wedding according to how much you can afford.
I’ll give you an idea of what some Nigerian couples are spending, may it’ll help you: micro and small weddings can cost between N200k and N1.5m. Some mid-income couples spend above N1.5m and N5m, and high income couples spend above N5m up to N20m.
Avoid using another bride’s wedding as a yardstick to measure your upcoming wedding, because you do not have the same budget. Instead of telling you an exact Naira amount of how much to spend on every wedding stuff, a professional wedding planner will ask you how much you want to spend overall, and then help allocate the wedding budget with top priority on things most important to you.
MORE SMALL & BUDGET WEDDING PLANNING TIPS:
- How to Plan a Big-Girls Wedding with a Small Budget
- How to Plan a Small Wedding in Nigeria (that Will Wow Your Guests)
- How to Plan a Low-Key Nigerian Wedding (Simple but Practical Tips)
Q3. Why Should I Create a Budget for My Wedding?
A wedding budget is needed for you to get an idea of the maximum amount to spend on your wedding. You need to break your budget down into an expense list, and keep that budget amount in focus during wedding shopping and payment of vendors so that you don’t go outside your plan or overspend.
I know a groom whose bride started planning without a budget, and she was just buying stuff and paying vendors until they ran out of funds – and they had to postpone their wedding. In their case, making a budget in advance would have helped them know how much their spending limit was. Savvy couples also make sure to follow an action plan to help them stick to the budget.
Q4. Does Low Budget Mean My Wedding will be Low Quality?
No, low budget does not mean low quality wedding. Good planning is what determines the quality of a wedding, no matter the budget. A N1 million wedding with poor planning will turn out looking cheaper than a N500k wedding with good planning. While having a lot of funds for wedding planning is nice, planning with more money is not a guarantee that it will be an amazing party. So, focus on good planning no matter the size of your wedding budget.
There are some things you can do to use a small budget to achieve a big-looking wedding. I wrote a series of articles to help you understand what it means ‘to have a small or low-key wedding’ and also clarify the two types of small weddings that couples everywhere (including Nigerians) choose to have: The 2 Types of Small Weddings (Which One is Your Style?)
Q5. How do you budget for a wedding?
The very first step is to set an amount you can afford to spend on the entire wedding, and then break that down into several other wedding expenses.
I have written an in-depth, step by step post on this and you can read it to learn how to make a wedding budget from scratch.
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Hello, I am very confused on how to allocated what amount of my wedding. Looking at 3milion with the price of things at this present times. I also noticed that you did not speak on the clothes parent of each person wears?
Read almost all your post
Hello Motunrayo, welcome here. I’m happy to know that you’re one of our avid readers – thanks. Now on to your questions:
-Budgeting for Parent’s Wears: Thanks for observing that. I did mention it in a few posts but I left it out because some couples do not include it in their wedding budget, but it’s something can plan to budget for it within under outfits by adding extra funds under the section: ‘Couple’s Outfits’ budget. Another way is to cater for that from the ‘Miscellaneous Funds’ Budget.
-How to allocate/ use your wedding budget: I made an automatic wedding budget calculator that does that for you. All you need to do is head over there, type in your budget amount and it will display a suggested wedding budget breakdown that you can use as-is or tweak to suit you. Try that and let me know.
-Can N3million be enough for a wedding these days? I understand what you mean. The cost of things are on the rise nearly everyday. But you also have to know that there are 2 types of costs involved in weddings – the ones within your control (guest number) and the costs outside your control (venue and vendors fees). You can keep your wedding within any budget you desire by controlling/ limiting your number of guests to an affordable number that your wedding budget can cater to.
*Food and drinks (catering cost) are Variable costs that you are in control of. It’d charged by per-person/ per guest. If you find that the total cost of your wedding food and drinks is a lot, you can either reduce the number of guests or look for extra money to cover the bill.
*Vendors and venues will charge what they will charge, and you can’t do much here. Their charges are Fixed. But with Venues, larger halls cost more, and so you can cut down cost if you’re planning for a smaller number of guest.
So, my take is always to cut down on areas you have control over (e.g. number of guests) – if you are unable to increase your wedding budget.
Last year, if you could invite 500 guests on a N3m wedding, you can invite around 300 guests this year – all because cost of food and vendors fees have increased.
Aside from reducing the number of guests, I had written articles covering different ideas to help you stick to your wedding budget and many ways to saving cost and managing your wedding funds.
Finally, if you really want to have a wedding within your N3m budget and not more, consider scaling down different parts of your wedding. It is possible to have a N3m wedding – as long as you know that it will be smaller than N3m wedding of last year.
Hope that helps.
Goodevening please is it compulsory to do chief Bridge maid and ashebi in a welding because am trying to avoid cost due to the encomy of Nigeria
Hello Omafuvbe, thanks fo reading. No, it is not compulsory to have bridesmaids and aso-ebi at a Nigerian wedding. Many people choose to skip them.
Wedding budget of 3million
What’s your question?