Q6. Is it Okay to Plan Your Wedding With the Amount Your Friend Spent on her Own Wedding?
No, you should spend how much you already have, or feel comfortable spending on your wedding. You’ll never know how much your own wedding will cost until after you make a wedding budget.
No two weddings are the same – the ways they differ make their budgets differ. For example, you could differ in the number of guests. Your taste may differ – maybe your friend bought a used designer wedding gown and you bought a made-in-China dress. Maybe your friend hired a DJ and you have plans to hire David-O to sing live at your wedding, etc.
Q7. Someone Promised Us Plenty Money. Can I Start Wedding Planning Based on that?
No, that is uncertainty and very risky. Humans can fail. Besides, you can’t take a verbal promise to the bank. Don’t plan your wedding on promised money or pledges from some rich man you want to make your wedding day chairman. Plan on what people have already given you PLUS your own money.
Q8. Should I ask Friends and Family to Contribute Money to My Wedding, and When is the Best time to ask?
Yes, you can. But start early and never plan with promises or borrowed money. Early on, months before your wedding, speak to your parents, friends, and relatives to find out how much they are willing to support you for the wedding.
Set a timeframe for when you want to start using the money, and be sure it’s up to 6 months from when you are asking for financial help. Ensure to tell your prospective supporters when (the latest month) you want to use the money. Know that there’s really no free money – when someone else pays all or a big part of your wedding, they expect to ‘ be in control’.
For ideas on how to have ‘the wedding, you want’ with your parents’ money, check out the video below from one of Nigeria’s top celebrity wedding planner, Funke Bucknor Obruthe.
One good alternative to asking for cash is to first prepare your wedding budget, then take it to your parents or other prospective funders to ask them where they feel most comfortable in assisting you.
After that, write that down in your wedding planning notebook, so you can follow up later. Be sure to send them a nice reminder before the latest date when you’ll want to start shopping for your wedding.
When it’s six months to your wedding, forget whatever funding that has not come in and go ahead with the amount that is already in your hand.
If any extra money later comes in, it would be a plus. Maybe you can use the new extra cash to splurge on your honeymoon or to furnish your new house after the wedding. However, if no other money comes in,, you can still pull off a memorable wedding on a low budget.
Q9. Can You Show Me a List of What Goes into a Nigerian Wedding Budget?
Yes. First, to make a wedding budget, you should make a list of everything you want to spend on – your wedding attire (bride and groom), your wedding rings, your wedding venue and other rentals, the vendors you would pay for wedding day services (cake baker, caterer, decorator, DJ/ music band, etc).
So, budgeting for a wedding is like what women do before they go food shopping at the market – make a shopping list.
So, with weddings, you will need to make a wedding budget list, after which you specify prices (Naira amounts) to each item on that list. Seeing what a typical Nigerian wedding expenses list looks like will give you an idea of what to prepare for.
Q10. Show Me Examples of Wedding Budgets From Other People’s Nigerian Weddings?
Yes. To show you what a wedding budget looks like, we made you 5 examples of small, low budget Nigerian weddings.
I know that many people find it easier to do something if they see how other people did their own. Therefore, in a different post, I provided different examples of Nigerian wedding budgets, featuring five samples from other people’s weddings for not more than four hundred guests.
Those wedding budget examples have helped many Nigerian couples plan their own weddings, especially those that thought they could not have a decent wedding with a low amount of money. Hopefully, you will find those examples also helpful.
Q11. Give Me an Idea of “the Traditional Engagement List” for Nigerian Marriage Introduction?
We interviewed different people who are indigenes of different parts of Nigeria (some are wedding professionals) for an insight into what the engagement and bride price is for their part of Nigeria. The result is in the guides below. We hope to keep adding more from other parts of Nigeria.
- Yoruba Traditional Engagement List and Bride Price
- Igbo Engagement List and Bride Price
- Edo (Eshan) Engagement List and Bride Price
Q12. I Have a Wedding Budget, How Should I Spend It?
Make an expense list, allocate portions of your budget to each expense, and follow it when buying wedding things and paying vendors. Here’s how to go about it – you need to break down your wedding budget into an expense list and allocate spending limits, just the way you make a food shopping list before going to the market. Go to our wedding budget calculator page and it will display your budget breakdown when you enter your budget amount.
You can also use our ready-made list of wedding budget expenses – just print it out and fill it.
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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?