Q13. My Budget is Very Small. I need Ideas to Make it Work
Here’s my take on this: it’s possible to have your wedding with the amount you have if you follow a few simple rules:
a. First breakdown that wedding budget into spending categories ((food/ drinks, venue, stationery, entertainment, photography, outfits). Our wedding budget calculator will automatically show you your budget breakdown. You’ll also see your catering (food and drinks) budget.
b. Calculate your Affordable Number of Guests: Take the amount for your wedding food and drinks (catering) breakdown, go to different caterers and find out how many plates of food and drinks that amount can cater for? That is the number of guests you should invite. If you’d like to invite extra guests, tell your Caterers and ask them for the cost of the extra guests. Note that wedding food is on per-plate cost.
There’s no shame in inviting a few people. These days, keeping guest list counts small is classy. What’s not classy and shameful is inviting more people than you can feed, more than you can give souvenirs. So, keep it classy.
c. Venue Cost: Wedding venues cost are based on the size of the spaces, which reflects how many people the venue can seat. Smaller venues cost less than bigger venues. If you have a small budget, inviting fewer guests means that you will need a smaller, cheaper venue. Ultimately, using a small wedding venue will lower your wedding cost. However, ensure not to use a small venue for a large number of guests.
d. Invitation cards: Invitation cards are priced by number (quantity of cards to be printed). The more your wedding guests, the more your wedding cost. Therefore, if you’re looking for a way to lower your wedding cost, reducing your number of guests will lower the cost you’ll spend on invitation cards.
MORE ANSWERS TO OTHER WEDDING BUDGET FAQs: Check out our tips and advice on how to use small money to plan a decent Nigerian wedding:
- 9 Smart Ideas to Save Costs On a Nigerian Wedding
- How to Plan Small Weddings that Wow Guests
- How to Plan a Big-Girls Wedding with Small Money (10 Unique Ideas)
- How to Plan a Great Low-Key Wedding In Nigeria
- Ideas to Reduce Wedding Cost without Reducing Quality
It used to be the norm to leave the doors of a wedding open – the more the merrier. That used to be when the parents and external family used to fund weddings in Nigeria. In those days, the economy was good. However, these days, most Nigerian parents cannot afford to contribute financially to their children’s wedding, and so savvy engaged couples are having smaller weddings. The norms are changing because these days people can no longer afford to feed too many guests. Modern Nigerian weddings no longer have crowds.
The norms are shifting to smaller weddings, weddings with fewer couples, weddings that do not have an entire village or entire old schoolmates in attendance.
We’re seeing Nigerian weddings with less than 100 guests and they’re still beautiful. So, go ahead and stay true to your budget and have your wedding your way.
Recap and Conclusion
I told you that the cost of wedding food and drinks at Nigerian weddings make up up to 40 to 50% of the budget. Food and drinks cost are on a per-plate bases and so you can easily cut down your wedding cost significantly just by reducing the number of guests.
You also learned that you can afford a decent wedding at nearly any budget, as long as you invite the number of people your budget can cater to. Since after the COVID pandemic and lockdowns, Nigerian couples have began to have smaller weddings with fewer guests, and they are classy. I once attended a Nigerian wedding that had only 50 guests (a few close friends and close family members only), and it was one of the best wedding experiences I’ve ever had.
That’s all on our answers to frequently asked questions on budgeting for weddings in Nigeria. I hope you found answer(s) to your own wedding budget questions or concerns?.
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?