Wedding Planning & Budget Tips During Inflation
Wondering how inflation will affect your wedding? Right now, we're seeing the wedding industry coping with an increase in wedding bookings and challenges from shortages and inflation. We're here to help with our top wedding planning tips for navigating your wedding budget and planning stresses during inflation, as well as uncertainty in the economy.
After postponed weddings due to the pandemic, we're seeing years filled with love ahead. The wedding industry is experiencing a "boom" in bookings, but then there's also inflation and rising prices to deal with when it comes to wedding budgeting. With shortages affecting everything in our lives from home renovations to food supply, you're bound to run into some supply chain disruptions, shipping delays in shortage challenges for your wedding.
For more on how to handle the increase in weddings, be sure to read our post on how to handle wedding boom in 2022 and 2023.
How will inflation contribute to your wedding planning? Well, quite simply put, prices are up and so is demand. Just as prices are up with gasoline in our everyday lives, prices of wedding goods and supplies are also up. Costs are increased for wedding goods like food for wedding catering menus and wedding cakes, fabric for wedding dresses. as well as flowers for wedding floral designs and bouquets.
Wedding experts are working hard for clients to help create beautiful dream weddings and stay within budgets. Flexibility is key. Couples who are flexible and trust their wedding professional partners will enjoy a beautiful wedding that easily navigates the industry's current challenges whatever those challenges might be.
WEDDING PLANNING & BUDGET TIPS DURING INFLATION
TIP #1 - WHEN YOU SEE IT, PURCHASE IT
With supply chain issues continuing throughout a variety of product types, be sure to purchase decor or other wedding items as soon as you find them. If it's available now, it might not be available later on. This is true for key wedding decor like flowers or bridal fashion like wedding dresses and accessories.
Rush orders are a thing of the past! With inventory issues with fabrics and other raw materials and supply chain shortages and shipping delays, most wedding designers are no longer offering rush orders and are consistently discontinuing styles, especially on wedding dresses and decor items that require materials.
Photo Credit: April Mae Creative
TIP #2 - HIRE THE BEST EXPERTS YOU CAN
One of our best tips for how to handle wedding planning during inflation is to hire the best wedding vendors that you can. Trust us, it will pay off!
Working with trusted and seasoned wedding professionals will save you money in the long run for your wedding. The most experience wedding vendors, like your wedding planning, will be able to help you maximize your wedding budget and spending. They will help you determine what areas you can cut back and what areas are must-haves for your wedding!
Experience wedding professionals are, well, experienced. They will know how to deal with the inevitable changes and challenges that come along with planning a wedding during times of such change like during supply chain delays and inflation.
TIP #3 - BE INTENTIONAL WITH YOUR GUEST LIST
The bigger the wedding guest list, the more money you'll spend...it's a fact. The easiest way to save money on your wedding and combat inflation is to cut the wedding guest list. More guests means more food, more drinks, more flowers, more tables, more rentals, just more of everything.
If money is an issue and you're worried about the overall cost of your wedding start with your guest list. Take a look at your proposed guest list and consider dropping to just 10 guests less. You'll notice a big difference in your wedding budget right away!
Photo Credit: April Mae Creative
TIP #4 - SET PRIORITIES, NOT SPECIFICS
Planning a wedding during supply chain delays, pandemic recovery and now inflation the best thing you can do to control the budget and your sanity is to set priorities, not specifics with your wedding vendors.
When it comes to wedding details like flowers or food, set the things that you care about and let your wedding experts worry about making it happen for you.
For example, if you want a certain color palette for your wedding flowers, let your florist know...but on your wedding day let them choose the most affordable flowers at the time to make it happen for you.
If you are specific about the exact flowers they must use, it will drive up the cost for them to be sure they can source those flowers for you.
This can be the same with food and catering right now during supply chain delays, too. The exact foods that you want might not be available at the time of your wedding. So, let your caterer know the overall food style that you want and then trust them to use their judgement and expertise to deliver for you on your wedding day.
TIP #5 - DON'T WAIT TO SIGN CONTRACTS
If you're worried about wedding planning during inflation, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is to not wait to sign contracts with your wedding vendors. Lock things in now! Dates are booking up for all vendors as wedding demand continues to soar.
If you wait, you might be locked out with your first and second and third choices in wedding vendors, locations and services that are not available.
Plus, with inflation signing your wedding contracts early may help lock in pricing. if you wait to sign your contracts for your wedding the cost of goods and services might go up.
Photo Credit: April Mae Creative
The inflation effects we are seeing in the wedding industry are caused by a number of contributing factors, not just one thing. So, we expect to see this last for a while. Weddings in 2022 will certainly be affected by inflation but experts also expect to see these inflation and supply change challenges last through at least 2023 weddings.
Don't let inflation stray you away from your dream wedding. Use our tips to help navigate the challenges we are seeing with weddings. Be flexible and hire the best experts you can who can create an unforgettable wedding that you will love, even if it's not the exact flower species you dreamed of before.
If you're looking for more ways to keep yourself organized while handling your wedding budget, be sure to check out the wedding budget planners & trackers available. Not only do they help you stay on track and organized...it makes all of the budget planning part of wedding planning a little more fun!
Don't forget, we have so much helpful and practical wedding planning advice on our blog. Whether it's with our our tips or our wedding heirlooms, our main goal in life is to share our expertise and help you have a joyful and stress-free wedding planning experience. You can shop our wedding garters and bridal accessories anytime and you can find all of our wedding planning tips on the blog.
With love,
The Garter Girl
P.S. Some of the above product links are affiliate-connected and purchasing through these links helps to support the blog.
