Traditionally, the bride’s parents have footed the bill for their daughter’s wedding, but nowadays, the new spouses-to-be have been taking the reigns on covering the costs of their upcoming wedding.

There is a plethora of things for couples to take into consideration when planning a budget for their wedding. The main categories include attire and accessories, beauty, entertainment, flowers and decorations, stationery, gifts and favors, jewelry, photography and videography, wedding planner, venue, catering and rentals. Couples can choose to spend more on one category and less on another, or just plain forego a few things in order to go easy on their wallets.

Websites such as The Knot provide budget calculators. These calculators work by allocating the funds to the different categories. The information the calculator asks for is the amount of money available to spend on the wedding, the planned number of guests and the number of groomsmen and bridesmaids. The couple is able to enter how much they actually spent on a certain item on the list and the calculator will tell them how much money they have left to spend, or even how much over budget they’ve gone.

It is always a good idea to do your research by looking up different vendors in your area and compare prices. Talk to other brides and get recommendations and advice on where to go for certain things.