What the budget includes:

Everyone has a different definition of exactly what is included in the wedding budget. We have decided that our wedding budget includes:

• Venue rentals (for both the ceremony and reception site; including clean up fees, permit fees, insurance if required, etc...)
• Food
• Alcohol (but we will limit the types of alcohol we serve and likely cap the time we host the bar)
• Attire for the bride and groom
• Entertainment (i.e., music)
• Decorations
• Flowers
• Marriage license fees
• Invitations, reply cards, postage, programs
• Wedding photography
• Transportation on our wedding day (transportation for the bridal party; discussing possibility of transportation for all wedding guests between ceremony and reception site as well)
• Hair/makeup
• Gifts for the wedding party and favors for guests

What our wedding budget does not include:

• Honeymoon
• Wedding rings
• Engagement photography

You can find a useful (and free!) budget worksheetat Real Simple. We nixed a few things from the worksheet (as well as other items that wedding magazines/books/websites claim you need) that we decided we really didn't need at our wedding:

• Corsages (bridesmaids don't need boquets and corsages!)
• Ring bearer pillow (no ring bearer; best man's going to hold onto those)
• Flower girl's buds and basket (see, neither of us have nieces or nephews or anyone else close to us with children in the ring bearer/flower girl age . . . turns out, we don't mind because it lets us cut a things from the budget!)
• Cocktail hour musicians and DJ/band (we're going the iPod route, though we are entertaining the idea -- budget permitting, of course -- of having acoustic music for our ceremony)
• Videography (I certainly am not going to watch my wedding again and again . . . I'd rather allocate this money for a better photographer)
• Welcome gifts for out of town guests (the vast majority of our guests are out-of-town and there's no way we could afford welcome baskets for everyone; we are trying to do some other cost-effective things to welcome them, including transportation services between the hotel and wedding day events, hosting picnics, etc...)
• Save-the-date cards (saves not only on the cards themselves, but also postage which adds up!)
• Seating and place cards (sit where you like! Also, we're probably hosting a more informal cocktail-type reception so place cards are really unnecessary)