News of the credit crunch sits uncomfortably alongside media interest in Wayne Rooney & Colleen McLoughlin's £2.5 million wedding. The nation's obsession with watching celebrities spend obscene amounts of money, whilst trying to emulate it on normal salaries with normal responsibilities, means more stress and less fun, especially when it comes to wedding planning.

A recent report estimates that nearly 125,000 people will need a personal loan to pay for a wedding in 2008 (source - Sainsbury's Finance) and our own research shows that many people worry about escalating wedding costs and feel pressurised to spend more than they can afford by the media, and by the wedding industry.

At Magic Dust, we've always believed that it's not how much money you spend but the way in which you spend it that really matters.

Setting a budget (as well as sticking to it!), discussing and deciding on priorities (then writing them down and carrying them with you) and remembering that your wedding day is the first day of your marriage, not the culmination of an expensive fantasy, are the first, and most important, things to do.

It is sensible in the current economic climate to curb unnecessary spending but, if you're planning a wedding, this doesn't mean you have to compromise on quality or style. It does mean that you'll need to be creative, clever and you'll have to plan everything incredibly well - and all of this takes time.

Time is one of the things a good wedding planner can offer couples and it's the premise on which Magic Dust was born. Our refreshing, simple & invaluable approach is a hit with couples precisely because they can choose how much help they want from us, and only pay for the time it takes us to do what they ask us to do.

We believe that everyone should have access to a professional, experienced wedding planner so we don't discriminate in terms of size of budget. We absolutely won't charge couples a percentage of their wedding budget (this seems utterly lazy and money-grabbing to us) nor do we have ready-made packages that people have to make-do with - every wedding is as individual as the couple getting married so the service a wedding planner offers should be too.

We practice what we preach too. A couple with a £49,000 wedding budget asked us to help them with just one task and they simply paid for the 3 hours of our time it took to complete it.

Another couple we worked with last year had a budget of £5000 and spent nearly 20% of that with us - it bought them a 'Girls Night In' planning session to kick start things, 12 hours of planning tasks and 'On The Day' co-ordination, and most valuable of all - it bought them the peace of mind that allowed them to sit back, relax and enjoy every single minute of their wedding day and the preparations.

And we see that, time and time again, it's not the budget that dictates how stylish, enjoyable and memorable a wedding is - being well-organised, feeling well supported and knowing exactly what's important to themselves as a couple, that's what makes for a successful celebration.

So, scale back by all means but don't immediately think that that means you can't afford to even contemplate talking to a wedding planner. A good wedding planner will be happy to talk to you about how they can help you - if they won't give you some time until you've handed over money to them then you obviously aren't speaking to Magic Dust!

Until next time,

Labels: budget