This is what i did. Take each month's salary between you, deduct all bills and a shopping allowance, allow a little bit for emergencies, what is left each month is you wedding budget. If your good with excel do a spreadsheet.
Salary in, monthly bills out, approx wedding costs and when they need to be paid so you can see everything and easily check you can afford something.
Bear in mind you will probably have to pay half of the cost up front for your dress, the bridesmaids dresses and maybe the rings.
Every where i have been the other half is due within a week of the dresses coming in and they can take 6 moths to come in.
Some venues take rather small deposits but then don't accept the balance till a month before.
Hope this helps hun

We chose our budget by what realisticly we could afford which is £1000.

Good job I wasn't wanting the huge fairytale wedding lol :)

didnt really work out a budget, we worked out what we really want and got quotes so we knew how much it qwould cost at max, which i think worked out to be between £25 - £30k, which we wouldnt spend, so we then sat down and worked out how and where we could save, what we had to have and what we could go with out, we then search about for the cheapest quotes of what we wanted and have managed to get it down to £10-£11k xx

cheers shellg that has taken alot of shopping around, our flowers where going to cost £5-£6k in the first place (which i almost fainted) but shopped around changed them a bit, and we now have more flowers than we where going to have and they are costing £900 which was a massive saving, our invite etc.. would of cost us £1000-£1500 but made them all myself and came in at £150. our photographer was going to cost us £2000 but my mates other half is a photographer and he is doing it for us as a wedding present, the videographer was going to cost about £1000 but a family member is doing it instead, BM dresses would of cost £180 each (need 4) but a friends mother is making them at £100 for all of them. ebay has been a god send as well xx

We had a vague idea of the top end in our minds and then started to look around. I then realised that all the things I had pictured would mean spending more or cutting back. We decided to cut back because we want to overpay our mortgage, do stuff to the house etc. So....in the same way as fairytale we worked out what our priorities are and then spent the budget to make sure we got as much as that as possible xx

lol, I looked at what was in our savings account and went with that. At least I know I have the money for it, it reduces stress lol

We just researched how much everything we wanted would cost.

i started by getting all the info on everything from all the websites and wedding fairs to see how much things cost. Then decided what we definitely wanted and how much we could realistically save and feel comfortable spending!