Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is

Spend unevenly on purpose. Name your top two or three priorities as a couple, put 60 to 70% of the budget behind them, and treat everything else as adjustable. If you cook together and care what people eat, the menu is where the money goes. If flowers are the thing you will remember, fund the florals and accept a shorter photography package. The categories you did not name are where the savings are, and they get easier to find once you have decided they do not matter much to you. No rule says a wedding budget should spread evenly across a checklist, and weddings that try to be excellent at everything usually end up merely adequate at all of it.