I need my own personal SUZE ORMAN

[megumic]

I''m feeling a bit stressed about wedding expenses. Things are turning out to be more expensive than planned and although I thought our budget was "cushy" it turns out I might be wrong. (Okay, admission, I AM wrong!

)

How are the other brides-to-be dealing with this? Have you cut things out, asked family for more money, or going over-budget?

Sometimes I feel like I need a mini-Suze sitting on my shoulder saying, "Don''t buy that!" "You don''t need that!" "Save for the wedding!" "Go for a run, not shopping!" On her Can I Afford It? segment tonight a couple was on with the same wedding budget as us, but they had more than $150k in savings!!! Made me feel like poo, despite the fact that we live simply, bring lunch every day and currently only have student loan debt. Oh, and they were approved b/c of their savings, which made me realize we''d be denied

Now I can''t sleep, hence the late post.

Look forward to hearing everyone''s situations! Hopefully we can share some saving tips and perhaps even motivate each other NOT to spend while we''re in wedding-anticipation!

 

[hawaiianorangetree]

Well we have gone from a 70+ wedding and when we realised that we could not afford it we decided to go to the registry office with just our immediate family (around 15 people) but now we are having a small cocktail style function after our wedding on the beach with 50 people (my mum has offered to pay for the reception up to a certain value, we are paying for everything else).

The most effective way i have found to cut costs is guest numbers. People = Expense sorry to say!!

As far as saving etc goes i have a certain amount from each pay that gets put aside regardless for the wedding, i don''t go shopping, i haven''t had any new clothes in at least 6 months, i space out hair appointments to nearly 3 months apart and we rarely go out on the weekends for dinners, drinks movies etc.

We are lucky in the fact that we enjoy spending time together at home and we amuse ourselves by doing things like riding the bikes to the beach to watch the sunset and we have many ''do it yourself'' home renno projects on the go to keep us busy, and i spend alot of time on pricescope!!

 

[soontowed]

Cutting the little things out of the wedding has really helped keep within budget. Things like expensive cake toppers, too many ceremony flowers, wedding favors etc. I bought my wedding dress at a trunk show at was comped an Amsale veil which save me at leat $300.

 

[laughwithme]

I am sorry you''re feeling some wedding expense stress!!! It''s so common and you''re totally not alone.

I feel like I set a really realistic budget in the beginning, but in regards to going over these items - the question is not whether the money is there, but rather how much will be left for a house DP. We could spend nearly twice our wedding budget, if we so desired. But, anything left over is being spent on our down payment, or new home expenses. So the trick that works best for me is, "which do you want - the string quartet? Or stainless steel appliances? The ice sculpture? Or a new loveseat?" That makes my decisions a lot easier.

If you''re not in this category (where the money is there to spend on either a wedding or something else), but instead the money isn''t there to spend at all, you need to not tempt yourself with things that you can''t have - if you can''t afford lilies, tell the florist, "I need to stay under this budget - not a dime over." And let the lilies go. Maybe you need to cut the guest list down, or even get out of contracts by paying a fee if it will save you money on less-expensive options. If you have stuff laying around the house to sell on Ebay, that could bring in some extra cash. I think bringing your lunch and being frugal is a great thing. Try not to compare yourself to other couples or other people with different situation - everyone has their battles. Figure out the arrangement that works best for you, and remember there will always be people better off than you, and worse off.

Its important to remember that no matter what, your wedding will happen, you will make everything come together, and this stress will end (I promise!!)

 

[PilsnPinkysMom]

I commented on your post in the Newlyweds thread, so I may be repeating myself here...

Suze may deny you because spending 30, 40, 50, 100, or 200k on a single day is not a wise investment. It's silly and you'll get nothing back except memories from a fun party. You could say that weddings are a waste.

So long as you aren't going into actual debt for the day, the only thing that matters is what you feel comfortable spending. Some women want to spend only 5k and others have no upper limit at all. If you're willing to cut back on your daily expenses to get an expensive dress, go for it. Maybe you don't NEED to buy a cake topper or champagne flutes or an isle runner, and maybe you have ZERO money in savings.... But it's your call whether you want to put off saving for a house or paying off student debt early and funnel all your funds toward the wedding. I don't mean this in a snotty way- it's precisely what my FI and I have been doing. Sure, we could be moving into a house in a few months, but instead all our extra cash is going toward a super fun party

People can judge all they want or say that weddings are a total waste. Maybe they are. But it's YOUR money and your FI's money. Spend it on what you want to spend it on! Shellin' out the dough for a single day might postpone loan payoff dates or home purchases or any other number of things *but* the memories will last forever. Is it wise? Ha. I think we can all agree that it isn't. But brides do it all the time. Does it mean you should? Only you can answer that.

If you've already decide that you want to cut back your budget, there are a handful of ways to do it... Make a list of what things are DEFINITELY important to you. Music? Photographer? Do a lot of e-bay shopping for things you need, and take advantage of wholesale websites and stores for vases and other items you're buying in bulk. Skip non essentials: programs, STDs, keep bridal party small, only have a florist do bridal party flowers, have small centerpieces, etc. If you've always envisioned a large, fancy, extravagant bash and feel that cutting back will lead to settling... well... do some soul searching and decide whether the guilt of spending so much money (but not so much that you go into debt) is worse than feeling underwhelmed with your reception and ceremony details.

Sorry for the novel

I trust that you'll figure out what's right for you and your FI!

 

[megumic]

Thanks for all of your replies - much appreciated! I hemmed and hawed about budget and spending all day - but it''s nice to see that others have just continued with their plans - within reason - to make their day come true.

I wish I could say tons of money was there, but it just isn''t, and we refuse to dip into our savings account. I think the trick will be to do every little thing we can to make this wedding as cost-effective as possible without settling on what we want. Wish me luck and thank you again for chiming in!!

 

[Haven]

I should have responded to your thread in Newlyweds but didn't.

Here's some info and my reflections on the wedding, a year and a half later.

- We were extremely lucky that my parents offered to spend $30,000 on our wedding. (They didn't pay for me to go to college, and this was, in their words, something they felt they really wanted to do to "make up" for that.)
- DH and I ended up spending another $10,000 on top of the money my parents spent on our wedding.
- I LOVED our wedding day, but in retrospect, I would have loved it just the same if we had spent only $5 or $5,000 on it.
- I'm not going to say I regret spending all that on our wedding, but now that I see the numbers in black and white I do think it was a huge waste of money that could have easily just been saved, instead. Some of my favorite weddings here on PS, and in real life, have been done on $5,000 budgets or less. When I think about it, I often feel guilty that we spent all that on one day. That doesn't erase my wonderful feelings and memories of the day, but I do think it was excessive. (For us.)
- Spending what we did on our wedding is completely out of character for both of us, as we are both very simple and we tend to live simply. I wish I had set a budget in my mind before my parents had given us their generous offer, because it would have been much less. For whatever reason, once I knew we were being given this amazing amount of money from my parents I did the opposite and planned a wedding to fit *their* budget instead of what I believed was reasonable. And then, everything snowballed from there.

Here's a breakdown of what I would have changed, if I knew then what I know now:
- Less expensive dress and veil. (I wore a Melissa Sweet gown and a Toni Federici veil. Loved them both, but totally expensive.)
- Chop the guest list from 180 to 30 or 40. I so wish we would have kept it to our very closest friends and family members only.
- Host the entire thing at an outdoor park or other outdoor venue rather than inside our synagogue. We spent so much money to have it there (rentals for EVERYTHING--linens, chairs, tables, etc.) and while it was special, outdoors would have been so much nicer.
- Our caterer was amazing but extremely expensive. I would have toned down the food big time. This was a huge expense.
- Nix the live band and use an iPod instead.
- Hire a better photog, even if it would have cost us more.

Here's what I would not have changed, even despite the expense in some cases:
- Our engraved invitations. I love them, and for me, they were worth the extra cost.
- We bought our own alcohol and our caterer just provided the glasses and straws and cherries and such. This saved us a lot of money, and we were able to return everything we didn't open at the wedding.
- Morning wedding. I loved getting married in the morning, and definitely would have done this for an outdoor wedding.
- My hair. I had extensions put in, and found an incredibly stylist to do them. She charged me $150 for the extensions and the style, which wasn't a lot, but I could have spent less but I'm glad I didn't. LOVED those extensions!
- Our ketubah. It's a Jewish marriage contract. I commissioned an artist in Israel to create it for us, and it cost $800 but it was completely worth it. It's the only real original artwork that we have in our home, actually.
- Hmmm, the groom, obviously!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I cannot believe we spent so much money, and in retrospect, it was all very lovely but hugely unnecessary. In the end, not much really mattered to me besides the groom, and having my nearest and dearest there to celebrate.

Now, whenever I see amazing photos from weddings like iloveny's and that $3,000 wedding that (I think) Deco linked to that was a "Potluck and a Wedding" party, I can't believe that I didn't do something on a smaller budget that was outside and toned down. I really would do it entirely differently if I could do it all over again. I loved our wedding, but I would have loved a much smaller, more intimate affair just the same, if not more.

ETA: I should add that a lot of my choices were driven by my desire to put in a minimal amount of time to wedding planning, too. I was teaching full-time, and coaching, and in grad school, and chaperoning an international trip right before the wedding, so it was not at the top of my priority list. This is probably why I made so many choices that I now think are so uncharacteristic of me. I wish I would have put more *thought* into the larger decisions we made for the wedding.

Yikes, it kind of hurts to write this all out, but I hope you can at least feel better about not having a huge budget because it's really not what's important for making a great wedding, so I wanted to share.