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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

So You're Engaged...Budgeting

Today I'm going to give you some advice that everyone gave me and I definitely didn't follow, no matter how desperately I tried...

That's right, today's the heavy money talk day. The dreaded day when you get engaged when you figure out just how much of your dreams you can afford...and how much you're going to need to be creative to make it work.



I'm going to preface with a reason as to why I didn't take this advice.

Every time I attempted to create a budget, I had a huge panic attack and ended up curling in a ball either crying, hyperventilating or sleeping. (This is common when faced with some things that completely overwhelm me.)

 It's not that I regret it every day, but it is something I wish I had done. I desperately need to figure out a budgeting system in life in general and stick to it. It isn't something I've had, or learned growing up. I always have enough to pay my bills, but never enough to feel comfortable.

Life doesn't happen in miracles, but somehow I ended up with quite a few when planning my wedding. While budgeting is important, it is also important to hope and to know that you will have the wedding of your dreams. Sure, you might not be able to get married in Versaille (I'm looking at you, Bee) but you could include touches of Versaille at the garden venue you choose.

I want to stress that Iman and I did not run into any problems with important things like the venue, etc. I suppose we had a budget in a way...but definitely not in the early stages. As our wedding day began, we were out almost 3k for a venue that our guests never saw. 

That would be the biggest part to budget - don't think that you could make that work when the price range is vastly out of your budget. We thought that we could (he was getting a raise, I was getting a wonderful job...that both fell through).

In situations like that, there is almost always going to be another venue, or some way you could figure it out. So don't put that deposit down unless you know you can afford it.



It's really important to have a real talk with all parties involved in the payment process. I feel like, besides the guest list, this is the one thing that people fight about the most. There may be a lot of people funding your wedding - or there may just be your parents or yourself. If it's your parents and other people, the budget is even more important so that you don't inadvertently cause a problem with a family member.

Every time I watch Say Yes to the Dress and the girl picks the dress that is over her budget, I cringe.

You need to be realistic. Check out this awesome wedding budget resource; and this awesome one that my wedding coordinator occasionally writes for.

By the way, if you live in an expensive state (i.e. California like me) no matter what you see on Pinterest about planning your wedding in under 5k...there is no way that it will happen if you have over 100 guests and big dreams. You can cut and search out ways to get discounts...but you will probably give yourself an aneurism doing so. Things cost more here, so obviously, your wedding will cost more.

With that in mind, there are several ways to get things without paying for them...about which I will tell you next week. (I'll give you a hint, it was one of my biggest blessings!)

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51 comments:

  1. I'm definitely going to be a major budgeter/cheapskate/DIYer when I get married! I want it to be gorgeous but.. it's ONE day of my life. I don't want to be in debt for years because of it!

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  2. Some good tips, that's for sure. I think ours was the cheapest wedding known to man to be honest. A family friend married us, a potluck was brought. All that was bought was my $60 dress, $120 nails, and my husbands suit.

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  3. Great tips! I did a lot of these! :) Good luck!

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  4. I always look back and think of ways I could have saved money on my wedding. Thanks for the great tips. Maybe i'll use them for other events i'll have to throw in the near future.

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  5. These are some great tips! Thanks for sharing!

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  6. Oh man it is BEYOND hard to stick to a wedding budget. I say pick your budget, then budget in a little more! We definitely didn't go overboard but things ALWAYS come up that you don't plan for! Great tips!

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  7. I got engaged YEARS ago and we don't have a budget, a date or anything! We need to get on top of it. Thanks for sharing these tips.

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  8. Wedding budget? Ha! I need a life budget!

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  9. I'm not engaged but I will definitely book mark this for the day it comes (wonder if my boyfriend of 3 years is reading this! hahaha)

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  10. I know I can have the wedding of my dreams, but the big blows will be the dress/outfits and accommodation for friends and family. That sucks that you didn't get your deposit back. Gutted for you. At least you can now say you had a dream wedding though?!


    Katie <3

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  11. Our wedding budget felt like a joke. I made an excel sheet to make sure we could cover all of the costs. We wanted to pay in all cash. We ended up being able to pay it in all cash but our budget was half what we actually spent. I thought I was being reasonable and we only had 75 people, but the amount of money you spend on wedding is absolutely insane. It was the best weekend ever and thank god for that because otherwise we both would've cried about the amount of things we could've done with that money.

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  12. I budget our monthly finances but totally sucked with our wedding. We had a very small one though so I just sort of loosely prioritized and we decided what we could afford on a case by case basis.

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  13. I never had a dream wedding in my head... I honestly didn't even want to get married until I met the man who is now my husband. We were going to just get a JP and say our I Do's in the park with immediate family. It ended up being far larger but that's because his parents wanted to throw a party, so the budget was all their business!

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  14. I was one of those people who would have been happy buying a dress off the rack somewhere and going to the Justice of the Peace and then splashing out on a huge honeymoon, but my fiance wanted something huge. We compromised and had a mostly DIY, 80 person wedding. As I was in grad school when I got married, and my husband had just graduated from college, we weren't rolling in the dough, but my parents were nice enough to give us some money they'd put aside for my wedding years ago (unbeknow to be!). That was pretty much all we had to work with, but we made it work by doing most of the favors, tablescapes, invitations, programs, etc. ourselves. A budget definitely makes the entire process easier, and you won't have any stress post-honeymoon if you stick to it! :)

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  15. What a fantastic guideline! I wish I had this when I was engaged and budgeting! <3

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  16. We had an unusual wedding, with an unusual budget to match. We had a wedding in San Antonio and three wedding receptions, one in my hometown and two here in Ohio. My parents paid for certain things, my in-laws gave us a check to use as we wanted, and we paid for the rest. We primarily met our budget only because we had budgeted food costs with the assumption that everyone would come, and we obviously had guests who RSVPed No. Although if Dan had listened to me in the first place, our budget would have been just a smidgen bigger and more realistic. Still, everything worked out in the end.

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  17. songbirdsandbuttonsOctober 9, 2014 at 4:37 PM

    Budgeting is just hard in general! Love your tips~!

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  18. Great guidelines! If I ever get married, I'll remember this!

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  19. There's are some great tips! A budget is definitely important to have.

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  20. Great tips!! I didn't really budget. I knew roughly what I was okay spending. I also knew what was important to me and what wasn't. The most important things to me were a great photographer and great food. I spent pretty much all of my money on those things and then found ways to make everything else work like doing my own flowers and ordering my dress online and getting it altered by a family member as opposed to buying it from a bridal shop that charges 3-4 times the price.

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  21. Great tips! SO important to have a budget and stick to it!

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  22. Really good tips, I'd awful at planning a wedding as I'm so so bad at budgeting for big things :-)

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  23. Awesome tips! The budget probably was the first thing we set in place from day one. I am pretty good about setting budgets, hubby -- not so much. But we did stick to it and it saved many arguments that I am sure happens due to lack of budgeting.

    Thrifting Diva
    www.thriftingdiva.com

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  24. Exactly!! I mean, I put more on credit than I wanted to. I don't regret it, but it is definitely just one day, so be as cheapskate-y as possible!

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  25. That is wonderful!!! My parents kept saying "our wedding was $300!" and I'm like, well we want to have 200 guests sooo...that's difficult

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  26. Thank you! I definitely got through it :)

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  27. yes, these are definitely great tips for all events!!

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  28. You're welcome!! Good luck with the planning!

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  29. hahahaha, leave it open on his computer!! :P

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  30. Yes! Our wedding was everything I wanted and so much more! It was amazing! People are still telling us that it was the best wedding they've been to! Don't know how we pulled that off :)

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  31. yesss!!! At one point we almost backed out to put a down payment on a house...but realized we both still needed to raise our credit scores and we'd be so sad to not have the wedding of our dreams

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  32. I think for smaller gatherings that is totally do-able! We sort of did that with ours...once we stopped pretending that we could afford other things. I need to get on a budget!! I can't seem to find something that sticks for me

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  33. That is wonderful!! I wasn't big on getting married either!!!

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  34. Definitely!! I'm glad you guys were able to compromise :)

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  35. hahaha, thank you! Sorry it came a little too late! :P

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  36. hahah, wow!! Three receptions must have been crazy! I'm glad you were able to celebrate with everyone in different cities!

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  37. Thank you! It is definitely so important :)

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  38. Yes! That is the way I worked around my budget, too :)

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  39. Yess, the arguments are the worst!!

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  40. Yes, and amen!


    It's also important to take into account the month that you are getting married in ... there was one venue that I had wanted for YEARS (even before I met my husband haha) that charged a $10,000 DEPOSIT for June - August weddings, but the price drastically dropped (no $10,000 deposit needed) if you booked the venue in the fall. It's crazy how expensive things are once you mention the word "wedding."

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  41. Right??? Like what if we called it a union instead? Wedding season is the WORST to get married. Luckily, with both of our dates we fell right outside of wedding season so we didn't have to worry about crazy deposits like that!

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  42. Weekends With WinterOctober 15, 2014 at 10:45 AM

    Thank you for this info! I watch Say Yes to The Dress and it gives me anxiety because those damn dresses are so expensive and they don't even factor in the veil and alterations that come with it!

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  43. The good news is, those stores are high end! You can find a gorgeous dress for much cheaper - that is still great quality! Something I'm realizing more and more is that a dress made just for you can often be much cheaper!

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