Wedding Money Moves
He asked me to marry him and I said “I Do”.
However, we both promised each other we would not go into debt over our wedding.
We sat down and agreed that we had the rest of our lives to live. This was only one day.
Friends and coworkers have shared so many stories with me about them going into debt to pay for their wedding. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Why would you go into debt and you have the rest of your life to live together? Some people even sacrificed going on a honeymoon to pay for their wedding. How interesting is that?
I knew this was not the route we wanted to take. So, I sat down with my husband and created a rough budget for our wedding. When I said rough budget, I meant it. I read a couple wedding articles, but I wasn’t 100% sure of the cost for everything.
I had a goal: HAVE A BEAUTIFUL WEDDING WITHOUT GOING INTO DEBT!
Estimated Budget: $14,000
Rough Draft Wedding Breakdown (in no particular order by importance)
Wedding ceremony location $500
Reception Hall/Food $5,000
Liquor $500
DJ $1,300
Photographer $1,000
Save the Dates $100
Invitations $300
Favors $200
Flowers $500
Dress $1,500
Veil $100
Suit $250
Shoes $500
Accessories $200
Make-up (bridal party too) $350
Nails $75
Hair $150
Skylar’s dress $50
Skylar’s shoes $40
Party Bus $500
Wedding party gifts $250
Additional wedding decor $250
Wedding assistant $300
Here are 3 more things we did to make sure we had a beautiful wedding without going into debt:
**We created a budget in the beginning, so we knew how much money we had to save each paycheck in order to reach our budget before the payments to each vendor needed to be made.
**We kept a calendar with due dates and the amounts needed to be paid that month. This was an easy way to make sure we didn’t miss any payments and didn’t overspend during any one month.
**We paid the big items off first in smaller, manageable payments, and then tackled the smaller expenses. For example, we divided the reception hall payments into $1,000 payments as opposed to paying all $5,000 at once.
After it was all said and done, we were able to have a beautiful wedding without worrying about thousands of dollars worth of credit card balances and debt after the reception was over and the food was gone. You can too! Share this blog with someone you think may be able to use my simple breakdown of my wedding day.
Leave a Reply