Just two days after Christmas, my mom and future mom-in-law joined me on a search for “the one.” The dress that would make me look the most beautiful that I ever have, the dress in which I will become a Mrs.
We found it that day and at the right price too! I won’t tiptoe around how expensive my dress was, the price tag said $599 and they were running a $50 off sale. That seems like a sign to me, so I ordered the dress.
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It may sound cliche, but the best memory I have is when Freesia Dude proposed to me. It was absolutely perfect- it was our anniversary, and he took me to a private dinner on a boat at Town Lake in Austin, TX. – just the two of us. Not only was that perfect in itself, but then he asked me to marry him- he had a heart-shaped necklace in his hand with “Will you marry me?” on it, and as I looked up, he was kneeling with the ring.
I know he was really nervous about the ring. But it was wonderful! The ring he gave me was a round solitaire that had been in his family for generations- since 1888! I just love that. What was he nervous about? He knew I liked white gold, but it was yellow gold. I’ve worn that ring for 7 months, and tonight I got the stone reset into a beautiful white gold setting.
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Planning your wedding on a budget is never easy, but if you read countless bridal magazines and blogs like I do, you get some great tips on how to save money. By far the best tip I got was actually from a recent wedding I attended… Have the wedding on a Friday!
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Sadly, I was not born to the Trump family. Or Rockefeller. Or Winfrey. The Snapdragon clan is far from being destitute, but we have to watch our pennies too. I am sure many of you can relate. That’s one of the reasons we chose to have a destination wedding– the theory was that having a wedding outside of New York would save us a lot of money, both in the cheaper vendors and in the shorter guest list.
Yes, this is true. But still, I am struggling to keep within the budget amount I had in my head. The average wedding in the US currently has a price tag of roughly $30,000 (according to Fast Company). Wow! The amount I arbitrarily chose as my budget is one-third the average cost of weddings; I figured I could do without a lot of the fluff, and was willing to DIY what I could to save. The problem? My brain.
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It’s amazing how quickly the wedding costs start adding up. I’m not having the most simple of all weddings, but certainly not an over-the-top extravagant one either; however, as I’m still a bit shocked when looking at my budget. I know that I’m not going to be able to do much to change the need to invest, so I’m just going to embrace it and try to make the best out of the situation.
 An indirect way of getting more out of the money that spend is to get those credit card points which can be exchanged for a range of things from miles to hotel stays to gift certificates to pure hard cash! It’s worth doing some research into which cards give you the most for what you are looking for. You should also make sure that the credit limit on each card are at the amount you need since those wedding costs can be high. I personally am trying to get everything charged on my American Express card which provides flexibility around what you can use the points for.
With the average wedding costs these days, you can easily get enough points for a free plane ticket if you charge everything. Plus if it’s a new card, you usually get bonus points for signing up. I know that a free ticket is not that much considering the amount you are spending, but I see it as a extra bonus since your having to spend the cash anyway. Also, I find that managing payments is a bit easier by charging things since you don’t have to worry about the variability on when vendors get around to cashing your check. Happy swiping!!!
 http://flickr.com/photos/tracy_olson/61056391/ A post at A Disney Wedding in the fall and then east side bride’s mention of this blog– where a couple hopes to raise $10,000 for their upcoming wedding– brought the issue of financing weddings to the fore.
Even before we got engaged, Plumeria Dude and I were determined to be sensible about our sometime-in-the-future wedding. The cardinal rule: absolutely no debt. Though I’ve had various financial disasters in the past, a couple of years ago I got religion via Oprah’s Debt Diet and Suze Orman. One of the first things they will tell you to do is to pay down your credit card debt completely. It took me a while and some major life changes (including getting a new job and radically changing my consumption and commuting habits) but I did it.
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You can’t start planning your wedding until you set a budget. Here are some tips I used for figuring out my wedding budget.
 - From islandpacket.com
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This is a tip that any good finance expert will tell you when you ask how you can possibly save more money. Suze Orman is the finance guru (for lack of a better term) and she has published books to help people save money and make well-informed financial decisions especially around situations of debt.
Keep in mind that I am by no means a financial advisor, nor do I care to be one. The suggestions I have are based on what I hear from experts, friends, family and my own ideas that have worked for me.
Gerber Daisy Dude and I got engaged in November of 2007 and set the date for a year and a half later. So we’ve had time to do the old “count-backwards” trick. We figured out what we thought would be a reasonable wedding budget and figured out how much we would need to save each month. You can even break that up into each week. This way, you know exactly what you want to pay for your vendors and it will help you stick to your guns. And if you need to spend a little more with something like food, you can shift the money around accordingly and maybe not get those expense centerpieces you had your eyes on.
Tips for how to squeak out every last penny:
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One of the first questions we asked ourselves when we got engaged was how much we are going to spend for the wedding. I thought setting up a budget was quick and easy. It actually turned out to be a long process that requires a lot of research for both of us who knew so little about weddings.
 Photo from Ashleysbrideguide.com There are many elements in a wedding. Setting up a budget not only requires coming up with a single number, but several numbers for each element. How much of your total budget will go to food and beverage, flowers and decor, photography, entertainment, etc?
There are lot of wedding budget tools on and offline that can help. But there’s one important feature missing on most of these budget tools. They don’t factor in your priorities. I learned that setting your priorities is very important in coming up with a budget breakdown. While most tools recommend allotting around 30% to 50% of the total budget to reception, our reception (including venue fee) turned out to be almost 75% of our total budget. Crazy, isn’t it? Well, to us, good food and a beautiful venue that requires minimal decor (one way to save) top our priority list.
Here is a copy of my Budget Breakdown, and these are the steps I followed to create it:
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