Did you purchase your home before or after your wedding?

My FH owned his house before we met and we plan on moving to a new location (closer to our families) after the wedding.

If you can afford to buy now I say go for it! It also depends on the real estate trends in your area. If the area is growing then home prices will most likely go up quickly. You may wait and end up paying $100k more for the same home. FH and I live in Northern CA and would love to buy a home but with a median home price of $800k it's just not in our budget unless we miraculously come up with a $300k downpayment. HaHa! For us it'll definitely be after if ever. If it was just us I may go for a little 1 bedroom home but FH has 2 kids and we plan on having kids right away so we at least need a 3-4 bedroom.

I just opened a separate account for my wedding because PP got me worried lol.

We are in the buying/building process as we speak. We knew we no longer wanted to pay rent so we planned for the stress of house buying in 2017 and wedding in 2018. We are lucking out slightly as the home is going in my FH's name so our wedding payments are coming out of my account which does not affect his and the loan approval.

We closed on our house 2 months before the wedding. As previously mentioned, you'll need to talk to your lender about wedding expenses. We had a couple of large wedding payments due during the purchase process and I had to call to get approval from the bank before making them. We lived in a 700 sq ft studio apartment before buying our 4 bedroom house and the timing worked out well. It would have been difficult to store my wedding dress, decorations, find places for wedding presents, etc... in our old apartment. On the down side, pretty sure my husband shed some tears after handing over $30,000 for the wedding and $30,000 for the closing costs all around the same time. Owning is typically better than renting but make sure you are financially stable before taking the plunge.

We bought two years ago...FH proposed last July. I wanted to be married before buying together, but looking back, I'm so happy we bought when we did. This seller's market is brutal.

When I first met my DH, I had my own apartment paying $1,000 and DH shared an apartment with his parents and payed the rent himself, another $1,200. Shortly after DH proposed I moved into his apartment with his family. The plan was to save money for our wedding (at the time our wedding was 1.5 years away). In the mean time we ended up finding a house that we all loved, put a deposit down to lock in our spot and began the process. There was a lot of back and forth but we ended up getting the house 6 months later and 9 months before our wedding. DH, his parents and I put down the deposit and now we pay a mortgage that is less than both our rents combined. It did add a little stress, but it is also nice to say that we own our home.

I have owned my home since 2014. To me owning a house was more important than getting married. I bought the house then waited a few years to get engaged.

We live in an expensive area so we're holding off until we're sure exactly what we want and the market is favorable.

Would your landlord let you stay month-to-month for a bit after your lease is up? When FH and I were looking to move in together my lease was going to be up before his. My landlord agreed to let me stay past the lease as long as I gave 60 days notice (I did explain to him why I was asking). In the end, FH ended up just moving into my place, but they never made us sign another lease (so we're month-to-month which is nice for keeping our options open). It might be harder if you deal with a larger company (my landlord just owns one building) but if you're a good tenant it doesn't hurt to ask!

I would wait until after, you could use some of the money you get from wedding gifts towards the house/move

We got together 2009, started living together in 2011, bought a house in 2014 and are having a wedding 2018. I was pretty adamant about not wanting to buy a house until after we were married but FH caught the house bug (he was sick of renting like yours) and went to a few open houses without me. When he found a great one got me to go visit and I absolutely loved it. So... we bought before we got married. But having so much time between buying a house and getting married meant no huge expenses all at the same time. Unless you really have a lot of money I would thinking closing on a house and having a wedding relatively close together would be super hard.

My FH and I are actually building our first home together and it will be ready June 2017 and we don't get married until may 2018. We decided to take the plunge because we knew we wanted forever and it just felt right.

We just closed on our new construction townhouse today! It has been a long process, but an exciting one as well!

We purchased our 1st home in June of 2016 and got engaged in September. There is a lot that goes into getting approved for a house. I would contact a mortgage broker and speak with them. They will be able to answer all questions and give you the best advice as they work directly with the banks.

We bought our house then got engaged 2 weeks later

You're right- once you put a contract in on a house until you close, you can't spend ANY money on credit cards or the bank will freak. If you are planning to pay all your wedding purchases with cash, you'll be fine but NO financing and NO major cc purchases.

We bought our house before our wedding. Actually, over 2 years before we even got engaged so over 3 years before we got married. I could not imagine trying to go through the stress of house hunting, the closing process, PLUS plan a wedding at the same time. Buying a house was one of the most stressful times of my life!

We actually bought my fiances grandmother's house. I wish we waited. It's just alot with paying for everything oursleves

I think the smart thing for us to do is bite the bullet and rent for about another year or so. FH is going to hate it but it make sense, its A LOT of money coming out at once plus the stress of a wedding in addition to a home purchase. This will give us enough time to get our savings back healthy. Thank you all for your advice!!!!

We bought our house over 5 years ago. I agree with pp, as long as you have the money for down payment, closing costs, etc already and aren't putting anything major on a credit card you should be fine. However, for me, I would never want to plan a wedding and buy a house at the same time, that would just be way too overwhelming. It sucks about the timing with your lease, but if it were me I would rent for another year.

We bought our home about a year ago, so before the wedding. It really doesn't matter either way, but you'll have a very busy couple months leading up to the wedding if you want to buy before your lease is up - I'd personally be okay with this for myself but that might not be doable for someone else.

Having lots of payments going OUT doesn't mean anything to a lender. They're probably not even going to look at your withdrawals, and if they do ask you about it it's just because they want to make sure you don't have any additional debts. It's not going to negatively affect your loan.

ETA Erin Wood had a good point, if we would've waited another year to buy our house (so like, now) it would've easily cost us another $20-30k for the same exact kind of house in the same neighborhood we live in. If your market is trending steeply upward I'd buy now anyway. You can't out-save the market in some places!