Fighting About Budget

Yup once the money starts going out thats when they see it lol

My FH was SHOCKED when I told him I bought a dress for 3K but really wanted the one that is 4K! Then, I started looking at these places that were sorta out of our budget and he flipped saying it was way too much money and how I was being selfish for wanting to spend that much. We came to an agreement though that if he wanted me to stay on budget then he would have to come with me to EVERYTHING wedding related and he agreed lol! So he has!

Two thousand dollars?!

Sure, if you want to get married at the courthouse and have a cake and punch reception for 50!

Guys are oblivious. Unfortunately for me I'm the guy in this. We are getting a lot of help from both of our parents which is awesome but FH just thinks its fine to just go off and spend and not worry about it. Here I am trying to get rid of flowers and not add things that I think no one will care or notice. I'm trying to keep it simple which is more my style and cut back and hes over here like "welp we have the money why not spend it." Well FH its called saving and using it wisely. His mom is all about the little details that I know no one notices. I'd rather spend the money on something else like getting gifts for our BP and parents. He doesn't seem to agree with me. Its not fun on either end.

Oh yeah. The last few weeks when balances were due was definitely a cause for tension between us. I went over the budget with him over and over, and yet it was still a total shock every time I gave him the final number. At one point I just told him that he doesn't have a right to be mad anymore.

I created a excel sheet with all the estimates and total cost. I forward him a link weekly telling him to check the finance progress. Just so he CAN'T say he doesn't know. Gotta cater to that engineering brain of his sometimes. I think 10K is totes reasonable... Won't even talk about how much over budget I ended up. His fault for adding 30 people to the wedding!

Men don't get it. Show him this post if he still puts up a fuss and see if it helps ease his mind. $10k for a wedding is completely reasonable IMO. What sort of wedding does he want for $2k?? A lavish potluck BBQ?

Our budget is $20K, FH flipped!! We both don't want a backyard wedding, or a wedding where we go to city hall and then a restaurant. We both want a dinner reception. so our next option is a ceremony with a catered reception. I did the research in the area and for our guest list, this is the standard cost.

In all honesty the $20K includes items that we aren't going 50/50 in the budget (wedding dress, hair/make up, etc), our budget for the 50/50 stuff is more like $16,500 - which he still isn't impressed with, I get it but really I'm intending for this to be my only wedding and I would like to make it special!

I chose exactly the right time, took him out to dinner and brought along my wedding planner notebook. I had already broken it down for him by how much I budgeted for everything and what I thought was reasonable to spend. He was relieved it was not double that because his boss had just gotten the budget for his daughter's wedding and it was astronomical. We also set the date at the same time.

The only hiccup we have had was when we got an unexpected check for a few hundred dollars and he wanted to spend it on something besides the wedding since we have a budgeted amount to put aside each month. It made no sense at all to him to maybe pay things off early!

Mine got a crash course in wedding prices at the beginning (I scared him by showing him super expensive stuff and then worked him down to the stuff I actually wanted). I also have an itemized spreadsheets (as well as the budgeter here) that I have to show him at times to refresh his memory lol.

My FH definitely freaks out about the prices - but luckily enough for us I freak out right alongside him. And we merrily cut stuff out the budget all over the place.

The thing is - you need to have a serious chat with him about what he thinks is a reasonable budget and come to a compromise. It's very easy to sit here saying 'well, 10K is pretty average for a wedding' but if he really feels that is way more than he's happy spending then you need to find some middle ground. Cut out the stuff that isn't essential to either of you or have a list of 'must-haves' and see where you can bring the budget down.

We actually started with a bigger budget and brought it down by 5k. Because between us when we thought about what we'd rather spend the money on a down payment on a house seemed like a far better use for that 5K.

Everyone's wedding budget is different. I get that. But what you need to do is make sure that you are both happy with what is being spent. They do say that financial issues are the number one cause for trouble in a relationship. No point starting off on that issue before the wedding is even over.

Oddly enough, FH has not been that blown by the budget. His biggest complaint is the wedding planners, as he swears everything they do I could do myself. While I could, it would suck royally to plan a DW during a residency, where I will be working 80+ hours a week. They save me a ton of stress and I think it'll be wedding day before he realizes ALL that they do. That being said, our budget is 25-30k so I think having a wedding on 10K is a steal.

We were actually both in agreement to sent our budget at $3,000 (since our venue was going to be free). He does zone out when I talk about wedding stuff, though lol. So far we are still good with our budget.

I've been pretty lucky, FH is more or less on board with most everything. We had our original budget at about 12k, then upped it to 15k after doing actual research and both getting into higher paying jobs. Now that we've done the real life math on our real life venue, we're looking at nearly 18k. I'm determined not to go over that though. He was at first really shocked by the whole thing, but he got on board really quickly after going to a few weddings with me and seeing all the work that goes into them. We've decided it's worth it to have what we want and do it right. He actually started out with more people invited, more "wants" as far as luxuries, hard alcohol and individual cheesecakes and these types of things. Now he's cut about 25 people, agreed to just wine and beer, and has really become more moderate about the whole spending thing. Now if I could just get him to stop dumping money into his work truck I'd be happy...

Add me to the "We LITERALLY JUST had this conversation last week..." as he blank stares at me. SMH. We started with 10k and will likely end up close to 20 k with honeymoon. If I had not picked my dress we'd be much closer to the original budget. However, the original budget didn't include the HM and this one does so...tit for tat.

FH said anything bigger than $10k is stupid. My parents contributed 7k, so he had his contribute 3. The little shit told them that's all we needed. Anyway, he later started bitching about how that's so much money, and we dont' need to spend that much. I sat him down and went line by line through the budget. I explained each one and asked if any of those numbers seem unreasonable. They weren't, so he stopped complaining. Now he wanted to add extra people and didn't care about the cost. UGH. Men.

Men dont see things like we do lol I think my FH first imagine weddings to be like those on tv, you pay a small deposit and bam a magnificent wedding magically appears lol. We started with a 10k budget as well and planned our wedding 15 months out so our saving for it wouldn't disrupt our house, bills, etc. Im fortunate hes been pretty supportive but when he wanted me to lower it i finally sat him down and showed him the number on paper. Im using yard sale, Craigslist stuff for decor and even using FREE wine bottle my friends gave me for centerpieces and i basically showed him all this and asked him "WHERE" can i cut the budget? And once he went with me to meet a few vendors he realized its not going to happen so that helped open his eyes. Dont stress too much hun, men are on another planet Show him averages for vendors and ask him where he thinks costs can be cut. Get him involved (which is the tough part) usually men will say ok never mind and back away lol

Are we in the same relationship? lol I just had this conversation with FH a few weeks ago. He has no opinion on anything, then I make a decision and book a vendor, and he gets mad about the cost!

FH thought I was spending too much money until I showed him the budgets of some other people on here. Now he thinks I'm doing great

Seriously, look up a few budget posts and show them to him. Once he sees that people are spending anywhere from 30 to 80K, he'll calm down about your budget.