How do you afford a wedding?

It can be really daunting to think of the final price tag on a wedding. First determine what’s most important to you and what you’d feel comfortable spending. Once you set a budget, think of how much you can set aside each month. Then set your wedding date for how many months ahead until you would reach your total amount needed. If you’re saving $1000/month for a year plus whatever you have already saved, you’ll be able to handle your proposed budget. The key is setting a budget and sticking to it. But how do most people do it? Credit cards! (I don’t recommend)

Some people have long engagements (2+ years) to be able to save to pay for it. Some people put it on credit cards. Some people take out a loan.

Our engagment is a year and a half to save for the wedding that we want.

You don’t have to spend that much on a wedding, you make it what you want it to be! Smaller guest list & longer engagement for more time to save,

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That's what I'm afraid of too! I don't have any credit cards and my fiance has one that he pays off each month. He gets rewards for using it, so that's why we still have it. I know we're capable of saving $1000/month, but that's if we are literally homebodies during that whole time! Ahhh!! We currently already have trip to Italy and Switzerland planned for this May, but those tickets were purchased several months before he proposed. We are trying to plan our wedding for Spring of 2020 in a different state (my home state). Maybe I'm just overthinking it

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I'd like to have ours in Spring of 2020. I'm hoping that's enough time to figure everything out. My main issue is I can't just fly home every time I want to look at a venue. I'm hoping to leave that up to my MOH, best man, and Mom. I live on the other side of the country now

View Quoted Comment That’s hard! Hopefully yes they can help you. We are local thankfully but trying to save every penny we can to do our dream wedding. I’m doing my masters right now so thank goodness I dont Have to pay loans out yet. My fh is paying on his though. We also just bought a car. It’s definitly a process. Good luck with all of your planning and saving! it is possible

For us, it’s a combination of a couple things. Although we are having a pretty short engagement, we’ve been together for 8 years and have been able to save when we were living at home (we attended a modestly priced college that we commuted to). I went to grad school so all of my savings went to paying my tuition, but FH got a decent job once he got his BS and has been able to save enough to have a comfortable wedding. Our parents want to help out financially, but he wants to be able to say we did it all ourselves. Because I’m not contributing much financially, I’m doing my part by doing as much research as possible to find the best deals on vendors, cutting down unnecessary spending (like on my dress, decorations, hair and makeup, etc), and DIYing as much as possible.

i second what most are saying about having a long engagement to be able to save up and not have to worry as much. If that’s not an option, then cutting things like the guest list and the things that aren’t your must haves will help a ton. And accept any help that is offered to you, like if someone wants to gift you a service (doing your hair and makeup or help with putting together DIY florals). I’ve learned it take some a village to plan and execute a wedding!

I am doing my whole wedding myself and only paying for a photographer and DJ and doing everything else on my own. I am spending maybe 2k at most and it appears as a 10k to 20k wedding. It can be done cheap you just have to be willing to put the elbow grease in yourself

Lots of saving. All of our taxes are going to the wedding. I save all my dollar Bill's and change. I am also taking a 5k loan to cover what we cant.

My fh and I are paying for 100% of our wedding. We don’t make a ton but our bills and expenses are relatively low compared to our salaries. We don’t view it as spending thousands of dollars on one day. We view it as spending money on the beginning of our married life together and that is something we truly value and don’t want to be cheap about if that makes sense. We are having a destination wedding in England and we just came back from a trip there to visit venues/meet photographers etc. We have a two year engagement so we (and our guests) have plenty of time to save. Honestly with the internet you don’t really need to fly home to look at everything. You can skype potential vendors. Keep your guest list low and bridal party small. You don’t need to spend a ton of money on your dress, especially if you shop online. Just make a plan and budget for what you can realistically save and you can do it!!!

We are splitting our wedding costs amongst us and our families. My future in-laws and my parents will be helping us with the extras things like photography, flowers, attire, etc. FH and myself will be paying for reception mainly. Like PP's have said, there are many ways to either save or borrow the money just make sure you don't go overboard with borrowing. It boils down to one really fun weekend and then it's over. Save where you can by keeping your eyes open for deals and discounts. DIY saves a lot also if you have the time to commit to it.

It’s the most financially stressful thing I have ever done - and I bought my home totally by myself, in the ridiculously expensive northeast, before I met FH. The struggle with the wedding, for me, is that my venue doesn’t accept credit cards at all (waving good bye to all the miles that could have been!). I’m in commissioned sales, so I earn pretty comfortable commissions quarterly, just not on the same schedule as all the wedding payments are due. We decided (unpopular choice but it made sense for us) to take out a low-interest personal loan to cover the bigger payments and take the pressure off of us, because we know my earnings will cover it shortly afterward. So for us, the small cost of the interest was worth the reduced pressure.

Hi there, some people like myself have long engagements in order to prepare. Our families are not financially able to help us at all with our wedding so I️t is 100% on us. By the time of our I️ wedding we will be engaged for 2 years & 5 months lol... I have heard that some people take out loans or put some stuff on credit cards but personally i think I would just have something in a small catering hall so we wouldn’t go in to debt. Some people make fun how long we are engaged for but we are happy knowing we did not have to struggle, sacrifice through this time and in the end we will have everything we want for our big day

Our engagement is 19.5 months to begin with. My fiance is paying for certain things from this savings. He is 35 and before this year made a good bit of money. Now he makes just enough for the rent, but he still has his savings. I am a teacher and I paid off my grad school loans last year and paid way extra on my car so my next payment isn't due til after the wedding. This year I'm just paying the interest on my car and other bills/groceries and the rest goes to the wedding. It's pretty awful, but everything is just so expensive. Yes we could have a tiny wedding with no decor etc., but we really don't want that. I just keep telling myself it's not forever. Soon it will be over and I can get back on track with my regular car payments and savings.

Fiance and I are 23 and 24 and almost 2 years out of school. We have thankfully been blessed with good jobs and are frugal anyway so saving isn't a huge deal. For example, he probably buys a new piece of clothing ONCE a year if that (not exaggerating!) We also look for good deals on things, both wedding and non wedding related such as going to Aldi for groceries. My dress was originally priced 1,000 but I got it off the rack for $110!

My husband and I eloped. It was very cost effective and still turned out beautiful for us. We started planning a big wedding, but didn’t get too far into it before going with an elopement. The planning for it wasn’t very extensive and it was manageable for us to handle on our own. We’d like to have something to celebrate with our families and friends in the future.

Basically, by being sensible.

The length of our engagement (18mnths) was about timing because of jobs not to save money but it has a positive effect on what we can save.

I like a bargain and if we can get what we want for less then we’ll do it. Such as designing our own invites, realising it is cheaper to have a deconstructed wedding cake than having it tiered, buying things in advance with sales or discounts, using cards that give us useful benefits.

Otherwise it just comes down to saving. We have a baseline of saving around a 3rd of our income, which will mean that we save beyond what we need for the wedding and won’t be starting again afterwards from nothing (we are paying for it all ourselves).

The rest is sensible- bills and things always get paid and we have a rough idea of other expenses every month (food shopping and travel). The other stuff is just about being realistic and living within our means and having the ethos of if you don’t have the money then you don’t spend someone’s else’s (ie debt).

If you are struggling then start giving yourself little challenges. Stop by coffee when out and bring your own put the money you would have spent in a change box. Challenge your self the save a set amount a week or month, put it into savings and then calculate your ‘fun money’.

It isn’t about denying yourself fun or enjoyable things though it is about laying out bills, then savings, then fun (with a contingency constantly).

Oh and different savings accounts - we move money around to get the best interest rates.

I think using credit cards or loans to fund a wedding is a terrible idea. At least for my family. The last thing I want to do is start off my marriage in debt. We’re using cash to find our wedding because of that alone. My cousin used a credit card for hers and now she’s having to find a way to pay back nearly 10k by the end of the spring because she doesn’t want to pay the interest. I don’t want that stress on me the first year of the marriage. I’d rather be free and clear of it by the end of the day and not owe a darn thing on it.

Not sure where you live, but if live in an expensive area going a bit farther out into the country might help. We’re getting married in the Shenandoah Valley and while not cheap, it’s probably about half of what it would cost in DC. One way to save money we found was to try the banquet room of a restaurant. The one by us didn’t charge a rental fee if you met a pretty low food/drink minimum. It avoids all the extra charges for things like china and linens and napkins.