Paying for your wedding

Woof I don't have much advice, I'm not at the paying stage yet. I wonder if it would be easier to put the wedding money into a separate account, then it's already earmarked for that and not considered "personal money"? In general though, weddings are so expensive, I feel like most of your personal money for quite a while just goes towards the wedding... it stinks though, you have my sympathies.

Yep, I've been dipping into my personal funds, as well. However, I haven't minded covering what I've paid for so far. Weddings dont have to be expensive, so don't let anyone pressure you into buying something that you don't care about that much or that you can't afford! Best of luck. I'm sure your big day will be great! 💕

It is super normal to go out of budget. i know for me i went over my budget and there was a time i had to increase it too. it's because often times we don't expect for weddings to cost as much as they do or we end up needing or wanting things we didn't anticipate

I ended up picking up a second job and I'm putting 85% of that paycheck into a separate savings account that my FH also has access to put funds into. I'm just at the deposits stage right now, but I can see a couple of those coming out of personal funds. It feels even harder to start planning because we don't have the upfront money to put all of the deposits on our vendors (most of whom require a 50% or $500 deposit). We'll have enough when all is said and done to cover what we need, but still. Oof.

I think it's normal, because I know when I started budgeting mine was more of an end goal of 'what will I be able to afford' more than it was a 'what can I afford 3-6 months out'.

We ended up being right on budget. I kept track of everything via an excel spreadsheet. For the expenses that we haven’t paid yet, I put an estimate in. That was the best way to keep it under control.
Do you have anything to keep track of expenses and deadlines?

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That's how we started! And it was really helpful at the beginning. The 'saved' money for the wedding just went a lot quicker than I anticipated, and we started using our personal money fast! But you're so right, it's easily where the majority of my "spending money" goes!!

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This is exactly what my FH reminded me of today! It seems like a lot, but it will all be so worth it when the day comes!

Thanks girl - Back at you!

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This makes me feel tons better! It seriously is so much more than you realize until you're planning and paying for it. It's funny because I budgeting a lot more than I needed for some things, but then doubled or tripled in others!

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I've absolutely thought about that, so you're not the only one! The deposits definitely get you. That's where we spent the majority of our saved money!

That is exactly where I've gotten myself into a stump - I feel like I could scramble at the end to get everything paid, rather than budgeting monthly, and that's where I'm stressing myself out.

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I do! I have an excel spreadsheet, along with my digital tracker on The Knot. I have reminders set on my Google calendar for when things are paid too! I think I just decided last minute to do "little extras" that wounded up being not so little extras - things I didn't really budget for, but really want, and am now kind of kicking myself for!

View Quoted Comment Oh, I see. Yeah those are dangerous. But hopefully all worth it in the end ☺️

Our venue has an all inclusive package that we signed up for & he’s paid all of that. I paid for our honeymoon. I’ve paid for presents for our bridal party & the extras that keep popping up that’s wedding related. 18 more days!!

We have a separate checking account specifically for wedding expenses that also gives us some interest every month. Our monthly budget for ourselves includes putting a good amount into that account that can only be used for wedding expenses. We're allocating more than what the wedding will cost to go to that account for "just in case" purposes, and whatever is left over will go towards paying down the credit card debt that FH has. (That debt isn't wedding-related; it's just what he already had when we started dating.)

We dedcided to go the cheapest route possible and elope. This gave us a super tight budget and we already had the money saved a year in advance.

I'm not even to the point of really making the month by month payments yet and I already foresee myself doing this as well. We are saving up money into a separate account and setting aside so much money each month that way we can try to have a good basis for when we have to make those payments. We also have a credit card through our hotel that we get points for to help us pay for our honeymoon so for payments that I'm able to make through that I do and pay off the credit card as much as I can each month. I feel like as much as we want to pay everything off right away it's going to be hard on a consistent basis.