You just got engaged! Congratulations! You are ten feet off the ground and you’ve spent the last three days calling everyone you’ve ever known to let them know that you are now the happiest woman in the world. You’ve already been doing some wedding planning – expecting the proposal, you’ve been casually searching online for tips for the last few weeks, but you didn’t want to jump the gun too much. Now you can dive right in and plan the wedding that you’ve been dreaming about since you were a little girl.

Now, where do you start?

Most people will tell you to start with the hall. I disagree. I do think that the hall is one of the first things you should focus on, but not the #1 thing. First things first – THE BUDGET.

In order to establish a budget, first you must figure out how much you can spend on the occasion. This will require three conversations. First, a conversation with the parents of the bride. Unless they have unlimited funds (wouldn’t we all love that!) you need to get a specific number from them. Not, we’ll see how it goes, not, start planning and we’ll let you know if you’re going to far, get a specific number from them. This will help you to budget and will help to keep things in perspective.

Second – the groom’s parents. They may decide not to pay for anything, and they may decide simply to do the rehearsal dinner. As the bride, you may want to send your groom to have this conversation on his own. I have heard of some groom’s parents who foot half the bill, and I have heard that others pay for burgers in the back yard after the rehearsal and that’s about it. To avoid any conflict with your future in-laws, it’s better to have your man do this!

Once you have had conversations with both sets of parents, you and your groom need to sit down and discuss between the two of you how much you think you can afford. Add your number to the number from your parents and his parents, and that is the total you want to spend. I would suggest basing your budget on a lower number. If you feel that you have $12,000 to spend, base your budget on $10,500. That way you have $1,500 for things that you can’t plan for, such as the veil you have to have, or deciding you want your DJ to play for an extra hour.

How do you determine how much to spend on each thing? There are many websites out there that will help you calculate a budget. www.theknot.com is one of the most popular. www.brides.com also has one. Google, “Wedding Budget Calculator” and you’ll find one you like – I promise! Additionally, you can purchase a book from the library which will help you with that. If you want, I’ll send you my budget – budgeted vs. actual numbers. My budget was $10,000 for the wedding, $3,000 for the honeymoon, and my in-laws took care of the rehearsal dinner. We were able to have a wonderful wedding for just a few hundred over budget. It can be done!

One thing to keep in mind with budget calculators, however, is that they rarely allow enough money for food. For example, with my $10,000 budget, it was suggested that I spend $1,400 on food and less than $1,000 on alcohol. We actually spent much more than that. So be careful! If you are having 150 guests, $1,400 for food is less than $10 per person. Not going to happen!

Once you have the budget established you can move on to more fun things! But it is imperative that you first come up with a budget and that you then stick with it – or you’ll be stuck with a hefty bill!

This is an awesome post from The Tipping Glass

Wedding Tips – The Wedding Budget!

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1. Wedding Tips – The Hall
2. Wedding Tips – Where to Start?
3. Wedding Tips – The Church

Before I was engaged, I heard of a bride who was rebelling against the, “wedding industrial complex” – sending out evites rather than actual invitations, having her reception at a brewery, passing out drink tokens rather than having an open bar, registering at Amazon.com rather than a brick and mortar store, etc.  I didn’t really understand her point of view until I planned my own wedding and began coming into contact with more brides.

It is true – little girls dream of their wedding day from an early age, wearing pillow cases as veils and their mothers’ shoes in mock weddings.  The commercial world knows this, and has capitalized on it – BIG TIME.  Everything is more expensive when a wedding is involved.  If you call a reception hall and tell them you’re having a retirement party, you’ll be quoted one price – if it is a wedding, it is another price which is much  higher.  Invitations for a housewarming party are twenty cents a piece, but invitations for a wedding are a dollar a piece.

And brides have taken it – hook, line and sinker.  Media tells us that we need to have a “Platinum Wedding” and that we should “Say Yes to the Dress.”  You are the princess for the day, and you are the only one who matters.  As long as THE BRIDE feels beautiful and everything is as THE BRIDE would want it, it is perfect.  What does this result in?  The bride spending much more money on things that she cares about, and others get the shaft.

What about the groom?  What about the guests?  Our society is experiencing a wave of women who don’t care about anyone but themselves on their wedding day.  What a great way to start a marriage – selfishly planning a huge wedding which will cost over $20K and ONLY thinking of yourself.  It is NOT just your day – it is the groom’s day as well.  And the guests deserve consideration, after all, they are giving you gifts and some have even traveled long distances to be there.

Brides need to get back to what really matters – at the end of the day, whether she was wearing a $5,000 dress or a $500 dress, whether the invitations had gold leaf or were printed at Kinkos, whether you spent $20,000 or $2,000, you are married to the man of your dreams and you can begin your life together.  Don’t begin your marriage by being a bridezilla and putting yourself into debt because you had to have your “platinum wedding.”

This is an awesome post from The Tipping Glass

The Wedding Industrial Complex

Related posts:

1. Wedding Tips – The Wedding Budget!
2. Wedding Tips – The Church
3. Wedding Tips – The Hall

I’m serious.  I’m aware that every woman reading this probably wants to deck me right now, but there is one particular instance when my husband ignores me, and it works like a charm.  When, you ask?  When I want him to yell at me – seriously.

Growing up I learned to argue and argue well – and when someone had the audacity to disagree with me, you had better believe that people two houses down would hear me.  My parents came to be the main targets of my arguments, and they had no idea what to do with me.

Then I met Jason.  He works with folks who are mentally ill.  In order to get into his program, an individual has to have a recommendation from someone highly qualified, had x number of psychiatric hospital stays in the last year, x number of visits to the ER in a month, etc.  It’s pretty intense.  As you can imagine, Jason’s skills for dealing with people have – shall we say evolved over time?  One thing that he has learned is that yelling in argument never solves anything – it just creates more problems.  As a result, when I’m yelling and being unreasonable, he ignores me.  He lets me know that when I’m willing to talk about the situation like a rational human being, that he’ll talk to me.  Until then, the Orioles game is on, and he’ll be watching that.

At first – it made me even more mad.  How can he ignore me when clearly he has made the world fall apart by doing x, y or z?  But after time I learned that yelling at him and getting all worked up wasn’t going to do a thing, so I started to bring up my issues like a rational human being and we’d talk them out.

So now we’re the couple who never argues.  We’ve only been married for 2 months, so that might change, but even while we were engaged – the last time I think we had an argument was about a year ago.  In Katrina arguing years – that’s forever.

This is an awesome post from The Tipping Glass

Ignore Your Wife

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