Buying a house BEFORE or AFTER your wedding?? mixed feelings.

Prioritize. You can have a small backyard wedding with just those absolutely nearest and dearest to you for $1K and save money towards a house. It's just a matter of which is more important to you and your FH. Not the greatest advice, but that's what I would do.

I would have to agree with Reenski. I think it depends on a few things, how big of a wedding your looking at and how long do you plan to be engaged. You can make it all work depending on whats important to you.

You can always look just to get options, but don't necessarily buy right away. FH and I have been looking all last yr and now, we want to get a house before we get married which is October 19th. I first have to get a job, a reliable job before we can even buy a house, but we are defiantly looking and we know where we want to live!

Good lucky though sweetie!

FH and I just bought a house and are doing some updating/renovating. He's hoping to move in within the next few weeks, and I'll move in after the wedding.

Our wedding is May 4th of this year, we looked for, put an offer in, closed, and began renovating our new house between May 2012 and finally closed on the day before Thanksgiving 2012. Luckily, the renovations are only going to go on for a couple more weeks and then he'll be in the house and we bought a house within our means, of course.

Planning a wedding and buying a house can be done in the amount of time you have, no problem...provided you budget well and know where you stand on expenses for both the wedding and the house.

We actually closed on our house about two months ago, before we were even engaged. Looking back now I'm SO glad we did it that way. We're on a budget, and if we didn't already have the house, I'd probably be agonizing over every penny spent on the wedding.

I definitely recommend looking into FHA or even USDA loans, depending on where you live. These will help you to minimize your down payment and keep some funds in your bank account for wedding purposes! And of course don't forget all the expenses that come with buying a new house. All those little purchases sure do add up!

Doing both at the exact same time will probably be overwhelming. But there's nothing wrong with looking. Unless one of you is a homeowner already, it takes time to figure things out. Clean up your credit history if necessary, figure out how much money you need to save for all expenses, take a look at a few homes and see what your must haves are and what your deal breakers are.

But basically I wouldn't do it at the same time, for emotional reasons. Keep in mind though that finding a home may take time. We have been looking for a year, and the inventory of homes in our area and our price range is extremely low. So looking is just that... looking :-)

I agree with Mrs. S .... FH and I want to have a house before the wedding but it is emotionally overwhelming, you don't think about the expenses of a house or the wedding you have to constantly think about both. But is does depend on where you are at with life too...I'm still in school and work weekends to save and pay bills but will be done at the end of april so if we bought a house right now i probabaly cant contribute much to home expenses putting it all on FH which isn't fair. And it means everything relies on him for getting the mortgage since the bank won;t even consider me..meaning we can afford bank repo homes...and the 3 I have seen are ridiculously disgusting in our area

rant being over... look to see where you and FH are at in your lives and if it's financially possible to do both at once...I think a house before would be nicer if you can though because then you don't have to find storage from gifts if you have a bridal shower.

I think it all depends on your financial situation. HOwever, I would not do both at the same time. It is too stressful.

I was married a year before we bought our house. But then again, I was married 4 months after I graduated college.

My daughter and her FH bought there house before the wedding BUT that is how her DH wanted to do things and my ex and I(and our respective spouses) paid for their wedding. They had to put out some money too, but not as much as they would have if they paid for their own wedding.

Good luck!

It all depends on your finances and how you handle stress. We bought our house and did some major renovations for 6 months after we moved in. That was in 2011. We just got engaged in Sept of 2012. For us, we knew we couldn't afford to do both at once. We made the decision to buy a house first and then move forward with a wedding.

You don't want to have to make sacrifices on your wedding plans or you first home because of 2 major financial commitments happening at once. Plus, buying a home is emotionally exhausting. You may not want to do both at once for that reason alone.

Thanks for all the advice! - sounds like me and the FH have to have a few serious convos about bugets.

I agree that it is about budgets and what you (both) feel is most important. FH and I started house hunting in Feb, made an offer in March and couldn't come to an agreement. Then we got engaged in the very beginning of April and made a 2nd offer mid-April (same house) and it was accepted. Now we are in our new home and I started planning after we moved in, July 2012. Suddenly its 2013 and we get married in March! So anything is doable! :-)

@ Jessica K. - It's so comforting to hear someone's vision so similar to mine that worked out! Thats kinda of our plan. We're planning for a longer engagement (my sister and I got engaged 6 months apart) so me and my sister could enjoy being a part of eachother's days without "stepping on eachother Bridal Toes" so to speak which is why we're aiming to buy a house and get settled before making any major wedding plans.

I would wait till after the wedding.

Your wedding is still over a year away so you have plenty of time to do both. We got engaged the day we bought our house so we were done with the necessities of home buying/ decorating by the time the major planning kicked in. It worked out great for us. Now when we're married we can just relax and not have to worry about it later.

I'm so busy with wedding planning that I couldn't imagine adding buying a house in the mix! But it definitely depends on which is more important to you. We're doing a big wedding, and plan on renting a house from my parents afterwards so it worked out for us. We're not ready to settle down and buy a permanent plot of land just yet

My ex and I bought our house a year before we got married.

I currently own a home, not the one I bought with my ex LOL and my FH has an apartment. We are going to wait to house hunt until after the wedding (actually probably not until next spring or summer). We were going to try this summer, but for a lot of reasons it's better to wait. Because we currently live 1.5 hours apart we may not end end up living together until 2014 either. He has a miserable commute from my current home.

All of you have been great with advice! - hearing so many pros AND cons have been so helpful in getting these discussions started with my FH. We're leaning towards waiting until after the wedding to start looking for some permanent roots - not so much for finacial reasons but more so becasue I work in NJ right now (and live in PA) but dont plan to for more than another year or two. With him working in the opposite direction, it seems like a waste to make a permanent descision based on locations that will change soon after we're married. Thanks again!!!

^^^ that's definitely our situation. This is a recent turn of events, but FH just got a job that has a year training period, then he could possibly (probably) move to a different territory. The made him sign a contract that he wouldn't purchase a home during this time so that it would be easier for us to move if necessary. So we'll rent until we figure that one out!

We are going to buy a house at some point after we get married. Just going to rent for now...1- We don't know where we'll be living just yet, it's going to depend on FH's job. 2- We don't have the amount of money set aside that we would like to have for a down payment.

Glad you guys have come to a decision!