Cannot decide on a budget and feeling guilty about money: advice?

My FBIL and his wife actually sent their wedding spreadsheet to us to use as a guideline. The cost for their wedding was over $31k, so we used that as a basis for what our budget would be. We're college grads with student debt, so we knew we didn't want to go in more debt for one day. At most, we're willing to pay $20k, but ideally we want to spend under $15k. Right now, we're at $9k with most of our vendors booked, and one paid off.

Luckily, my mother is paying half of our venue as our gift, FH's parents are paying for the rehearsal, and a family friend is paying for our DJ as his gift to us. Everything else, we're paying for.

When it came down to thinking about cost, we thought about whether we'd regret not having a big wedding with everyone. In the end, we knew we'd regret it. We love parties and celebrating with everyone. Plus, this would be the first, and probably last time both sides get to be together. My family lives in different countries, so I'm lucky if I see them every 3 years...

My husband created a spreadsheet in Excel. We knew we wanted our overall budget to be $20,000 then we researched different vendors to see what the average cost was. I believe we spent about $3,000 over budget, but we made it work. You have to decide what you are both comfortable spending and go from there.

Hey girl! You sound a bit like me, except I have more in savings and my fiancé doesn't have any debt. The first thing I'd ask is if you are planning to combine finances, and how he is managing paying on the debt. If his debt is going to become "y'all's debt" then you should take a look at what that will look like after you get married.

Second, if I was in your shoes, I would be trying to do the wedding for $10k or less. I would not go anywhere close to burning through my savings for a wedding because, as you said, you have other things to save for like a house. You are in a really good spot compared to a lot of people, and you should leverage that to give you a leg up on your future.

We set a goal of $10k, and ours will probably come in almost double that, which I'm not happy about, but I feel okay about it knowing we made careful and prudent decisions at pretty much every step of the way. We didn't splurge big on pretty much anything.

When we decided on what type of wedding we wanted, we started to look at venues. In the beginning, we really lie balled ourselves, not realizing hot much the wedding we wanted was going to cost. We increased our budget to $20k & that includes our honeymoon. The venue we chose is all inclusive & right now we’ve paid them $9200 (guest list of 90) & plan on making our last payment of $3200 in March. Our honeymoon is paid off- we spent $5400- that’s for a 7 day honeymoon suite villa with a butler at a Sandals resort in Jamaica & 2 round trip first class tickets!

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That sounds lovely!! You're going to have a great time. Yes, I was low-balling to the point of delusion before I started looking at prices! Including the honeymoon cost in thinking about how much to spend is a good idea. I think that'll help both of us rein in the wedding day spending.

I also live in an area where the cost of living is higher and we're basically paying for everything ourselves. Similar to PP, we looked up vendors to get an average on ones we liked and put everything into an Excel sheet to give us a starting point. We gave ourselves a budget of $20k and went though the vendor list to decide what vendors were most important to us and which vendors we could "skimp" on to meet that budget. Based on that, we upped our budget to $25k because there were some stuff we "couldn't live without" since we want the perfect wedding. We're going to end up at around $28k once everything is finished.

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Thank you thank you, this is so helpful. Finances will stay separate. Technically I won't become "legally" responsible for that debt, but I hope to help him pay it off even faster. We already split rent based on income + me paying a little extra so he can increase his loan payments. He's usually very responsible with money (which I'm why I'm surprised he's apparently willing to deplete his savings for a wedding) and has paid off over $20k of the over $100k initial balance (yi-yi-yi-yikes) of the loans.

I was initially thinking under $10k, but I got so swept up in articles geared towards people spending the average $33k plus looking at vendors/venues outside that budget, I really lost sight of that initial goal. I should purge my spreadsheets of those over-budget things so I don't become more tempted.

I read in a finance book about how wedding related spending should never exceed 30% of your total saving. Same as housing. Never pay rent or mortgage more than 30% of your salary. However, weddings are often paid or supported financially by the young couples’ parents, or paid as much as they want the wedding to be, or I know someone who even takes 4 numbers credit to pay their wedding (now divorced and still haven’t paid their wedding debt off - yikes). I myself keep comparing vendors (price & quality) so I won’t feel guilty booking too soon and finding out cheaper vendor for the same thing.

View Quoted Comment I read about the average cost of a wedding, but didn’t let that influence my budget. It’s very feasible to be way under that amount if you make concessions to your wish list.
I was never the kind of person that dreamed about my wedding since childhood, so maybe that makes things easier.
Furthermore I’m from Europe originally and weddings are usually much cheaper over there (depending on the country/city etc., but on average I don’t think people spend as much as Americans).I would definitely not burn through your savings for the wedding. In the end, the goal is to get married to your FH and to enjoy the day with family. All of this can be done at various budgets. I don’t judge anyone that splurges on their wedding or that has a low key affair. The only thing I’d say is that no one should go in debt or deplete their savings for it.

I would have a serious talk about how different spending ideals will need to be compromised, and the wedding is a good place to start.


In my situation - and this may not be at all how you wish to handle it, I’m not saying this is perfect - I earn far less than my FH and have little savings. We are at different places in life. I told him that my dream wedding would be the typical - pretty venue, reception, as many loved ones as we could host generously. But I also acknowledged that I would not be able contribute half to the cost (he is well aware of my financial situation. He has already done a lot to improve it and I am now debt free, thankfully!) I told him I wasn’t comfortable deciding how much to spend because I knew he’d be paying most of it. He set a budget of 15k and will be paying a large chunk - I’ll doing some things like dress, etc but not as much. I’m doing the lions share of the planning and convinced him to look a a venue he initially didn’t want to because it looked very low-rent to him. He was pleasantly surprised, it’s an incredible deal for our area, and I feel like I was able to be frugal with his money. I am not saying you get to decide everything, don’t get me wrong. But have the wedding you both can afford without compromising things like savings - things are so unpredictable and something like a job loss can wipe out 30k quickly. The budget is the hardest part I think! But you and your FH will figure out what works for you through talking and prob grow even closer by having the hard conversations - I know me and my FH did.

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Thank you! I'm a numbers person so I appreciate the percentage That's great to keep in mind. At the end of the day, I would likely really regret spending over 30% of my savings, too.

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Thank you, this is very helpful. I will try to talk with him more about other financial issues. I love hearing that you're debt-free! Hopefully by talking more I can also convince him to let me help out more with his debt. We are both inclined to be independent to a fault, but hopefully he can agree that it's a way for me to invest in our shared future.

View Quoted Comment It took a while for him to convince me to let him help me. What made the difference was me worrying that poor credit and debt would affect him once we were married. And he really drove it home that we are a team. He kept saying “there is no I in team” and now it’s an in joke with is. “There is no <whatever letter> in team.”

We've both got great paying jobs but knew from the beginning that we didn't want to spend a lot on a wedding, especially since we wanted a small group (30 people). We budgeted $8,000 and so far have spent a little over half, including venue, tables and set up, dresses, most of the decor, catering and photographer. It's very possible to have a beautiful wedding without blowing your savings.

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Girl I felt my heart flutter when you said $100k!!! Double check on what you're legally responsible for because I think you *may* become responsible for it if you're married unless you have a prenup (don't quote me on that though - laws vary by state).

I feel you on getting swept up. I really wanted to make use of wedding planning magazines and whatnot, but I found that so many of the weddings they featured would have been insanely expensive to pull off - not even average, but six figures. There are lots of ideas for VERY inexpensive and VERY expensive weddings, but not much for people who want to pull of a semi-traditional, semi-DIY wedding on a budget, which is what we're trying to do. Honestly it's been a lot of work, but I like weddings and planning, so I don't mind too much. Figuring out your goals for the day, what matters to you, what doesn't, and doing a lot of "preplanning" before you actually put money down on anything will go a long way.

View Quoted Comment Lol, yes. Wedding stuff is overpriced! But 30% is maximum, not the number you should spend 😉

I'm a strong believer in Dave Ramsey's baby steps. There's no way I could spend several thousands of dollars on an event when I have $80k in debt. You never know what's gonna happen in the future. I've seen people have kids and their kid or kids end up having disabilities to where the parents really want one of them to be a stay at home mom or dad...but they are unable to due to having so much student loan debt. I definitely recommend you spend as little as possible (less than 5k) and put the rest towards debt and house down payment savings.

I would say the budget is the most difficult thing about wedding planning lol it’s easy to get carried away and that we did. $30K later and $10K for the honeymoon, but we felt completely comfortable because it did not make a dent in our account and we have paid off all $150K in student loans. It’s whatever you’re comfortable doing at the end of the day - but with your provided numbers, I would stay under $10K for wedding and honeymoon. You never know what could happen and you always want enough set aside for a “Rainy day.” I would not worry about taking on his debt - if you’re married - it’s your debt, too and it is what it is! Best wishes🤍

This is going to sound terrible and against everyone's wedding advice, but we never set a wedding budget.

We are already pretty set in life with owning our second home and having nice cars. Usually those things come after marriage, but I wanted us to be stable in our careers and have our nice things first.

I asked him about setting a budget so we don't over spend on the wedding, but we decided it was more important to have the wedding of our dreams than limit what we could and couldn't have. I definitely shop around and compare prices, I'm also realistic about what we absolutely can and cannot afford. I want a glam style wedding and our guest list is about 200, so I'm estimating my cost to be about $40k.

When I first told my parents I think they were shocked at how much it was going to costs. They gave suggestions on how to cut cost, but it wasn't what I wanted. My fiance and I will be paying for the wedding ourselves and my parents eventually came to terms with my dream wedding and gave the advice that since we are still young and have good careers we will continue making money and we can afford things. But at the same time, yes I also feel guilty spending so much (I could upgrade and buy another car with that ). I'm definitely envious of those who can budget their wedding to under $10k!

View Quoted Comment Student loans don’t become joint debt thankfully! And usually debt from before marriage can remain separate unless the debt is for an account that becomes commingled like a credit card. There are always exceptions though! But you can run into trouble if the debt gets garnished and the new spouse is on any bank accounts jointly - since that money is considered to belong to both, then that can be taken.