Did you purchase your home before or after your wedding?

It doesn't hurt to get a soft approval for a loan - the bank will go through your income vs expenses (car loans, student loans, etc). That way you know what kind of home you can afford and what your mortgage payment would be. But if you can't break your lease without some kind of penalty I would hold off for now, since it is looking like a sellers market right now and if you find a home you want to put an offer on, you will need to do so immediately. That doesn't mean you will find something right now necessarily, but once you do everything will start moving quickly.

If you plan on putting down 20% of the mortgage that will save you from needing PMI in most cases, but that's a ton of cash to squirrel away at the same time you're paying for your wedding. Not trying to sway you either way, just more food for thought

I owned my home since 2006.

However; you should speak to a lender. You may want to have a separate account for the wedding expenses and as long as your primary account has the proper funds, your underwriter should be OK.

The real issue is for you to determine whether you can afford down payment and closing costs at the same time as a wedding. It will be a lot of expense and a lot to deal with at the same time. Plenty have done both at same time and survived though!

You are right. Anything on the credit card, any credit pulls, and large withdrawals from your bank account affects you ability to be under written. We've been searching for a home for 4 months now and we've needed to avoid purchasing a second car even though we have the cash because it'll affect our cash on hand. (They request 2 months of bank statements and when they see large withdrawals it's a big issue for under writing).

Honestly marriage is a big change itself. I'd wait 6-12 Months before making another change

So we're BUILDING a house almost immediately after our wedding. We're actually currently in the process of doing shit like getting power up the 900' driveway, septic, well, etc to the land.

We purchased the land July of 2016 and got engaged Feb of 2016. By July, we had already had all of our major wedding expenses booked and deposits paid. It didn't seem to be an issue for getting the land mortgage, though you're smart to have that considered.

As long as you didn't take out a loan for your wedding and don't actually have debt, I don't think spending would be a huge issue. What they do what to see, however, is the down payment and closing costs in your account. We HAD to have a 20% down payment to get a land mortgage and had to write the check the day of closing (we put the very last amount of money we needed into the account like the day before closing).

Go ahead and speak to a lender and see what they say. We have had our house for 2 yrs now.

We are building right now, it is a lot of extra stress. I am working OT to make vendor deposits via debit card vs using a credit card.

I am having this exact same issue and my wedding is a day after yours lol. At first we were planning a wedding and a home purchase at the same time but that quickly became too stressful. Right now we will probably suck it up and rent for maybe another year after the wedding. I didn't even think about how the wedding costs coming out of my account would look to lenders :/

We bought our home last summer and he proposed in October (five months afterwards). We'd lived together for six years prior to that, and wanted to get a house because we were sick of paying rent on a place that wasn't upkept to our standards.

PPs hit the nail on the head --- you and FH should go get pre-approved for a loan and start considering how much you can afford as a down payment. We were able to secure mortgage payments very similar to what we had been paying in rent, so aside from the down payment and moving expenses, the financial impact was minimal.

We'll own our home for a little over 2 years by the wedding.

We're going to be relocating shortly after the wedding (we're both currently sharing an apartment while we finish up grad school, there are 2 semesters to finish after the wedding), and would be looking to own after that. I agree that marriage itself a huge change, it's okay to not go right into owning a home immediately after.

We will be starting the purchasing process later this year. We picked a wedding date that would allow us to plan and buy a house, but we also do not currently live together. Will you have the funds for a down payment even with the wedding costs? People have done both, it takes a lot of planning and sacrifices, but its not impossible

After for us!

We purchased one house together 5 years ago, sold it, and are looking for another one now. We've been looking, and in this instance it's just going to work out that we're purchasing after. Make sure your house fund and wedding fund are completely separate, and you've got savings for emergencies as well, and it won't matter when the house is purchased.

We purchased 6 months after our engagement after all the deposits had been paid. It was perfect because we were in the calm part of planning after all the deposits had been paid. Now that I'm 3 weeks out I'm writing checks left and right. I would speak with a lender...but they were adamant that we don't do any unusual spending or large purchases prior to closing. I think going through the lending process right now would be really difficult and super super stressful.

We got engaged in October and at that point we were already looking into buying a house. We finally finished with everything in the middle of January and are finally in our house! It took awhile because it was around thanksgiving and Christmas and the previous owners kept jerking us around. It was a terrible experience I hated it. That with wedding stress we were fighting constantly. Now we're doing just fine. We definitely found a house we knew that we could afford though.

@Svetlana - The only good thing about building while planning a wedding is that after the wedding, my life won't be meaningless because I have to house to plan LOL. I love wedding planning and have been getting sad thinking about it being over.

If all goes well, our closing date will be a month before the wedding, but we will not be moving in until after our wedding. The time in between will be used to fix up the house and move our things in

And to answer your question, we want to have our house by the time we married so we're buying before.

We have been looking for four months and our wedding is in August. If it happens before then, great. If it doesn't, then it'll be after the wedding

I'm using a lending broker and clearly pointed out what money was designated for the wedding and he didn't bat an eye at it. No concerns whatsoever. I think as long as you have enough for the down payment then it's not an issue.

Also keep in mind you might not find a home right away. Where I live, there's barely anything on the market so while we'd love to buy a house, we haven't found one we like that's available

We're currently in the process of closing. And pp have said it perfectly, get pre-approved first and that will help you narrow your price range. Get a fixed loan, so you don't have to worry about interest and know your area's market, get a feel for the average price range in your area.

We are purchasing our home before. Our lease is up in October so we postponed our wedding to focus more on buying a home right now. Wedding planning and home shopping at the same time is too stressful.