Fiancé a little too frugal

I think most people have sticker shock when they first start planning a wedding. We had an amazing wedding for under $25k- I think as he starts to see how much things really cost he will lighten up- our venue was 16,500 (which included decor except flowers, food, bartenders and all linens- pretty much everything except florist, photographer, and dj). Just start with venues you both like and don’t tell him the cost till after you see them in person.

View Quoted Comment That’s a good idea! We haven’t been to any venues in person so his opinion may change a bit once we see a place he really likes and can imagine us getting married there. Thanks for the advice!

Pricing out the costs with your fiancé might help. He may thinking of this as the cost of "a wedding" without realizing there's a zillion things that need to be considered and paid for: the venue, the food, the booze, the photography, the bride's dress, the groom's apparel, the decor, the officiant, the invitations, the DJ, the flowers, hair and makeup, the cake etc. It all adds up surprisingly quickly.

Also, since your fiancé is wanting it to be "special, but..." then I think it would also be a good idea to sit down with him and figure out exactly the things that will make it special to each of you. Then you can prioritize spending your money on those things (and the things essential for hosting your guests) and save money on some of the stuff that's not so important to you (flowers and favors come to mind). Then you'll have some definite things you can point to and say "yes, we saved money on that," which he will probably like.

If your dad is footing the bill, I don’t see the point on trying to stick to a lower budget. Seeing venues and allowing your FH to understand realistic wedding costs may be helpful.

My FH is probably the most frugal person every and I am the exact opposite (whoops!). He had major sticker shock when I was showing him the pricing of everything but I had him do some research of his own to find prices that he thought were reasonable and he realized that weddings are just stinkin' expensive! We still try to sit down together and look over pricing just to make sure I stick to budget and also to show him that I really am not just making this stuff up! - Good luck

😂 our entire wedding (venue, food, dress, everything) is under 5k. We found a venue that includes everything from food to officiant to decor for 2800 and I was sold.

My parents always had me think about it the other Way. Like yes ideally it will be your only wedding day BUT it's just one day. One day out of all the days you'll have. Do you really want to spend 10-20-30k on one day? Do you need to spend thousands of dollars on a dress to make the day special? That kind of thing. Being frugal isn't a bad thing. It means he's trying to be money conscious for your future. I'm guilty of being the "cheap" one in my relationship and I am that way only because I am thinking of our future and how we could better use that money later on. And we also aren't accepting money from people because we don't want others to have a say in our day (if we accepted his mom's money, then we have to consider her wants and demands.) My parents are gifting us a small amount of money for my dress but only because I'm their only kid and my mom and I have been talking about me having a black wedding dress for years, which run a little more than I want to spend, so she's decided to give me that because she doesn't want my frugality to get in the way of my being a bride.


If you're with the right person, it will be a great day no matter what. Come together and talk about what you two find most important and see if you can agree on a budget together.

I think showing him the actual cost of things that go into a wedding may help with that. He probably doesn't have a concept of what wedding things cost. You should both make a list of what's important to you on that day (food, flowers, DJ, etc.) and make sure you go all out on that part. But I do agree that you don't have to spend $25,000 y to make it a beautiful and fun day.

That is quite a jump UNDER what your dad was comfortable with. Esp because ti wont be coming out of your pockets.

Im the cheap one in the relationship even though my dad offered to pay for everything
I see it as being one day
I was just having a conversation today with my mom how much i paid for my glasses they were 300 or 400 after everything and i think they were one of the most expensive pairs there
I said i wanted ones that looked good on me cause ill be wearing them everyday for years and then i said i dont care if my dress costs that much its only going to be wore one day

FH and I came up with a number for what we thought would be reasonable to spend when we first started discussing budget. ...we had NO idea what things actually cost , so starting to price things out might help. We started talking to caterers, I thought I was finding the cheapest I could ....and their quotes were the ENTIRE original number we started on.

in the end, our wedding will cost twice that, but it took us both a while to wrap our heads around it. But, we didn’t want to keep cutting our guest list, so we came around as we realized that was just what it would cost to host a nice event.

We ARE gettinf generous financial gifts from our parents, more than I was originally comfortable with. But the way that I came around to it was this: this money hasn’t been and isn’t just on the table for us to take and do with as we please. This is money that has only been presented to us in this situation. It’s clear my parents have saved for this specific event. ( If we don’t use it all, that’s great, but if not ...that’s what it’s there for!) and it occurs to me my wedding is kind of a big deal for them! They WANT to spend on it because they want it to be nice — I’ve found this to be a very convincing argument as I hit them up for deposit checks 😂

Send him over to this website https://www.costofwedding.com/

Incredibly helpful. When I had the "money talk" with my dad, I was able to rattle off stats about what a wedding would cost in different areas that we've lived, and that helped us settle on location and budget. Let him have a few sticker shock moments, we all need them.