Financial preparation for wedding & married life

Hi Beni, what an insightful and mature question. I love personal finance. My advice would be three things:
1. Be on the same page as your partner. My new husband and I are similar in how we handle finances.
2. If you are in a professional job, work hard to keep that job, be valuable, and ask your supervisor what you would need to accomplish to move up the ladder and do it.3. Don’t wrack up credit card debit. As we wedding planned, we chose a vendor, signed a contract and got it writing that we paid the bill. We then moved to the next vendor. Hope this helps and congratulations!! ❤️

Sit down together and go through every single one of your monthly expenses (it helps me to pull up bank/credit card statement). You will have different categories: bills, rent, food, gas, recreational. From there, take a look at the recreational category and decide where you’re willing to make cuts (eating out/delivery, Starbucks, alcohol, clothing, Netflix). If you have direct deposit set up with your bank, ask your employer to contribute that amount towards you saving account. For example: my direct deposit sends 80% to my checking account, 10% to my 401k and 10% to my savings. This way, I don’t even see the money or have it in my checking account to begin with.
Hope this helps!

Congratulations on your engagement! My fiance and I are in a similar situation as you since we are both newly out of college and don't have tons of money or anyone to help us pay for the wedding.

1. We are going to be starting marriage prep/counseling in March, but we have also been going through the Dave Ramsey material together to make sure we have the same money goals.

2. There are a few ways we have been able to save money that might help you. Go to wedding fairs if they are free admission. Lots of vendors have drawings for services, so you might win something! There are lots of things that aren't necessary such as guest book, favors, save the dates, and wedding programs. There are also ways to save on your wedding dress. You can shop off-the-rack styles, and some places, like David's Bridal have occasional sales and coupons online.

Hope that helps!

To financially prepare for the wedding my husband and I took side gigs or extra hours! I was lucky enough to get an extra part time job where the money earned from that paid exactly my portion of the wedding

View Quoted Comment Thank you very much Katie ☺️

View Quoted Comment Sounds like a challenge time, I'm happy that you were able to raise the needed amount. Thank you for sharing Melle, I am definitely considering extra hours on my current job and my Fiance is considering a part time job. Maybe in a few month I'll come back with an update 🙂

View Quoted Comment Thank you Elizabeth, I have heard of Dave Ramsey before but never checked it out. Thanks for sharing!

View Quoted Comment Amanda, thank you so much for sharing, the sit down is really important and still a new thing for us, especially for me as i am more of the spender than he is.

My husband and I sat down and had a discussion. We came up with a total of how much each of us could save from our checks and went from there.

I second others about sitting down and planning finances. You are not just planning a wedding. You are planning for your future together. If you have not had any money conversations yet, now is a great time to figure out what your financial goals are (do you have debt you want to pay off in x number of years, but a house at some point, etc.), as well as figure out spending habits and a budget. How will you handle money as a married couple? Will you merge finances completely? Will you split costs 50/50 or a percentage based off of what each person makes? In terms of budgeting for a wedding, I would look at what you each bring in per month, subtract necessary spending, and see how much you can realistically save per month. Compare that to the approximate costs of the type of wedding you would like in your area. Then you see how long it would take you to save that amount, if you're comfortable with spending that amount. If you feel like a 2nd job or picking up extra hours are an option and will get you to your goal faster, then, as others have suggested, that's also an option.

Hi there.
I graduated witj $22,000 in student loan debt and my FH had about $5,000 in cc debt. I'm also in grad school and paying out of pocket and it's about $2,800 per each course.

We have been together for five years and throughout that time we have been paying iff debt. At the end of this year, we should be debt free, God willing.
Things we did was we only go out once a week to eat a meal. We mostly cook at home and buy whole foods like veggies from scratch and fruits and lean meats. For both of us, our grocery bill per week comes to about $70.
I also never get a better/newer/more expensive car or apartment whenever I receive a promotion. I always live BENEATH my means. I typically shop from goodwill or other thrift stores.
For our wedding, we did not want to go into debt nor save a bunch of money that could be used towards a house down payment! So we agreex to spend as little as possible. We originally wanted a 25/30 guest count wedding but bills and charges kept piling on. We cancelled and we compromised on an elopement. About 400 miles away from in my favorite city!
Our only expenses should be one bouquet of flowers, my dress, his suit, my manicure, photographer, gas, hotel for one night, and an upscale dinner.
I never thought it was necessary to spend a bunch of money on a wedding. I couldn't see myself doing so unless I was a millionaire and had zero debts including my house.
Make sure you're doing things you and your fiance want to do and not give into societal pressure or nor worry about what others will think.

View Quoted Comment Absolutely! I did that side gig for about half a year and it was so tiring! But it was worse it to be able to not strain myself financially

We sat down and openly shared our finances and long term goals. We started with a spreadsheet detailing what we expect to spend (rent, utilities, clothes, vacation, etc) vs. save in a typical year. Then we created a budget for financial goals such as buying a house, having a wedding, honeymoon, etc. Based off that we put together a realistic timeline of when we'd be able to afford those. We were OK with the timeline so we didn't have to make any adjustments to our spending habits, but I imagine if we wanted to speed it up we'd look at it more closely to see how we could save more.

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Thank you for sharing Yasmine, Communication is really key.

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Wow, thanks for sharing Nicole, very detailed and I'm sure it took a lot of discipline.

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I love your advise here Mrs. Spring "Make sure you're doing things you and your fiance want to do and not give into societal pressure or nor worry about what others will think."

Thank you so much for sharing, I'll just put that one in my pocket right now.

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Hannah, thank you so much for this, very much appreciated {"You are not just planning a wedding. You are planning for your future together."}- I totally agree

You've really touched on some very important questions that we must ask each other to get started.

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Thank you for sharing Mrs. Spring and for your reminder at the end!