Financing a wedding

We got a secured loan from our bank for half of our wedding (10k) using FH's car as collateral. There was a very lively discussion from a post I made about wedding loans...

I am trying to get ideas. I really do not want to get a loan but I know saving around $5-10k in a year is going to be next to impossible.

S/N: Specially when we just had to replace one of the cars and now pay an extra $300 a month. :/

We could have cut back or waited another year, but those weren't realistic options for us. I've gotten plenty of crap for it on WW, but basically the extra debt is worth the amount stress we would have trying to plan this wedding without the loan. FH and I got the loan about 3 months ago and whole heartedly believe it was the best decision for us.

I also refuse financial help. I feel weare adults doing an adult thing so we should be the ones to pay for it. I'm a stay at home mom so we live off of one income. We've been engaged for 2 years so we could have what we wanted. We've been through a lot this past year alone including FH's work shutting down for a total of 4 weeks and might be again for the month of July. So instead of paying off the wedding early with his bonus it went to bills and our emergancy savings are gone. My advice would be to have two accounts for saving, one for emergancies and the other for the wedding. That way you aren't dipping into the wedding money to pay for other things. Unless you really really need to. With some great budget skills and lots of great deals, our wedding will come out to about 10,000 not including rings or honeymoon. That's on one income supporting two adults and one toddler. We also stay credit card free, it's too easy too easy to charge stuff and I have a bad shopping problem lol!

Well, I am an extreme bargain hunter. I just want to have an all-inclusive wedding. Most of those are going for around $10k in my area. I'm not too worried about our honeymoon. We were able to get a sweet deal. Free 4night 5day stay in the Bahamas all-inclusive, all we have to do is pay tax (comes out to $400 PP) I for sure can put that on a credit card and have that paid off within a month (and a half at max)

We too, are living off one income basically. I used to work for the school district but because of cut backs, I got let go. :/ If I still had my job, things would not even be an issue. We would be able to put back my entire months salary.

We worry about this all the time and its one of the reasons we arent married yet! Similar to you, everytime we save X amount something comes up and we have to take care of. We finally just concluded that we are going to scale back our wedding plans which were never super elaborate to begin with. We have so many other goals to save towards...we cant afford to blow all of our saved money on a wedding. So we will have a very nice, small wedding No loans, we have enough student debt to worry about, we dont need more.

To add insult to injury, I just opened the mail and got a payment requirement for my school loans. :/ But, I have to get in touch with my school because I am still attending school. I know it wouldn't hurt to start paying now, but I would rather that payment go to the wedding instead right now.

We paid for most of our wedding with christmas/birthday/graduation gift money and tax returns. I just graduated and was working very part time, and FH was working a min. wage job. We did save up a little from our jobs, but only a couple thousand. Thankfully i have grandparents who generally give in the couple hundred range for most occasions, so we were able to save a lot of that up slowly.

You would have to save around $833.34 a month to save 10k in a year. That's $208.34 a week. Which is about $30 a day. It actually can be done. You just can't really go out, have to give up things like getting your hair done, or buying clothes/makeup/anything you don't need. But even than you would need some cushion room for things you might forget like tax or gratuity. If you are determined about the date and paying yourselves, you might need to give up the all inclusive, or downsize some things.

Pay for stuff as you get it, for big things like venues, reserve and pay on them. Do as much DIY as possible, use you loved ones gifts or talents as well. My mother is paying for my DJ as a gift to us, so allowing the parents to help some isn't bad. Use your tax money towards your wedding also. I will go into my wedding day only owing for unforeseen catering things and we are only planning with an 8 month time span. I went over my budget, but, I kept it low enough that we could pay it in advance. I will have spent just under $4000 b y my date, unless you ladies give me some other great idea by then, lol

L - it's a good thing you weren't here 6/8 months ago. Rebecca's similiar post was definitely "lively" but there's a different crew on the boards now so hopefully it will stay productive.

There's a couple of different ways to look at taking a loan out for the wedding. 1st - you guys look young (pic) so if you could get the loan it would definitely help your credit score especially if you make on time payments.

2nd - you mentioned using credit cards - I'd rather see you take a loan than use plastic based on the interest rates. Should you get the loan, take all of your CCs and put them in a ziplock baggie, fill it with water and put them in the freezer. Take away the temptation to use them while you have the loan.

3rd - If you can get the loan - pay off your high interest debt. Take the $ that would have been paid to debtors and put it in a savings account for the wedding. cont.

That is your wedding budget. Assuming you have $ left over from the loan, put it in 6 month CD's so you can't touch it for odds n ends and can make a little interest.

I personally have no problems with taking loans out, since $ is so cheap. But it has to be used wisely over the next 17 months b4 your wedding.

FH and I opened an account in both of our names just for the wedding. As soon as our check goes into the bank we transfer money. I am transferring $100 every 2 weeks and he is transferring $100 every week (he makes more than I do). If we don't have anything to pay on for the wedding that money is just going to sit there. The little stuff like my garter, my shoes, and things like that I just have paid for out of my check instead of taking it from the wedding fund. Also, my tax money went straight into that account. I can't believe how much we have been saving up. We should have more money in the account by the time our wedding comes than what we need. Also, we do not use change when paying for things. We have a change counter and save it all that is extra money into the account. We do the same with our $1 bills.

Two years ago I took control of my fiances and begin following Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace program. I actually have paid off over $25k in debt, so it is possible to save a ton of cash for the wedding. I'm cash flowing the wedding, and we are able to put around $1,500 cash aside each month (we've spent a lot it on wedding things already as we get close to our wedding).

I found my biggest savings avenue was to use CASH, actual CASH, for groceries. I used to go to Walmart and spend and spend and spend around $400/month. On junk food, junk for the bathroom, junk for the house. I've cut my grocery budget to $160 for me, ($240 for US when he moved in), and spend around $20 on "junk" during the month. It saves a TON of money. My debit card is my biggest "fail" when it comes to money.

We also planned what we could afford, when we could afford it.

Meghan, that book is awesome. 20 years ago, the ex & I were in debt up to our eyeballs - about 20k, 2 kids, mortgage & two car payments. I bought Two Incomes & Still Broke by Linda Kelly and I have to say it changed our lives. He quit his job and stayed home with the kids and we had our debt paid off within 24 months. It was a combination of life style changes and a low interest loan to pay off high interest stuff.

I am a HUGE proponent of CASH as well. I've paid all of the vendors with cash - count out 100's on someone's desk and you'll be amazed with what you can negotiate. LOL.

We paid things off monthly...savings does not work well for us unfortunately so we made payments on things every month

We paid most of the wedding off with our tax return. and DH took some of his 401k before Christmas to pay for a bunch of stuff and Christmas our parents helped a little but we paid most of it ourselves. we really didn't save. I skimped on things that weren't important to me like real flowers we did silk

As we have just started planning our wedding, we decided on an amount we have to save up to in order to make sure we are covered and then some, and divided it in half. I picked up a part time job, and FH is picking up some freelance work where he can. We've been just putting all the extra income into our wedding savings account, and contributing from our primary incomes when we can. Also, cutting back on going out, cooking meals at home, brown bagging our lunches, and having friends over for game and movie nights rather than going out to bars, restaurants, and other entertainment has helped as well.

FH and I are not all that great at saving money month to month either, it's soemthing we've been working on together, but we still need a lot of improvement. If you are doing an all-inclusive venue can you look at paying them a set amount monthly so that you and FH view it as a bill that has to get paid rather than attempting to save it for the next 18 months? I know I just mailed our caterer a huge check and feel so much better having it paid than having it sit in the savings account.

I'd avoid "wedding loans" if you have access to any other type of loan, the wedding loans seem to carry a high price tag. I know a friend that got a credit card that was 0% interest for 24 months to charge all her wedding expenses and pay them off slow and steady, this wouldn't have worked for me b/c my venue charged a "convenience fee" for credit cards and my caterer only takes cash or check (our two largest expenses).

That's the good thing about having a long engagement, which it looks like you do. We have just paid for everything as we go based on how much extra money we have each month. Like one month pay the officiant and buy decorations, the next month buy wedding bands, etc. A few of the big vendor payments were due when we didn't have enough saved so we used a low interest credit card and just paid it off as quickly as possible. It's been somewhat stressful but in the end everything will be paid for and we'll hopefully never have quite as expensive of a year again, you know?