How to afford a wedding

First decide how much you want to spend and how long you are willing to wait. Divide the total budget by the months you have to save, at least a few months out from when you want the actual wedding to be. Then take that amount per month and put it in a fund you will absolutely not touch, preferably a separate bank account. For instance if you want to get married in a little over 2 years, with a $5,000 budget, you would need to put around $208 a month into the account. If you want to get married in one year you would need to put $416 dollars a month into the account. If that's too much for you to do you may need adjust the budget. You can have a lovely wedding for a reasonable cost if you are willing to adjust your vision (ie bruch or dinner with close family at a restruant after a courthouse/church ceremony instead of a large evening reception) Play around with it until you find something that works for you and stick with it.

Hi Robin! My FH is in the navy too. Your FH should still be getting paid even if he isn't on deployment. yes, deployment pays more, but being in the navy is still a job. did he leave the navy completely? I would suggest planning the wedding for about the same time you would have. don't move it forward. then you can figure out how much you need to save per month, and hopefully moving gin with your parents will help save that. I would suggest tightening your belt a little, so to speak. look for coupons for food and only buy on sale, generics (many are the same as the name brand in different packages...except for orange juice...that is really second hand stuff). gas you can't really do much about if you are just driving to work and such. also, maybe you can do a minimoon and then do a real honeymoon when you save up the money again?

Hi Robin,

im in the military and so is my husband. we got legally married in april We are waiting to have the wedding. it will be october of 2014 because we have to save. we are having the wedding at the chapel on base its FREE! we save $250 each per check also we using the club on base for the reception the dinner will be $1,700 for 100 people. we are paying for the wedding ceremony on our own. look into the club at his base or a different base because you can use the out of state base clubs and chapels also. also i have found that i will need to cut out some wants and that i will have to DIY a lot of things BTW out budget is 6000.

Regardless of how much you spend on your wedding day, you will wake up the next day with the same result. Honestly I want to elope and just go on a nice honeymoon.. But our parents are insisting on a wedding and are paying for 90% of it.. I know i sound like an ungrateful brat, but it all seems like such a waste of money for 4 hours.

Elope. Invite just your closest friends (and frankly? If your family is acting this way, maybe you don't invite them......just a thought.....

You can have a wonderful party for 20 guests, even in my are (ny/nj) for under 2000.00. That is totally what I'd do.

If your family isn't willing to help that means they get no input on the guest list. Keep it to 20-30 of the people YOU both want there. $5k goes really far for a small wedding. Logistics are way easier and lots of venues open up that wouldn't normally be available (ei restaurants).

I would only invite the family who has supported you, in my opinion the family that have laughed or disapproved of the relationship should not be issued an invite. That already should save you some money.

Then, have a look at alternative venues, like botanical gardens and such. They are usually much cheaper. Cater for yourself- if you have a small wedding then it's easy. If you choose a place like a garden then you don't have to worry about décor because it's already there.

You don't need to buy a fancy wedding dress, my budget was so small I was originally looking at just getting a white sundress. FH is using a suit he already has, I am sure your FH won't mind getting married in his army clothes (which looks awesome, so prestigious).

I agree with what everyone has said. If you want a bigger wedding, plan out what you want, add it up (add 15% for unexpected things and extras!), and divide that figure by the amount of months you have to plan/save. Set up direct deposit into an account that you can't touch - the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality really DOES work!

If you want the wedding but not necessarily the big hoopla - elope. You can always have a big party or vow renewal down the road, when you're more established, have more steady income and/or have had more time to save for the wedding you dream of.

Try not to cut corners and short change yourself too much - you will likely come to regret that later. Plan the wedding you want to get you the result you want - marrying your FH.

Good luck!

This sounds like us! Deployment was cancelled now it might still go on, we were going to save money from deployment to pay for the wedding as well.

As many of the people above said, I would cut the guest list by not inviting anyone who hasn't supported you two. If you want a small gathering, maybe a friends house/backyard if it's big enough. Where are you stationed? We're in San Diego so I've been looking at private homes that people rent out for events. It's not too pricey. I would also do the ceremony in the chapel on base, it's free!!! Good luck!

Oh and as for the honeymoon, if you guys don't do a registry, you guys can instead create a website with honeymoon details and send out the information with the invitation and instead of bringing gifts to the wedding, your guests instead can pay for different activities you wanna do during your honeymoon, or for a night in the hotel. It's an option if you can't afford a honeymoon. I'm going to do that because we already have a home established. I don't wanna create a registry if I already have everything for a home. I don't remember what websites do that, but I've seen it before. My parents paid for a friend of the families hotel for one night as their wedding gift.