I'm paying for my wedding myself

Sometimes it's hard to come up with a budget.

What I would do is go over your monthly bills see what you have left over and add that up a month and how long you want your engagement to be and you'll have a number! Maybe that will help you!

I work as a bartender on the side any money i make between tips and paychecks goes directly into savings plus what ever is left over between mine and FH paychecks goes directly into savings....we have saved 4000 in 2 months and ate budgeting to save 20000 for honeymoon and wedding

We've been saving for a little over year and will have about $16K out away. We save $1200/month between the two of us. Sometimes we put in a little extra if we can.

We are paying around 5,000 ourselves including all little details. That does not include food and cake. Which is around another 4,000. We just keep putting money aside into savings that we don't touch. Getting married this weekend and we did it!

I've been buying little things as I plan, but for saving I've only just started. I'm having a lot of friendors. While not ideal, it's what I can do for now. My fiance just got a job and I told him to put everything towards savings. It's minimum wage, but it's still pretty good. I try to save as much as possible per paycheck. So far between the last 2 checks I have $550 saved. Which is nothing Once the busy season comes around it'll be much more doable! I'm not kidding when I mention running off to vegas and eloping. It's much cheaper and seems virtually stress free.

I put about $360 - $400 away every month for 23 months. FH and I agreed on a budget and said that each of us is responsible for half and how we save for it is our business. I told him my plan and offered to open a joint account to put the funds in, he wanted to do it his way so I let him. If we wanted something that went over the agreed upon budget we had to pay the extra ourselves. I believe in the end we spent approximately $22,000 - 25,000.

We didn't really have a budget. I made an organized spreadsheet of deposits and final totals. FH is a really good saver and has minimal debt and I am lucky enough to have a job that I can use 1,000 or so a month toward the wedding and no debt. We have to go out less, but it really hasn't been uncomfortable. We started with a 22 month engagement. We have paid 19,000 so far, with a total of 27,500 before flowers and hair/makeup with 7 months left. With tax returns and and Christmas bonuses we will make it work. I would be willing to live like a college student and eat ramen until my wedding if necessary haha.

I wouldn't give OP bad advice! Telling her to use friendors isn't the solution. It can go so wrong so fast!

No self catering and no friendors; have you not read enough horror stories about missing friendors? And disgusting self catering? I got a call just last night for a wedding in three weeks that was going to be done by someone's uncle. Who is sick.

But I digress.

Try www.smartypig.com for automatic savings and www.digit.co (yes, co, not com) which will take out varying amounts based on the activity in your chosen account. I started using it last year and my account has over 3000.00 in it, taken a few bucks at a time. I think it's brilliant actually.

And good habits to keep AFTER you get married too!

We are having a small wedding (25-30 people) in Colorado next August and our budget is $5000 since we are paying ourselves and we just bought a new home. Save a large portion of each paycheck and don't spend money on unnecessary things. We stopped going out to eat so much and save almost double what we would have been able to before

I've been saving close to 500 a month. My dad is also saving up money (he started a savings account) but he has never been good with his finances so it's making me have some anxiety deep down so I'm saving as much as I can just to be on the safe side. I'm putting away money for our 2 year engagement while the FH is putting away money for our first home we are going to be purchasing next fall.

@GeeQT how is his 401K not penalized?? I work in taxes and that doesn't make any sense.

FH and I saved $500 each a month, plus any bonuses we got from work, cash back from ebates/credit cards, tax returns, and we put all spare change in a huge jar which ended up giving us giving us a couple hundred haha. We saved for 23 months. In January I came into some money that helped us get our "would be nice to have" wedding upgrades. Thankfully though we were set to pay everything off well before that. I do not leave things to chance!

FH and I each deposit a set amount of each check into a savings account. Every time I use my debit card my bank moves $1 into a savings account which I don't touch. Pllus both our tax returns and my Christmas bonus. When we go to the grocery store we try to pull an extra 5, 10, or 20 and immediately put it into a box full off spare change and loose bills (this adds up fast and we've already paid for the cake this way). We just got engaged 1.5 months ago and are getting married April 2017, with a wedding at approximately $9k.

@Ragan - you're allowed to take out a 401k loan (not a withdrawal) for personal reasons without penalty and the interest you pay on that is actually going back to you. The repayment comes directly out of your paycheck.

With that being said, I would never take out any sort of loan to pay for a wedding. Especially retirement savings.

@Gym, yeah, a loan is penalty free. I just don't get someone pulling money out of a 401k to pay for a wedding! The way my employer has ours set up we can't take any loans.

Even if it's not penalized, pulling money out of a 401k to pay for a wedding is absolutely ridiculous.

FH is able to barrow against his 401k and he just pays it back with every paycheck. He gets No penalty at all and it's great! Thank god for 401k's. He puts 20% in and his company matches it each week! It's amazing!

Don't borrow from anyplace.

It's "amazing" but you do realize he's losing any earnings on that money you are pulling out, right? They are retirement funds, not "I want a spectacular wedding" fund. Ugh, priorities!!