Postponed

Financials is one of the main reasons we decided to wait until next year and have a 19 month engagement so we have time to save. We are really lucky that my father is also going to help a little, but the rest of my family can’t afford to help and FH’s parents are both deceased. Nineteen months seemed like so long at first, but it’s actually going pretty fast so far. Sometimes you have to just do what you can do. We’ll never be able to afford my “dream wedding,” but that’s okay because it’ll be perfect for us.

I think it's smarter to postpone now than postpone 2-3 months out because you can't afford it after all. The longer you wait, the longer you have time to save money for whatever you need. I'd suggest making a budget, saving up that money, then adding another $2k to it for "backup" because a lot of people go over on their budget. Another way to cut costs is to make your guest list smaller. It will go by fast no matter how long you wait! Try to take one thing a week (or every two weeks) to tackle. That way you aren't in the middle of 10 things and don't know where to start. Ex: Week 1 - venue, Week 2 - wedding colors/theme, Week 3 - Catering, Week 4 - Photography, Week 5 - Cake, etc.. it helped me a lot to stay calm and organized.

View Quoted Comment Such good advice!

View Quoted Comment Thank you all so much this helps a lot !!

I was in sticker shock big time - nearly in tears on a daily basis at first. We didn't postpone the party - just the honeymoon. We will have nearly a 2 year engagement just so that we can save up for the event. I really get a lot of use out of this website's planning/budgeting tools.

Not for financial reasons but due to family stuff. I think if you know you can't afford for the time you originally had it for, I would def postpone it. You don't want the wedding to put you in an uncomfortable financial situation.

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This is such good advice! Once we hit 6 weeks before our wedding, I made a calendar in a shared google doc for me and FH so we could see what needed to get done and when... I put his stuff in blue, mine in pink, and shared in black. It really has helped us visualize what needs to get done, and notice when things are too concentrated on one point in time (i.e. I initially had like 10 things to get done during 1 weekend which was ridiculous to expect of myself, and seeing it in the calendar made me realize that and I was able to be like "hmm, well this one is just a phone call, I could easily move this to Wednesday instead" or something!) Honestly wish we had done this sooner, I feel like you are so right in how it is important to space things out, and I feel like putting it in calendar-format rather than list-format really helped me do that.

Totally forsure.

I keep reminding myself that we're not getting married til next year instead of this fall so we have more time to save money.

We did at first because we decided to get married in Hawaii (elopement/micro ceremony) and was going to turn it into our honeymoon trip as well. It went from 2020 to 2021. Now, we're in talks of starting a family so we'll still have an elopement/micro ceremony but closer to home and just have a dinner reservation. All the money saved from the Hawaii idea will be put towards our kid(s). So we went from postponing to backtracking.

It's definitely normal to postpone so you're not alone! The last thing you want to do is overload yourself with the ideas of what you want compared to what you can afford based on the timeline of your date. It's always better to postpone (especially as far ahead as possible) to feel comfortable with everything you want and knowing you can afford it with ease no matter how simple than to try and just do it all at once and give yourself a heart attack.

View Quoted Comment Thanks jasmine

Yes, we postponed for financial reasons. There were some other reasons also, but once we started planning, and researching the costs of everything, we realized we weren't going to have enough time to save for the cost of the wedding we wanted. So we made some adjustments, and really figured out a budget we could live with, then figured out how long it would take to save that amount. We had originally picked August 2019 for our wedding, but after the financial assessment, we moved it to May 2020. It has really reduced my stress, knowing we have so much more time, not only to save, but to plan. Don't trip. Lots of people postpone. It's ok.

View Quoted Comment Yay thank you so much for the reassurance I just really didn’t want to feel alone in the matter and this really helps me to re think my expectations to a more realistic approach I appreciate your feed back !

We did! We decided in March 2018 to postpone our September 2018 wedding. We had just had a baby November 2017(I spent 2 weeks in the hospital before having him and then baby had to stay 2.5 weeks after he was born), my car engine went out January 2018 so I had to fix the car before anything else, we can't function properly on just 1 car lol. Just too much at once. It was my husbands idea to postpone it too which pissed me off lol but..he was right!

We got married March 2019 and I'm soooo glad we postponed our wedding! I initially tried to convince my husband that we could still do it but it wouldn't have been anything like it was if we had went with the Sep 2018 date! We enjoyed ourselves, got to RECOVER financially and then enjoyed splurging! And got to take our honeymoon right after our wedding. It was worth the wait!

View Quoted Comment Oh my thank you for sharing so many details I’m glad everything went well and congratulations on your baby that’s awesome !

We might have to...if we don't get the affordable venue we what we'll probably have to

View Quoted Comment Awww I can teammate, both my FH's parents have passed as well. Does he have a lot of other family that can make it to the wedding?

I postponed due to other reasons that weren’t financial. Keep in mind that you don’t NEED a fancy wedding.
I love my boo so much that I would marry him on a doorstep (I would prefer not to) but marriage is marriage no matter how big or small the celebration is.

View Quoted Comment Ugh, I can sadly relate to this. I really thought we'd be able to get it all done for under $10k. I enjoyed my engagement for all of a week until I started planning and was nearly in tears for a month.

The biggest sticker shock for me was photography. Every established wedding photographer in my area (northern California) starts at $3500 and goes up from there!! This was made worse by my stepmom "warning" me in the beginning that a good photographer cost $1500 😂 I realize now that that's what her daughter's paid back in 2010. And even $1500 sounded expensive!

View Quoted Comment Yes that’s true