Saving for a venue

I am using a high yield savings account to help save for the wedding. I am putting money from each paycheck into a savings account I opened that has a high interest rate. It will grow faster that way. Check out Capital One

Good old fashioned budgeting! See how much money coming in every month and out (including rent). The difference is how much you can save for your wedding, including your venue. Check your spending for the past few months and see if there is any spending you can cut back. Easy ones are to cut/negotiate cable bill, cut going out to eat and cook at home, cut any monthly subscriptions like gym or bark box etc, and cut happy hour.

Most venues will not require a full amount upfront, just a deposit. Deposits can range between 10% to 50%. Be wary for those that ask more than 50% deposit.

Good luck!

We set a budget and worked backwards from there. Most payments are due 30 days before the wedding, so we counted the number of months between then and now and divided our total budget by that. Then we set aside that amount (transferred it into a separate account), along with some more for the honeymoon and a bit for a buffer.

A high interest savings account sounds like a good plan, but over the course of a single year you'd get maybe $10-$20 in interest, so it won't add much to it. You really just want to save incrementally out of your paycheck.

If you both have jobs at this point, then you should know what your average paycheck will look like and should be able to determine if you'll be able to afford to set aside an appropriate amount or if you'll need to cut cost-of-living expenses or settle on a smaller wedding budget.

For my area, $3,500 would be a steal for a venue! They likely only require a deposit, so it may be feasible to go ahead and secure it at this time. Keep in mind that venue and catering (depending on your guest count) will most likely be your largest expenses, so if you can figure out what those will look like then you should have a good idea of where to set your budget. Weddings are almost always more expensive than anticipated - and catering will likely charge a 20% gratuity!

It's like a retirement account: the sooner you start the better! Incremental saving adds up!

(I just graduated in May and my Fiance just graduated in December, so I understand the struggle!)

Unfortunately there's no super easy way to save a lot of money quickly. Budgeting is really the only way. I use the monthly budget spreadsheet that's in google sheets. I start with our anticipated income for each month, then lay out all of our "required" expenses (mortgage, utilities, insurance, car/loan payments). Then I determined how much we need to save monthly in order to save enough by next January when most of our payments are due. The leftover is our spending money for things like eating out, movies, trips, etc. My bank has a built in feature that lets me link all of our accounts and label everything by category, so that helps me sort everything faster. It's also a good idea to set up an automatic transfer to savings every time you get paid, or ask your employer to split your paycheck so that some always goes into savings, and then DON'T touch it until you are ready to use it for the venue or your apartment.