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Wedding planning and other updates

July 15th, 2015 at 10:27 pm

I'll start with the other stuff:

Our budget this month is crazy tight. I'm actually cashing in our piggy bank and putting some extra money I made for helping DF's mom out into our account just to make sure we could cover everything. Our buffer was completely depleted when DF was gone for so much of June and then this first week in July. Needless to say, all extraneous expenses are out and we're eating down the pantry.

I'm super grateful that we made it through the FL vacation without too much extra spending. We mostly used DF's work incentive gift cards to cover the extra stuff.

I will probably get some flack for this, but I did provide a down payment for my little brother's car. The one he was driving was on the verge of destruction - it was like russian roulette on whether the brakes would work or not. Unlike my mom, he actually will pay me back. It will just be over several months.

Now to the wedding - it's definitely not going to be cheap. I only plan to do this once, and I never thought it'd happen so soon. I'm so lucky that he asked, and now I get to plan this day. We've decided on a destination wedding. We're inviting about 100 people, but given the location, anywhere from 40-all 100 of them could show up. I geniunely have no clue of the final count and won't until RSVPs come back, so budgeting for all 100, we're looking at about 15k. My family is pretty much useless. My dad did say he would help a bit, but I'll be lucky if my mom manages to pay her own way. Fortunately, DF's family will help out in any way they can, including my future mother-in-law lending her event planning assistance, so I can forgo a wedding planner. It's going to be a stressful, but exciting next several months!

3 Responses to “Wedding planning and other updates”

  1. VS_ozgirl Says:
    1437033098

    I had a destination wedding. What can I tell you? It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. We were lucky enough to get a wedding venue for free (SIL's tropical rainforest property in Queensland) and while we decided on the date only 12 weeks earlier, because we had the wedding on a Wednesday (because everyone's on holidays anyway so who cares what day it is on?) we could pretty much get all the services we needed at super short notice. A wedding of 30 people cost us around $10,000 including our flights and honeymoon accommodation (we went to a hotel on our own nearby). One thing I found out though is that because people are flying to be at your wedding you need to be considerate. I was so caught up in the excitement of having a destination wedding that I didn't realise that it's not always easy to just fly somewhere for a holiday at the drop of a hat, people can't always afford it or get time off. We did get discount accommodation rates for our guests because there were so many, perhaps you can look into something like that for your guests. And the stress- most stressful thing I've done but it was worth it!

  2. Debt-free by Thir-ty Says:
    1437050147

    VS, I'm glad to hear you thought it was all worth it in the end. That's one of my biggest concerns. We're planning for next spring, so that's a little more time for guests to secure accommodations and I don't believe it's any holiday. However, now I'm concerned since your wedding costs almost as much as my budget and we have 3 times as many guests, plus venues fees. I'm hoping my budget isn't unrealistic... I did add a tab to my budgets document for wedding stuff. I plan to track that all on its own.

  3. VS_ozgirl Says:
    1437084930

    I'm happy to give advice as you go along. Our costs were a lot of small things- celebrant, dress ($900 with veil- you may find something cheaper), marquee hire, jukebox hire, catering (finger food but they were filling items), alcohol (one of the most expensive items, even at a home venue!). These things all creep up. Oh and photography and also thank you gifts for attending. I was lucky enough to have a wonderful friend who could really help me put it together in a cost effective way. Oh and my flowers- because we were on a beautiful tropical rainforest property, on the morning of the wedding, I took our niece for a walk and we picked a really colourful bouquet of flowers, they were beautiful! Cost- a ribbon to hold it all together! You just have to be creative and remember to spend more on the most important things and cut costs on other things.

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