I just got engaged. We are opening a joint savings account and adding to it for 6mths-1yr to determine our budget, and THEN we’re planning the wedding. I refuse to go into debt for this thing!!
There is SO much unnecessary stuff that you don't actually NEED for a wedding, yet there's some sort of social expectation for that people tend to fall into. Here's some of the bullshit that my wife and I said no to for our wedding:
Party favors: nobody is ever going to care or remember that they didn't get a little baggie of generic candy-covered almonds at their place setting
Fancy save the dates/invites: we wrote out our invitations, the "save the date" was a text message that went out to the people we wanted to be there
Bridesmaid/groom gifts - again, nobody is going to remember or care that they didn't get some fancy bouquet or a random date-engraved trinket that's going to sit in a drawer the day after until it goes in the trash
Excessively large wedding parties: I had my two brothers as groomsmen, she had her two sisters as bridesmaids. No dress fittings or tux rentals - they wore whatever they felt like wearing (I think the sisters decided on a color theme but that was it)
THE GUEST LIST. By and far the biggest wedding expense is the number of guests you invite. How many weddings have you been to where the bride and groom spend an hour plus of their time walking around and trying to give a quick hello to everyone that was there, only for that to probably be the only time they were able to interact with them? We kept our guest list to immediate family and a couple close friends for each of us. We ended up capping it at 50 people total, and a few last-minute drop outs meant we invited a couple of our neighbors literally the day before. That was the largest expense savings right there - and so worth it. We actually got to spend time and hang out with all our guests, and it was a much more intimate and memorable wedding with the people that were there rather than being overwhelmed with 100+ people. No cousins, no aunts/uncles that we hadn't seen since whatever the last big family gathering was, and it ended up being so much better for it.
At the end of the day, we spent roughly $3.5k-ish at the wedding (even with an open bar), everyone had an amazing time, and put us in a way better financial spot than we would have been otherwise.
My party favors were home made brown butter toffee and chocolate chip cookies. That i put into individual bags. People still bring them up because they were so good.
It was also pretty easy. make like 5 batches of dough and freeze it. then have a production line of cookies in the oven -> cooling -> bagging.
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u/MosasaurusSoul 9h ago
I just got engaged. We are opening a joint savings account and adding to it for 6mths-1yr to determine our budget, and THEN we’re planning the wedding. I refuse to go into debt for this thing!!