I’m past the whole wedding mania now, but when I was planning it seemed like everything I could find was either “get married in the woods with sticks for rings and eat bark at the reception” or “fly everyone to Dubai and have a seven course meal every day.” I suspect the majority of people are not at either extreme, but it was very, VERY hard to find actual numbers for middle-of-the-road budgets.

I also vote “not heroes,” for what it’s worth

It sounds to me like the author didn’t take the experience lightly and she made a couple of financial EXCEPTIONS with the wedding. Based on this post I don’t see her blowing $2500 at Neiman Marcus because her high school reunion is around the corner and it’s suuuuch and important milestone. So yeah, it’s a lot of money, and I vote “not heroes” but I don’t think there was anything particularly ridiculous about what they did.

Lastly, to the author: your bridesmaids sound awesome.

I was married in the midwest, St. Louis, last year(In February so it was a cheaper time period). We had ~300 guest(I think we had a little less, but we had to pay for 300 since we got two rooms) and the wedding cost about 15k. We were at a nice wedding reception hall and used their base package, only added some time for the open bar(beer, wine, and mixed drinks). We didn’t go crazy on decor, they had a nice decor there with nice center pieces(and who remembers those anyway). Everyone loved the food, the dancing, and the drinks and that is the only thing people really remember from the wedding. We got a photographer that had a track record, but was new to the area so they were starting their business here without a client and referral list(since then they have had probably 10 people choose them because they did our wedding).

If you are looking for cheaper weddings, do it off season.

If I were to miss that for any reason I think I would bitterly regret it.

Seriously? Compromising with a spouse who is in huge debt, isn’t making enough to fund it, and has champagne tastes he can’t afford in no way constitutes an emergency (and if it does, then that bodes ill for marital bliss). Compromise is overrated when it means potentially a long-term path to financial ruin. (Which may happen if they keep compromising by buying things they can’t afford just because he wants something even more expensive! Think of all the money we save by buying the 500K condo instead of the 1.875M house he wanted! It’s a bargain, especially since we were able to put only 3.5% down! By going to Greece instead of England for vacation! We only had to put 3K on the cc rather than 10K!)

Obviously we want an emergency fund that we can use should we have an actual emergency, which is another good reason not to spend on elaborate wants until we can actually *afford* them. I could very easily drop 11K on whatever I wanted right now (want or need) without it making much of a dent in my finances, but that’s because I made choices that meant I wasn’t wasting huge amounts of money on interest payments buying things I couldn’t afford. Like someone said in a previous comment, by not having champagne tastes when one has a beer budget, one can afford champagne later.

Is staff writer a “paid” position? Many inquiring minds would like to know.

Not sure if this is relevant to the conversation, but it is a funny Brit-style take on over-the-top one-upmanship. Oh, watch it anyway.

What I’m hearing is “since it’s not important to me, and taking my husband’s dreams into consideration are not in my plan, no one should ever have different priorities or follow a different path than me.”

Personally, 90% of the articles on this site do not directly apply to me, but I still find them interesting to read. Variety is the spice of life. I can’t imagine a life where everyone follows the exact same path (even if they want the same end).

As for Hubby not wanting to be a litigator and not having a mentor for his “new direction”: the best litigators seldom actually go to court; they know how to NEGOTIATE. Surely he learned that at the BLF, even from his “closet.” He might consider turning that around to being a mediator, while he has some time on his hands. He should take any such course at the best law school in your area; they’re usually one week, at the end of which one has a “certificate.” Mediators are paid IN ADVANCE, with provisions for the session running overtime. Personal bankruptcy is not such a big deal to figure out, but the whole process scares the heck out of potential clients, and the lawyer ALWAYS is paid first. As for contracts and transaction work, ever heard of a “retainer”?

Honey, you may not know about any of this,and I am not saying any of it is EASY. Hubby needs to think outside the box the BLF put him in — waaaay outside.

He is a litigator. He wants to change his practice area (to do personal bankruptcies, contracts, and transaction work instead) but he has to do what pays the bills and it’s hard to transition into a totally new role without someone to train/mentor you. His big struggle with litigation as someone in business for himself is that he charges hourly and can’t always predict how many hours something will take. Then when things take longer than the client wants, they do not want to pay their bill in full. He is trying to focus on client selection at the front end after learning some hard lessons.

Yes, your description of life at BLF is totally accurate. They would pull out a graph at every monthly meeting showing him how much money he was “losing” the law firm. Ugh, don’t get me started on how terrible the corporate culture was there…

I am thrilled to know that you don’t know what “bespoke” means. Shhhh. Don’t tell Hubby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bespoke

It may also be worth clarifying that he didn’t “open an office” in the way a lot of people here seem to assume. He and his partner pay something like $150/mo. for a “shared office space,” that provides them a physical address for business cards and to collect mail, and that will rent rooms to them for a nominal additional fee (like $50) if they have a client meeting. Mostly he works from home in pajamas. He’s probably met a third (or less) of his clients in person. He hasn’t bought new business clothes in YEARS. I don’t even know what bespoke is though I will assume it is a brand.

Ah, our student debt. I hope I get the chance to lay it (and all the other details of our situation) all out for everyone! I did get him to set up a Mint account yesterday (I set up one, too) so we can each log in to the other’s account and see the overview. Exciting progress!

So, back to the $200,000 student loan debt for Honey and Hubby. My guess is that at least 75% of that was for law school. Tell that boy to get off his butt and get real. In addition to the costs of opening a new law office [which I mentioned in a previous post], and reading between the lines about his desire to “upgrade” everything, he probably believes a lawyer who seeks to be instantly successful must Dress For Success. How about that wardrobe, huh? I’m thinking he goes for the high end of men’s clothing, if not for “bespoke” garments.

Did they get a discount? I certainly hope so. Anyone with even a tiny bit of imagination can get a discount on a cruise, wedding or no wedding. “Sales assistant”? SO WHAT? IMO, that would have been a smart move. I see no mention of it.

Did Honey and Hubby have to pay extra for the “venue” on the ship? I haven’t noticed any specific sum for that expense, but I could have missed it, along with perhaps other salient “details” left out of this tale. Like the pre-existing $200,000 in student loan debt. Ooops!

Still not impressed.

To Karen, I’m not married yet but if/when I do, I fully plan to renew my vows every five years in fun and different ways. When I was a child, one of my neighbors did this (a Hawaiian renewal once, Elvis 5 years later) and it always struck me as a wonderful tradition and way to strengthen a marriage. I might not have the means to do everything I want right now… but I can wait 5, 10, 20 years . . .

Anyway, appreciated this article and this author.

1. It’s supposed to be about how to save on a wedding… but it looks like the only way the author actually saved was by having fewer guests than the national average– 30 people rather than 100. Everything else is not actually saving money from the average. She didn’t really get any bargains. Having a small wedding is a great way to save money, but she doesn’t seem to realize that.
2. The author was already in 200K student loan debt. This debt has no collateral (you can’t sell your house to pay some of it off) to back it, and cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. And yes, it sure makes that 11K look small, and as their debt grows, each additional thing they put on plastic is going to look even smaller! Why deny yourself anything? If you want it it must be worthwhile.
3. The author’s husband has a precarious financial future– he left a high-paying job that could have helped to pay down the debt or for paying for the wedding and the trips he wants to take. Instead they have uncertainty.
4. The author has no idea what her husband’s CC interest rates are.
5. The author has no idea how much the interest on this wedding is actually costing her in dollar terms.
6. The author isn’t looking on this as a mistake. She’s looking at it as if she got a great bargain.
7. The author sounds like she’s willing to spend more on a lifestyle that she and her husband can’t really afford (travel) in the name of “compromise”. And fie on all those judgmental people who recommend only buying what you can actually afford. Obviously they don’t know how to live life.

If you really really want something, then you should want it enough to have to make some sacrifices for it, not just put it on plastic. Sure, spend tons of money on your special day, if that’s what you really want but only if you can afford it. If you’re not willing to figure out how to actually afford it other than debt financing (and you have zero plan to pay for that debt financing, and you don’t even know how much the debt is costing you), then you can’t really want it that much.

Most of us would love to throw money we don’t actually have at whatever it is we really want. But not if it means having to pay the piper later on.

Judgmental? Responsible.

“I know the normal recommendation is to stop the e-fund at $1000 if you still are paying off debt…”

*Is* that the normal recommendation? I know Dave Ramsey advises it, but it’s always seemed somewhat nuts to me. (Suze Orman, for instance, puts more emphasis on building the emergency fund first.) Really, is there anyone here for whom $1000 represents even a month’s worth of expenses? I think having at least 3-4 months of an e-fund should be a priority.

So you have student loan debt and car loan debt, and chose to spend $40,000 on one day instead of paying down that debt?… and you are saying you, not the article writer, have money management skills?

My husband and I spent a little under $10k on our wedding and honeymoon at a time in our lives when we could ill afford it (massive student loan and credit card debt). We had intended to put the balance due on our reception on a credit card on our wedding day but the caterer said they’d prefer a check and would wait a week to cash our check until our wedding gift checks cleared. So that’s what we did.

My husband was also the one who wanted the actual reception – if I’d have thought he’d gone for it I’d have eloped, even though I know it would’ve heartbroken so many in our family. In retrospect, I’m very glad we had a reception and spent as much as we did even though we really couldn’t afford it at the time.

Like Honey, I wanted to go to city hall ($50!), but my partner wanted a “real” wedding. And yes, I’m the bride. It’s all about compromise, and while it might be easy to have a decent wedding (as in having enough seating and food for guests, I’m not talking designer anything) for $11k in some areas, it’s nigh impossible in others.

I’m hoping to get married on the beach and then hire a whale watching boat for the reception!