As a long time reader of GRS, I have a lot of respect for the opinions offered by people in comments and forums. I'd love some advice about how to divert our money to pay for a wedding while working toward our financial goals of paying off our cars and student loans and adding to retirement savings. I currently max out my 401(k) contributions and have ~$3000 in an emergency fund. My main expenses are rent ($1200), car payment ($300 plus at least $50 over payment), and student loans ($325). My fiance has a mortgage, car payments, student loans and contributes enough to his 401(k) to get the company match.

How much to plan to waste..er...spend on your wedding?

Kate

Here is an article I wrote for GRS on how we planned our wedding

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/11/08/beating-the-high-cost-of-weddings-how-we-did-it-and-how-you-can-too/

That was a nice article, JerichoHill.

I think you need to figure out what your budget is for the wedding and then just stick to it. Then put away each month toward your wedding in a wedding fund. I wouldn't take any money out of your emergency fund or divert funds from retirement for your wedding. It should be a separate savings source. There are many books and online resources to have a wedding on a budget. Good luck!

Why post this with the added sarcasm? It doesn't contribute to the dialogue.

OP: We syphoned everything from our discretionary spending and did not diverge from our financial goals and retirement contributions. When we saved half of the budged amount, I obtained a loan for the remaining half from my siblings, and repaid that we cash gifts from relatives.

In terms of honeymooning, there are websites out there that allow you to register where guests can contribute/purchase trips/outings in lieu of wedding gifts. Since your gf already has her own home, this will greatly reduce unnecessary purchases by your guests. I mean, you don't really need a new stainless steel toaster.

Good luck, let me know if you need me to dig up the honeymooning stuff.

There are many ideas on the net for keeping costs low. You just need to decide which areas are important enough to you & your fiance to spend on. What will make the day most memorable for you?

There is no appropriate dollar amount for a wedding. It is what you can afford.

I am also getting married this summer, but our situation is a little different. We do not have a mortgage right now and now other debts only debt is we both have student loans. We stopped contributing to our investment accounts last summer, not because of the markets but we just wanted to make sure we have enough for the wedding.

I have a lot of experience when it comes to wedding and event organizing so we estimated some costs and set a budget and agreed to stick to it no matter what. We decided to keep the wedding at a low cost and were able to get some very good deals. We save about $1200/month towards our wedding budget and are almost there, we stopped spending money when going out and saved pretty much everything else.
We do not want to get into any kind of debt for the wedding, and we got lucky with pulling money from the markets last summer.

Thanks to everyone for the tips so far. We haven't set a budget or really started to plan yet since we only recently got engaged. We'll start to work that out this summer when we can sit down with both sets of parents and find out what expectations they have. Right now, we're thinking that we'll spend around $15,000 of our money with our parents chipping in for things that are important to them. Even though we haven't started the planning yet, I wanted to get the wedding savings going because every little bit will help!

Easiest ways to save money on a wedding:

* Limit the guest list. A large guest list means larger hall, more table and chair rentals, more centerpieces, more food, more favors, more waitstaff, more alcohol. We had a FABULOUS wedding with 76 people.

* Limit the attendants. We had one each, with a reader. Much easier and less stressful to coordinate opinions.

* Schedule for a weekday, if at all possible. Our dating and engagement anniversary was Nov. 3rd. We got married on Nov. 3rd. It was a Monday. We got the hall ALL day, for the half the cost of what was normally a 4 hour reservation.

* Find a caterer who will allow you to provide the alcohol. And limit it. We served sparkling wine only - no open bar. So no bartender cost either.

* Hire a DJ with a DO NOT PLAY list, rather than a band.

* Have the wedding and the reception in the same place.

Congratulations, and enjoy the planning. Our engagement year was awesome, fun, and culminated in one of my favorite weddings ever.

Sandi

Weekday may not always work the best, but you could try a sunday long weekend. Our is on Sun. Aug 2nd its a holiday on monday so it's pretty much like a saturday it reduced our costs by 45%.

Yes DJ's are great, we have both band and DJ. Parents wanted live band we wanted DJ for variety, but the DJ is my cousin so it's free

And that did?

I'm of the opinion that most people spend way too much money on weddings. Money that is better spent on the marriage. It's really not that important. OP may be perfectly reasonable, thus I asked how much they wanted to spend. If it was obscene considering their existing debt load, I think that would color the advice given. More information helps the community help the poster.

There have been a lot of posts at queercents about cheap weddings lately.
http://www.queercents.com/category/mone ... tionships/

I'm considering backing off my 401(k) contributions to just enough to get the company match and saving the rest to pay for our wedding. This would set me back about a year in my retirement savings, but it's much better than going into debt to pay for the wedding. I'm not sure we'd be able to save enough by just cutting back on our normal expenses. Any thoughts?

A wedding is one day. Retirement is 20 years or more. I wouldn't forsake retirement contributions to pay for the wedding, but that is just me.