Budget

Feb 2012

How do I stop stressing out about where all of my out-of-town friends are going to stay for my wedding? I live in a studio apartment with my fiancé, and while we are very comfortable, we can fit about one guest, and I really don't want to have anyone on the floor the week of our wedding. All of my bridesmaids and most of my friends (we are in our early twenties so all of our friends are dealing with student loan debt and not-awesome jobs) are flying in. I wish, oh how I wish, I could afford to rent a house for them to all crash in, or have them stay at my place, but I can't. I know it will be expensive for them to get hotel rooms and I keep stressing about it. How do I stop feeling like this is my burden?

~ Sara Judy

Oh, Sara Judy, I know you, and you are the best kind of friend. You always have our favorite snacks available when we visit, you let us have the window seat on the bus and you always know when we're having a bad day, don't you? You are a lovely lovely person. And I say this because I'm about to yell at you for forgetting a basic APW core belief—"Your wedding is not an imposition."

Your friends are lovely people also, which is why you invited them. They are also grown folks (even if they are young grown folks) and can handle their accommodations themselves. They are coming because they want to come to your wedding, not because the trip is free. You will have enough to do without entertaining guests you are not prepared for, so invite them and then move on to other things. You can be helpful by reserving a block of rooms at a cheaper rate at a nearby hotel (you may be required to give a credit card to hold them, but you should NEVER be charged for this) or suggesting mutual friends' couches they can surf on, but in the end, it is your friends' duty to figure our their own accommodations. Think about it! They go places all the time without a block of rooms to help them out. They use Trip Advisor! They use Airbnb. Block of rooms or not, they are going to be just fine (and if they won't be fine, they don't have to come).

Of course, I'm assuming your stress is self-inflicted. Now if the stress is coming from the friends in the form of "Oh, I don't know if I can AFFORD it, WHERE will I stay?!?" comments, well that's terrible and they should be ashamed. But my advice is still the same. If they can't come because they have nowhere to stay, that's very sad, but tell them you understand. Sometimes such comments are sneaky sneakerson ways of getting a free ride; when faced with empathy but little else, you may be surprised how fast they'll find a place to stay.

P.S. Under no circumstances should someone sleep on your floor during your wedding. Not to be obvious, but for god's sake, weddings are for getting laid. Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Accomodating Guests

Posted in: Ask Team Practical, Budget, Friends & Relations, Registries | 103 Comments »

Nov 2011

APW Sanity Pledge & Reverse Sanity Pledge

Tomorrow we're going to talk a bit about the APW Vendor Directory, which has been growing like a (super awesome) weed. In getting that ready, I realized that I’d never taken time out to talk to you guys about the APW Sanity Pledge that all APW advertisers have to take, and why we created it. The APW Sanity pledge is about vendors promising to treat clients like people and not walking dollar signs, and it’s about vendors respecting your wedding for exactly what it is, not what anyone else thinks it should be. But today we decided to kick it up a notch, and I asked Elizabeth of Lowe House Events (along with all of the APW Sponsors) to help us create a Reverse Sanity Pledge, detailing how you guys can continue to change the wedding industry by being awesome clients. And let me be clear, APW-ers are famous for being The Most Awesome Clients, and we want that to continue to flourish.

This week, we've talked a fair amount about the way the Wedding Industry is problematic. We've talked about the pressure to Buy All The Things, and a call from a well known person in the wedding industry for wedding blogs to stop focusing so damn much on The Stuff and instead focus on the reason you have a wedding in the first place: two amazing people joining their lives.

APW was built on the idea that a wedding is two people committing their lives to each other, and it doesn't have to cost a cent (or, a cent over the cost of a marriage license, if that's in the cards for you). But APW was also built on the idea that most of us are spending some money on our wedding, and we should use that money to be conscious consumers. That how we spend our money is more important than how much. That we should use our dollars to be LGBTQ allies. That one of the simplest and most powerful ways we can change the world is by voting with our money.

So. In an effort to help you be the change, we made an APW sanity pledge that every single person who advertises with us has to sign. That means when you use your dollars to book an APW vendor, you're voting for a non-manipulative, affirming, LGTBQ friendly version of the industry. And not only do our advertisers have to sign it, but it's legally binding. So if you flag them as being in violation of the pledge, we can pull their advertising. We're hoping it changes this corner of the wedding industry bit by bit.

All APW-approved vendors, agree that:

... A wedding is an awesome party, but it’s the marriage that really matters.

... It takes two people to get married. It’s not all about the bride (and sometimes there isn’t a bride to begin with).

... We support LGBTQ couples\' right to marry, and we are delighted to work with them.

... We don't charge a premium just because we heard the word "wedding."

... We will be upfront and fair about our pricing. We won't surprise you with a secret fee because you want frosting on the cake, not just the cake.

... You don't have to have cake at your wedding.

... However you decided to tie the knot, we’re on your team.

... Weddings come in all different shapes/sizes/colors/budgets/etc., but as long as you two end up married to each other, it will have been a successful wedding.

****

But I've been thinking about it, and I decided that if APW sponsors are committing to being awesome vendors, it's equally important that APW readers re-commit to continue being the worlds most awesome clients. (Seriously, you guys are absolutely famous for being the best clients in the world of weddings.) So I did some talking with sponsors about the problems they have with (non-APW) clients, as small independent business owners. I was slightly shocked by some of the stories I heard. Because here is the thing: we all know there is a universe of people in the wedding industry that use the word "wedding" as an excuse to behave like total jackasses (that's a technical term, there). But I was scandalized to learn that there are clients who use the word wedding to behave badly. I heard stories from photographers of people cold calling them and saying, "I know you're over-priced because it's a wedding, so I want 75% off." And the photographers thinking, "Lady, I've got to feed my kid this month but thank you." So, I decided it was time for us to come up with a reader pledge, and with help from Lowe House Events, did just that. Continue reading APW Sanity Pledge & Reverse Sanity Pledge

Posted in: Budget, Planning, Planning | 68 Comments »

Oct 2011

You Don’t Have To Buy All The Things

I got this excellent email from the now happily married Jessica two weeks ago. I couldn't let such a good thank you note to all of you, about what we crack on about every day, lie unpublished. So, All The Things, consider yourself on notice:

My wedding is a week from today. I was running around today feeling consumed by WIC-promoted Consumerism... thinking, Oh My God, I need to buy a new dress for my rehearsal dinner and new shoes and we should buy everyone in the wedding party more stuff to thank them and what about a cute hanger, don't I need a cute hanger for my dress?! And, and, and....

Anyway, all of a sudden I had a moment of clarity. I turned to my fiancé, who was looking (rightfully) frightened, god bless him, and said, "We don't need All The Things." We already have All The Things that matter.

We hugged and went home. We're about to enjoy a nice bottle of wine.

All in all, my fiancé, our bank account, and I thank you, Team Practical.

P.S. When I emailed Jessica to ask if her wedding survived no cute hanger, she said, "It sure did. As did the filthy dress (thanks to amazing second line through NOLA's French quarter). It's funny how the joy is the only detail that matters..." Wedding Graduate post coming soon.

Photo from the APW Flickr stream by Emily Takes Photos

Posted in: Budget, Meg's Thoughts, Sass, Weddings | 71 Comments »

Oct 2011

Price Is Not The Same As Value

Last month, we announced Up Up Creative's crazy, inspiring name-your-price experiment on paper goods for the month of September. If you didn't watch the video Julie put together about the project, you should go do that now. It's inspiring and thought provoking. In the many comments on that post, you asked her to report back on what happened during the project, and what she learned. The result is today's post. It's more philosophical than factual, and it contains a ton of business lessons and career lessons. It spoke to me about how sometimes flying in the face of what's expected can really piss people off, but how it's usually worth it. Plus, it's accompanied by pictures from Julie's business sketchbook (I know, rad).

There's sort of a business adage (adage? rule of thumb? bit of advice? moral? truism?) that says you should price for the customer you want. If you want a high-end customer, you need a high-end price. If you want a bargain shopper, you need a bargain price.

I actually just gave this advice to two separate individuals in the last 48 hours.

At some point early on in this experiment, it occurred to me that at least in part, my goal for this experiment was to do this the other way around: find the customer I wanted and then let that customer set the price. And who was that customer? She was the kind of person who believes in the power of her voice and her dollar; the sort of person who would think carefully before naming a price. She was thoughtful, maybe a little bit rebellious.

I agonized over my so-called pitch. I worked so hard on the video, on the FAQs. I was selective in which blogs I contacted. I wanted to make this an experiment about ideas more than it was an experiment about how many customers I could bring through the door. I wanted to focus on finding the right name-your-price customers.

After all, it's just me here. Me and an ex-intern (back to school in September) and a very pregnant sister and a husband neck-deep in prosecuting bad guys. And two young kids in just-part-time daycare. So it's not like I wanted an onslaught. But I did want participation. I told Meg that my biggest fear was that no one would participate.

And thankfully, people did. In the end there were 33 orders.

The money stuff you can read about here. It was better than I feared, about as I expected, and as awesome as I'd hoped. In the end it even put some money in the coffers, but at the expense of a lot of my time. Put another way, it covered my raw materials but I was paid only part of my hourly rate for all the work.

And ohdeargod was it emotional. I cried. I did Meg Ryan-inspired full-body high-fives. I soared, I despaired. One night I considered taking the whole thing down after a customer admitted she was feeling tortured by having to name a price for my value. I suddenly felt so mean.

So yeah, it's not sustainable in its current state. It requires too many hours for too few dollars. It made people happy, but it also made them uncomfortable, and not always in that good-you're-growing way. Plus it's fair to say, I think, that it pissed off its fair share of people in the stationery industry (although I have to say that appeals to the Mary Mary (Quite Contrary) in me just a bit).

But I'm glad to have done it, and I'd do it all over again. Continue reading Price Is Not The Same As Value

Posted in: Budget | 52 Comments »

May 2011

Ask Team Practical: Wedding Planning While in Debt

with Alyssa

It's Friday, which means Ask Team Practical with Alyssa! Wheee! Today we're talking about budgets and weddings. Back at the beginning, the APW tagline was "Creative. Thrifty. Sane." And we spent a whole lot of time talking about wedding budgets. But these days, we talk more about emotion, and less about the emotion of wanting to gouge your eyes out while paying for your wedding. So, I'm thrilled to dive back into budget talk today, after a week of talking about low key weddings, and surviving unemployment. Plus, Alyssa is dishing on surviving her wedding planning with a lot of debt, which is a story she's never told before.

For someone who’s not *quite* engaged yet, I’ve been doing a lot of wedding planning these days. Without a ring on my finger, my Bearded Giant and I have already chosen a date, venue and our attendants. We’re looking forward to putting together a DIY wedding for around $7000. Thankfully, my parents are going to help chip in.

In the same vein of budgeting and money, I’m going into this marriage with quite a bit of credit card debt. (My 20s were not kind to me. Living in a big city, working for a nonprofit, and making nothing kicked my butt. I also played really hard…and accrued debt.)

Do people pay for weddings when they still have credit card debt? Am I the only one? Is it ridiculous of me to put money toward something other than my debt? I’m feeling conflicted and embarrassed by my debt, which is nothing new, but I need some help sorting this out in my head.

Considering Aborting Singlehood, Help

{Picture via the excellent Indexed. We used this on a post way back here....}

CASH, honey, you are not alone. Many, many people plan weddings while still in debt. I'd even venture to say that most people who are planning a wedding have a debt of some kind already. But whether you should plan a wedding while in debt? That's a horse of a different color.

I have to mention this, even though I'm not sure it applies to your situation. Your partner knows about your debt, right?? Both you and your partner deserve to enter your marriage with your eyes wide open and that means disclosing all the not so fun stuff. Hiding debt makes it so much worse and will ruin a relationship. Okay? Okay. (For more on marriage and finances, read this post and this post.)

What you should do is what's best for you, your partner and your family. (As always.) Can you plan a wedding while still maintaining your current financial situation AND continuing to pay off your debt? If paying for all the things that come with a wedding will cause you to cut costs to a point that is uncomfortable, you might want to consider other options. Because let me be clear: here at APW, we think that anyone with any amount of money can get married. But if planning a wedding now will cause you to do without some important element to your ceremony or reception that breaks your heart a little, you might want to consider waiting. If you are considering planning a wedding and using the money you're paying towards your debt (or opening another credit line) then we will be in a serious fight.

I'm gonna say it again - You should NOT go into debt just for your wedding. Nor should you go into further debt. It is bad news bears in so many ways, I can't even tell you... You might have a stunning wedding, but when your credit score keeps you from being able to secure an important loan, that perfect wedding is going to look mighty bad in hindsight. Don't do that to your wedding, it's not nice.

However, a debt-free wedding is part of how things will work when I am czarina of the world, along with mandatory 2pm Twizzler breaks and the banning of jeggings. Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Wedding Planning While in Debt

Posted in: Ask Team Practical, Budget | 96 Comments »

Apr 2011

Ask Team Practical: Family Financial Contributions

with Alyssa

Y'all, it's Friday! Hurrah! And that means it's time for Ask Team Practical with Alyssa. Today we're talking about a tough question: what do you do if your parents want to contribute to your wedding, but aren't really in a position to do so? For me this is a question about wedding budgets, but it's also a question about adulthood. What do you do when you have to parent your parents? How do you tell your parents no - and not, "No, I don't agree with you," but "No, you can't help me out in that way, because I care about you, and that's not the best choice for you." There are no easy answers, but this is Alyssa, so we do get wisdom like, "letting their pride write checks that their butt can't cash." So happy Friday, and amen to that.

My wedding is next summer in my hometown in Florida. My fellow and I live in NYC, both in graduate school, and both broke in that hopeful, scraping-by way that as only graduate students can be. Sure, it would make sense to wait a year and make some money and then get married, but we've been waiting and we are ready to be married. [Editor's note: f*ck yes!] His family has given us a small wedding fund and we are creative, penny-saving folks so we are making it work with that money. Sure, doing it on a budget is sometimes stressful, especially from this far away, but that's cool, we all know that.

The problem is my family. They are the only ones living in the city where we are having the wedding and they are outrageously good at being terrible with money. They have a long history of painful money problems, including home foreclosure, borrowing tons of money, bankruptcy, and (in the last few months) job loss. We have made it clear that we are aware that they won't be able to help, but they continue to make promises of the "oh we'll make ____ work" variety, and I know, from them, these sort of things can unravel a lovely time. They are from the South, and feel on some level that they "owe" their daughter a wedding. I'm a big girl, and don't care if they can't give any time or money, but find myself sensitive to what will undoubtedly be their broken promises when I try and give them some way to help. While one side of the family is purchasing week-long beach castles, I worry that the other won't even come through with the three fans they have promised to rent.

So how to include all family members, when money is a ridiculously touchy subject, when one side has far more than the other, and when I am far more sensitive about my parents money problems than I should be at this point in life?

~Brittany

This is very tough. Your parents' hearts are in the right place, but as you said, they're gonna have trouble with the follow-through. This is another example of an area in which weddings do not change things; just because their daughter is getting married doesn't mean that your parents suddenly get better at handling their finances.

Let's start with finances in general. Have you had a serious talk with your family on what they are going to contribute? Families are notorious for being vague, they like to say things like, "Oh, we can pay for X. As long as it doesn't cost too much..." Anyone dealing with familial financial contributions need to nail down what exactly that "too much" is. Are they offering to pay for specific things, no matter the cost, or are they giving you a check? Will they contribute as the process goes along, or are you paying out of pocket and they're reimbursing you later? It's a tough discussion, but it needs to happen so that they are not saddled with a large bill they didn't expect and you are not left scrambling to find another vendor when they don't pay for your first one. Iron out numbers, how they want to pay, and when they will be paying.

Since you know there will be differences in the amounts that both sides contribute, keep those discussions private. If anyone asks, your parents contributed as much as they could and as much as you were comfortable with, and that's that. Letting either side know the details of the contribution is just going to set the stage for bad feelings; your family will be sad they couldn't help more and his family might be resentful that they are bearing the bulk of the budget.

As far as your parents' contributions, you've known they probably won't be able to help, and beyond that you've listed a lot of reasons that it is better that they don't. So, game plan! Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Family Financial Contributions

Posted in: Ask Team Practical, Budget, Friends & Relations, The Hard Stuff | 75 Comments »