Budget

May 2011

Ask Team Practical: Wedding Planning While in Debt

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 | 97 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 »

Apr 2011

Ask Team Practical: Disappearing Guests and Vendor Expectations

with Alyssa

Ya’ll, it’s Friday. Amazing spring-is-finally-here Friday (we’re having a heat wave in San Francisco, which is so rare here that the whole city practically grinds to a halt and we all eat outdoors nonstop). But that’s not the only reason to rejoice! It’s also Ask Team Practical Friday with Alyssa, and she is rocking it out today with three questions (I love when she does three questions). Plus, I’m answering questions too (and not just by sneaking in sentences when I edit, like I usually do). So let’s get on this.

My wedding is long over, but there’s one thing about the otherwise fantastic day that still bothers me. I briefly saw several people before the ceremony who seemed to disappear before the reception started, and I never had time to chat with them or thank them for coming. When I asked my mother later about one family in particular, she said that they were under the impression that they were only invited to the ceremony. What?!? The ceremony and reception were in the same room, and the invitation said “Reception immediately following.”

I’ve since learned that a number of people left immediately after the ceremony. I didn’t really notice not seeing most of them, but I do remember thinking that there were a lot of empty tables at the reception. I’m totally confused. Did I somehow make a mistake when writing my invitations? Is it common for some guests to leave after the ceremony? Did I just have a really boring reception? I’ve been torturing myself for months with thoughts that my guests think I was rude enough to only invite them to the ceremony. Some of those who left are people I had really hoped to see and celebrate with. Also, we had so much leftover food and cake, which means that we spent far more money than we needed to. I’m hoping that you’ll have some insight into where I went wrong, so that the wedding undergraduates out there can learn from my mistake. Also, I want to finally stop worrying about this. Thanks!

-Worried About A Cold Reception in Kentucky

Dear WAACRIK,

You’re lucky, because you get two answers for your question! One from Meg and one from Alyssa. You win. Maybe because you have a fun sign-off to your letter. Achem (get on that people!)

Alyssa:

Sweetie,

I’m at a loss here. I realize that etiquette rules are not always as clear as they may have once appeared, but “Reception immediately following” is pretty darn clear. I can only think of a couple of reasons for your disappearing guests.

1. Your guests are liar-liar-pants-on-fires. They had other plans that day and are too chicken to tell you or admit it to your mother.

2. Your guests are morons.

To find out, your only recourse would be to actually get ahold of the people who left and ask them what was up. You can either say, ” I didn’t get a chance to see you at my reception, did you have fun?” or “HEY. Why’d you bail on my reception, yo?” But what kind of answer would satisfy you? The kind where they go back in time and go to your wedding reception? So. Right. Maybe don’t ask.

Just remember the good times that you did have. And that you didn’t commit any breach of etiquette or make a mistake. Your guests did come to your ceremony and saw the most important part of a wedding. They missed out on an amazing time and that’s their fault, the losers. And now I’m going to kick this to Meg, because she knows a thing or two about this.

Meg:

My dear WAACRIK,

I’m going to clue you into a closely held secret of wedding planning: some wedding guests are dicks. It has nothing to do with you, or your kick-ass wedding, or the clarity of your invitation. Some people just don’t get that weddings are important, don’t care, and can’t be bothered.

How do I know this? Well. We had some wedding no-shows. Here is the sum up: we had people who skipped the ceremony and just showed for the free food and booze. (Unluckily for them we were taking pictures at the entrance when they walked in, so they had to walk right by us to get in. So, awkward for them, but kind of hilarious for us.) We had people who skipped the whole thing because they “had a day” (seriously). We had people who went to the reception, ate as fast as they could, and then stood up and announced (announced!) that they were leaving. Excellent.

You know what that means? That means some people are *ss-hats. In some cases we learned things about our friendships that we were not sure we wanted to know (which oddly, was ok, because we learned that other friends are so much more awesome than we’d ever imagined). In other cases we learned that some of our friends are sh*tacular at weddings, but are still awesome at being our friends, and we’re ok with that. In some cases we learned who was lacking in social graces. But in no case did we learn that our wedding was boring, or we were bad hosts, or even that we shouldn’t have invited these people. Because with something as big as a wedding (or a family, or a circle of friends), things just go wrong.

But fundamentally? People skipping your reception and making idiotic excuses (or your ceremony, for that matter) doesn’t mean a d*mn thing about you, or how clear you were in your invitations, or how awesome your wedding was. So I absolutely refuse to allow you to spend one more second worrying about that. Go back and look at an awesome wedding picture. Something like this:

{Me dancing at our wedding! By One Love Photo! Forget jerky wedding guests!}

And remember how it felt, and let the rest go. The end.

*************

I am considering asking my caterer if she would be willing to barter her services. Not all of them, just perhaps a reduction in the cost in exchange for free labor on my part. Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Disappearing Guests and Vendor Expectations

Posted in: Ask Team Practical, Budget, Planning, Planning | 266 Comments »

Feb 2011

Wedding Budgets & The APW Book

Hello All!

So now that I’ve FINALLY gotten to tell you that I’m writing the book, I can ask you guys to weigh in on it. Actually, I sort of cheated and did already back here (because I really wanted your input and I couldn’t tell you why), but now we can talk about it for real. Obviously, Team Practical is all over the pages, in spirit and in quotes, giving advice to future brides, but I want more specific input from you guys in some areas.

Like budgets, because budgets are a total b*tch.

Most wedding books give you a break down on what you should spend on budgets (5% on favors? Really?) which are total nonsense, because obviously there are as many ways to do budgets as there are people. That said, I don’t want to stick future brides with a SWAG budget,* so I need to give them some details.

So that’s where you come in. I’m hoping to give four examples of real life budgets in the book, that break roughly along the following lines:

Under $5,000
Around $15,000 in Manhattan
Around $15,000 in Manhattan, Kansas (by which I obviously mean big city and not big city)
Around $25,000

If you’d be willing to share your budget with me, email budget at apracticalwedding dot com, with the rough amount of your budget and the location of the wedding in the email title. If I pick your budget to go in the book, I’ll get back to you with forms to sign, and if I don’t pick your budget (it really is not you, it’s me) then I’ll make out with you on the book tour anyway. Deal? Deal!

And now that we’ve brought it up, let’s dish. What was the best thing you learned about money while planning your wedding? And, rather specifically, what did you learn about who pays? If your parents helped pay, how did that work? If you paid for all of it, how did that work? What advice would you pass on? Because for serious, I’m going to use whatever you say to help me figure out exactly what needs to go in this chapter, which pretty much means you’re all in the Library of Congress. But we knew that when I got the book deal, right?

Ok, and now I’m all excited about the book! And you about guys!

Wiggle!

Meg

*To quote the excellent Sarah: “SWAG = seriously wild a** guess. I think that what it’s called when you Google ‘how much does a DJ cost?’ ‘how much does a live band cost?’”

Posted in: Budget | 185 Comments »

Jan 2011

Wedding Graduates: Cindy & Matt

Later this week, we thought we’d dive into the how-to-pick-a-date wedding dilemma. But to get started, we thought we’d talk about the ways that an off-season wedding can be rad. One of the most fantastic ways to not sell the family farm to have a wedding is, of course, to pick a slightly less popular time for your wedding. It turns out that those times can have unexpected gifts. I’ve written about the wonderful things about having a morning wedding, and today Cindy is here to write about the joys of the winter wedding. Both David and I have parents with anniversaries in December, and our families are huge fans of the winter wedding (my mom will tell you, “The church was still decorated for Christmas. Amazing decorations for free! Do it!”) So I’m thrilled that Cindy is here to share her winter-wedding-empowerment. You’ll remember her from her post about how you WILL remember your wedding, her inspiring Reclaiming Wife, and her post about choosing to stay mostly at home. And now she’s here, doing winter weddings. Here we go:

I always pictured myself an autumn bride, but, because of the nature of Matt’s work (he owns a lighting production company), we had two months to choose from: August or January. I chose January because I did not want to be a sweaty bride, and it turned out to be so wildly awesome, I’m glad it ended up happening this way!

We figured this timing would work great because January is typically a slow season in the industry but little did we know the political event of the century and the Ravens/Steelers championship game would be happening that very same weekend. Oh, and we’d have a cold snap with temperatures down in the single digits.

Oh well, the show must go on!

Matt spent the entire week before our wedding working 16-hour days getting shows ready for inaugural events. Then, we found out the NFL Eastern conference championship game (whatever you call it) was on our wedding day and our hometown was in it! Oh, and then Matt got sick the day of our rehearsal dinner because he was overworked and was sick on the day of our wedding! Did he care? Nope. He put on his tux and met me at the altar sucking on a Ricola.

Lesson learned? Plan all you want, right down to the tiniest detail thinking you’ve got it in the clear but something will always go a little awry. Does it matter? H*ll no, because your friends and family love you and they will BE THERE.

Your overworked, sick fiance? He will BE THERE, and you’ll get married and it will be awesome.

So, with that little bit of background, here are some major bonuses for winter weddings:

Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Cindy & Matt

Posted in: Budget, Planning, Planning, Wedding Graduates | 45 Comments »

Sep 2010

APW Wedding Budgets – Cold Hard Numbers

Ok. I’m going to do something exciting and terrifying today. We’re going to talk about money, specifically wedding budgets. I know! I’ve been avoiding the topic of real life wedding budgets with actual numbers for, ohhhh, two and a half years now. But I got this comment on Monday, after I said that while APW-ers could talk about parenting and sex without batting an eye or raising a voice, but we’d never been able to discuss wedding budgets calmly:

I know what you mean… the topic of money comes up and everybody starts feeling bad about themselves for one reason or another… but, I wish there was a way for us to become good enough listeners to have discussions about money without freaking out because I know that for me, money was the biggest stressor when planning our wedding. I think that one of the reasons I was so stressed was that I felt completely in the dark. The only people who talked about money and weddings online were people who were spending SO MUCH MONEY and people who were devoted to spending nothing at all. I feel like the majority of us, folks who aren’t millionaires, but do plan to spend more dough on our wedding than we’ve spent on almost anything before (whether that amount is 5k or 50k) were left to figure it all out for ourselves.

Reading the discussions in APW comment threads has really helped me to step out of my own shoes and see lots of different things from other people’s perspectives and I wonder if we’re not incapable of doing the same thing when it comes to money (although I know how hard that would be). I know it would have helped me.

And, well, I just couldn’t not take on the challenge. I love a challenge. It’s a character flaw.

So this is how we’re going to do this. We’re going to lay out cold, hard wedding numbers…. anonymously. You don’t have to be anonymous, but I’d encourage you to be, and here is why: People are more honest about money when they are anonymous. When you’re anonymous, you tend to not try to brag about how much you spent, or how little you spent, or how smartly you spent. And that kind of bragging and reverse bragging is what takes wedding budget conversations down. Plus, when no one knows who you are, you’re less likely to get in a fight with someone about how bad you think their spending choices were. As if you should be judging anyway, achem. Continue reading APW Wedding Budgets – Cold Hard Numbers

Posted in: Ask Meg, Budget, Meg's Thoughts, Weddings | 490 Comments »