Perfect doesn’t necessarily mean expensive, does it?

Those of you in the groomspace who haven’t started looking into finances when it comes to “the big day” have probably heard all the hubbub about what costs what, how long in advance you have to do this, and so on, already. Those of you who’ve been working on planning already are dead-on familiar with how much some things cost and the timing surrounding vendors and whatnot, and will hopefully nod your head at what I’m about to get into here.

Just because you and your spouse-to-be want to have a “perfect” or “awesome” or “amazing” wedding doesn’t mean you HAVE to spend upwards of $30,000, it just means on average that’s what they’re going for these days. Keep in mind there’s wanting to spend big bucks on things and then there’s having to do so. Sure, having a huge family on both sides of the aisle might require a huge reception hall and amount of food. Maybe a family tradition is that the to-be-betrothed pays for the travel for some part of one side or another or the wedding party’s formalwear. But that doesn’t mean that you’re beholden to spending a certain amount just because “everyone else is.” This is probably a spot where your mom was right in saying “if they jumped off a bridge, would you do it?”

Recently, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer carried a guest column by Anthony B. Robinson about the pricetags on today’s weddings and how they came to be. I won’t get into the religion vs. big business discussion, as Robinson does a good job of explaining that, but I will say that people definitely fail to keep in mind that this is a celebration of their marriage, not a celebration of what other people want to think about their marriage - does that make sense?

Yesterday, my fiancee and I were driving in the area where we booked our reception, and I was asking about why the larger, more expensive banquet facility just down the road was booked much further out than the perfectly awesome (and yes, I’m biased) place that we booked ours at. It should be noted that the place we’ll be having our reception is a pretty well-to-do restaurant, overlooking both a river and the Atlantic Ocean, with fantastic food and great service. It doesn’t pack in hold quite as many people for a reception or other event, but the food is largely exactly the same food you’d be able to order off the lunch and dinner menu in the restaurant itself, and the quality is exactly the same. To boot, it’s anywhere from $20-$50 / person less than the hall was, for similar meal options. Why is that?

Did we make our choice based on the pricing? It certainly factored in, but all in all I think we liked the restaurant choice better because it fit our interests and the vibe we wanted to share with our guests. Could we have just as easily gone with the banquet hall, and had a fantastic wedding? Absolutely. The trick here is that we went with what we thought was a good idea, factored in cost and took the monies we would have spent on food & drink at this place and are able to parlay it into something else we mightn’t have been able to offer if we had gone with the other choice.

Think of it like debt reduction, except your “debt” in this case is the ballpark area you want to be for your overall spending. A wise person who helped me with a plan to get me out of the debt hole I racked up while in college showed me how making x in payments per month to y debts would then be x in payments to y-1 once one was paid off, and so on. What am I saying? I’m staying that you should truly try and stay on a budget, whatever that number is. If you think that your budget is well under what “averages” are in your area, then taking some of those dollars and putting them towards a wedding planner, even if only for budgetary and guideline assistance in the interest of keeping you on track might be a wise decision. We’ll be able to have our wedding - at least based on where our current budget sits given employment, debt, and other concerns - at a few thousand dollars under the average for our state, which frankly I’m thrilled about.

This isn’t at all to say that you won’t get into a scrum about who has to cut how many people from the guest list, or +1s, or the transportation for the wedding party, or the honeymoon. The trick is figuring out what you’re comfortable with beforehand, and what you actually want vs. what someone at a bridal event (it should be noted that many are called “bridal” events, by the way) is trying to sell you. If someone’s parents are requiring a certain thing or a certain guest list or something else, then it’s not unreasonable, especially if the wedding isn’t being funded by that party, to ask for some middle ground or assistance elsewhere. As a for instance, we’ll be having a significant number of people coming in from halfway across the country, which is awesome, and we’d really like to make sure they’re not bored out of their minds for a few days when not at the wedding, and we’ve planned a dinner with most of that group for the night before our wedding. How are we fitting it in? Well, it’s going to be an outdoor (no rain!) event at my mom & stepfather’s house that we’ll either cater ourselves or just hook up with all the grills in the neighbors’ yards, and be done with it. Instead of shelling out thousands more dollars to get a hall for the night and formal catering or something like that, we’re doing some of it ourselves and people were more than happy to go along with it for the sake of having a great event.

The point is, don’t buy into every little thing you see just because you can, only to groan about the amount of money on your credit card afterwards. Pick a priority or two. If the bride wants to have a killer dress that’s out of the original budget - go for it, just adapt elsewhere. If the groom wants to buy his wedding party some amazing sports tickets as a “thank you” and it’s beyond the original budget, then that’s great too - but find a spot to make that work, and do things such as this to make the wedding yours, not the wedding that someone else told you that you were supposed to have.

[photo credit: Gracey Stinson]