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Question:
I'm trying to see if it is at all possible to do even a little wedding with the money we have (not much at all..seriously).
So, how much money did you have saved when you started planning? or if it makes it any easier, what percentage of your "wedding budget" did you have in the bank when you started planning.
I feel like I would be comfortable if we had it all there...but that is definitely not gonna happen. We only have about 1/3 maybe right now...but I'm not even working, so I'm taking money out of that account all the time :(
Me personally? Zip. Nada. My parents are footing the bill for the whole thing.
I wish we, as a couple, would/had started a POST wedding fund/savings.
We had zero too. His parents chipped in 25%, my parents put in another 25% and FI and I saved the remaining 50% during our engagement - but we had 14 months to save and one year before the wedding I got a new job with a raise that made saving really easy.
We had zero at the beginning, but we were also planning on a 2+ year engagement. Figured out what we were getting from my parents and his parents and worked on saving the rest. We'll need to save about $10K by the spring to cover everything.
We had nothing to start with, but we started saving after a few months of back and forth on what we would do, and both MIL's have given some money, but not much. We have a budget of $5k, and believe me, it can be done. You can save that amount and you can throw a gorgeous wedding with it. I think that the crafty, lower budget weddings in the blogs are the prettiest, most sincere weddings.
We had... oh let's see here... Zero dollars... and zero cents. 
I just bought stuff when we got paid. In the end we spent a total of about $1500, and had no debt or long-term savings spent on anything. I feel great about that.
yeah...we haven't set a budget really, and dont have a date, just because of the situation we're in.
but in reality, we'll probably have a budget of 8k or so..do something really small (church ceremony, private dinner with just our familes) I still want to save a good amount of money, so that we can get a nice photographer - really important to me, have a really delicious meal, get a nice dress, and stuff
maryjane...your wedding looked lovely...i was definitely following your posts!
$0!
I've got a little saved and he does too. We're fine w/everything as of now. We're having a small yet elegant affair!
haha we have nothing. But, the church is free b/c I'm a member, the reception site/catering is pretty cheap, & the photographer's going to be bartering w/ the FI-he'll do construction work on her studio & she'll do our photos. we'll hopefully be under 10k. I'll be doing lots of DIY projects and hopefully finding good deals on things.
Saving was a big reason on why he waited to propose.
I have 8K and FI has 15K we have both been working full-time for the past 3 years (him longer). His will be going to a downpayment/wedding and mine will be for wedding/keep saving. Both of our parents are helping out with wedding costs and we are saving on a couple wedding things already - Uncle is photographer..as a gift! yay! Church is free, borrowing vases for centerpieces, invatations are being made and printed by the graphic designer at my work for only the cost of paper.
We have been blessed :)
well...sorry we're all at 0, but its comforting to know that you dont have to have it all upfront
we had all of it, and then we bought a house...so it dwindled a bit after that. :)
When he is done buying my ring, he will have $0 in the bank (or, close to it heh). I have about $20,000ish in savings, but I want to keep $10,000 at least in savings as an emergency fund that I don't touch, and we're planning to buy a house in March (using the other 10 as an admittedly small downpayment). So.... for the wedding? Nothing really. But, if need to put deposits down or something I have cash on hand to do it then I just need to pay it back to the house fund. Hopefully once he pops the question we can start a separate wedding account. I am hoping to keep our wedding under 10K at most, and we'll probably be married in about a year. Oy money.
We had NADA saved up at the start of the wedding planning process. By the time the wedding came around we had about $8K. That was the most we ever saved as a couple. It took dedication but well worth it!
I had $10K saved when I started because I knew neither of our parents would be able to contribute a lot and I knew I wanted a bigish wedding. My mom gave us $8K his parents $2K and the other $23K we are saving as a couple during our engagement.
Zero! I started budgeting for our wedding when we got engaged and had to cut back on some stuff we love to do to maximize our savings. I'm hoping that on the day we get married, it will have been worth all this restraint!
Um we really don't have anything saved and didn't then which is why we are working off a TINY budget. Its what we can manage to spend here and there with our pay. To be honest we would have to wait longer to save up first and well I want to be married more than I want a wedding...so I think its okay we aren't spending that much and we didn't save for it. Not to mention the fact that its really difficult to save when one of us is in college (since they make you practically spend all of your savings before they give you aid) and the other just started working (a job unrelated to his education and low wage because he couldn't find anything else).
I didn't have anything saved specifically for the wedding either. I maybe used $500 from my bank account and then started saving the rest after the engagement. But my parents paid for about 75% of the wedding.
Zero here too! My parents are paying for a lot of the wedding/reception and his parents are paying for most of the Blessing/reception two weeks later so we're going to have to swing a few grand for things like Inviations x2/Photographer x2/Florist x2/Videographer (if we do one)/Rings/anything else miscellaneous and we're going to manage that stuff together.
We had savings but I always thought of our savings as our 'condo fund'. I would've been sick if I used our condo savings all on the wedding. So we basically just budgeted and saved this year so we wouldn't have to touch our condo fund that much.
I actually had $20K saved, but that's only because I was working abroad in a developing country and getting my housing and meals paid for in addition to my salary. I literally had no expenses except buying my airplane tickets home to see my fiance once every two months.
When we got engaged M had about 15% saved of our portion of our total projected wedding budget. We will be contributing 20% for our wedding, our parents the rest of the 80%. The rest of the money we save is going towards the home we're buying and hopefully will be closing on next month and for our emergency fund!
Nothing either :(
His parents are paying for the bulk of it, aka the reception and my parents will pay for the other cool stuff like photos, video, dress, decorations, etc...
If we need more money, I just graduated and starting working, so Im saving too. Our parents want us to keep our money though, since he's still in a PhD program and we have a few years until we are BOTH working.
We had not saved anything to start. We are planning a year engagement and a wedding budget of apx. $7,000. So we are saving $600/month ($300-each) to comfortably reach this goal. Granted, this is for a relatively simple/small wedding, but its going really well so far.
We had $1,800.00 saved. I had a feeling it was coming, so we started saving for the wedding before the proposal. We also are havign a 2 year engagement so we have time to save for everything.
I didn't have anything saved-I didn't think to save for it b/c I was surprised by my proposal. (I was the only one apparently :-)) That said, we are getting $$ from both sides and saving money during this 9 month engagement. We have made quite a few cutbacks budget-wise to save money. We are probably going to end up with a little debt, but not too worried about it.
I'm a huge saver & have always been that way. So I had the entire amount in my savings when my FI proposed. We decided to split the cost of the wedding and then I'll probably pay for most of our honeymoon.
We're both pretty frugal and save, so we had some saved up when we were first engaged, not for a wedding specifically but just money in the bank.
We bought a house though the month after we got engaged, so we set aside $3000 as our "wedding fund" and put more into it as we went along. Our engagement was a year and a half, so we saved everything we needed comfortably during that time.
not engaged yet but i do have a savings account set aside. i opened it when we first started discussing our future and made the decision that this was it for us. he hasn't contributed it yet [he was still in school and then working freelance so not too much extra money...and now he's saving his moving for the big move] so it's just been me. no biggie. i have about 60% of my proposed budget so far [3 years now]. i didn't want to depend on my folks for money so just did it myself.
We got engaged this past March and I had $500 saved up for the wedding...Yep, that's it....$500...and the wedding is less than 3 months away. We haven't gone into debt for the wedding, just paying for what we can afford as we move along with the wedding plans. Everything is DIY from the food at the reception to the decorations to the invitations. The only thing that was not DIY was my dress, which I got for $370 at a privately owned boutique and my bridesmaids dresses which I found on sale for $15 each at a department store...We're putting off the "real" honeymoon until our 1st anniversary when we can pay cash for it...then again, that's a bargain too. I negotiated my way down to $89/night for a cottage in St. John. Off season ROCKS! lol I've gained quite the reputation of being a bargain hunter and price haggler...lol
I had about $500 saved up waiting for him to freakin' propose already :-) After I got engaged my family insisted on paying for everything. Even though I am strangely obsessed with weddings now, I still think it's a dumb thing to spend lots of money on. (No offense to anyone who feels differently.) But I mean, it's just one day. FH and I would have had a backyard bbq and a bunch of kegs if we had had to pay for it ourselves.
Me? $0! My parents are thankfully footing the great majority of the bill!
My fh and I DO have a post wedding/saving fun ;)
When we started planning, we did not hve anything saved. I managed to negotiate smaller deposits on things and my dress is only $750. All the other $ for the wedding is coming from a real estae deal I've been involved in for 2 yrs which is closing this month or next. I will be so happy to be able to complete everything after that! FI's parents want to contribute, but they have not been clear as too how much yet- most likely just the welcome party.
We had $0 saved for the wedding... and we were actually paying off some credit card debt. We finished paying off the debt soon after we got engaged, and then started saving everything we could... a year and a half later, we were able to pay for the wedding ourselves! It was a great feeling. We went into a tiny bit of debt for the honeymoon, but that should be paid off within the next month. So you can do it!
We started saving seriously sometime around the new year of this year which gave us about 9 months. We got a good amount back in income taxes plus what we were able to save was a bout $18,000 + the $12,000 from my parents. We spent every dime of it and don't have a bit of regret!!
After we got engaged I looked at the money I anticipated having in my savings by the end of August when I stopped working and went off to law school. I earmarked about 10K for the wedding from that, with another 5K times 2 coming from each set of our parents. The rest goes to tuition and living expenses in law school.
I wound up having more than I thought, because my tax refund this year is going to be grrrrreat between the hope or tuition credit and major overpaying in federal taxes. Is it January yet?? Is it?? I'm filing on the first day I can.
@chicagobride: i'm not engaged yet but i was in school earlier this year and will get the tax credits plus the write offs for starting my new business plus daycare expenses plus the court reporting machine i was paying for... and m gets all of his write offs for his new business so um yeah i will be joining you in filing ASAP!! the only thing is if i get a huge amount of cash i may be more willing to pay off my suv than to put it towards a wedding... sigh... i guess i'll have to see how much i'll get back first and then decide. and of course have him propose :D
We saved......$0 dollars. Once we got engaged in 05/2008, we planned for a long engagement. We focused on paying my FI's credit card bills. That took about a year. Since then, we've taken what we would have paid the creditors and saved it. Now we're almost done saving for the budget which is $10k with no help from our parents.
Once you get into the mindset of saving, I think it's easy but that's just me.
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