Weddingbee boards

yeah, it's scary... luckily, law firms have been giving at least three months severance, so that should help if something happens.  I agree with Peony80 too- it helps you really figure out what is essential.  For example, our venue wants $6 to cover chairs.  At $6 x 160 chairs- $960. Srsly. If I wanted to spend a grand on something, it would be to pay for plane tickets for my friends who have gotten laid off from their firms, not for chair covers.

It's tough out there and I definitely stress a lot about how much money we're spending on the wedding, even though neither of our firms have announced layoffs. In the end I think it's more productive to focus on your own individual situation than what the news is reporting - can you live on one salary, how much will be left in your savings after all the wedding and honeymoon expenses, etc.  If you've already planned your wedding and set all the vendors, what's the worst that can happen if you have 1k or 5k less in your bank account? Will you really feel safer or more secure if you have that much more in your account when you get laid off? Severance packages have been pretty generous, so at this point my main concern would not be directly financial, but more generally how I could get a job and get my career back on track, in an economy in which so many lawyers have been laid off and so few are hiring.

Our plans came to a screeching halt when my FI got laid off 3 weeks ago.  I still have plannin in the back of my mind, but untill he finds another job, we will put everything on hold.  Luckily we have untill June to cancel our venue and still get our whole deposit back.

My now husband was laid off 4 months before our wedding.  Luckily, we planned on a low budget to begin with and had most of the money already set aside for the expenses.  If we didn't, I dont know what we would have done.  

My husband and I got our bar results last November, right after we got back from our honeymoon.  We've been looking for jobs since then, but so far no luck.  I went to a job interview yesterday for a law clerk position (!).  The interviewing attorney told me that he was originally looking for a 3rd year law student, but when a bunch of attorneys applied, he threw out all the law student resumes and only interviewed attorneys so that he can get his money's worth (not in those words).  It's scary out there. 

Depending on your financial situation, it may be wise to spend conservatively on your wedding -- it may spare you financial stress in the future.

I'm a second year associate at a BigLaw firm and our firm just went through layoffs just less than a month ago and our wedding is in August.  Fortunately I survived this round and also, my fiance is not in the legal industry.  However, it definitely caused a lot of stress in terms of us arguing about money because it made me realize that I was footing most of the bill in terms of the cost of the wedding (him and I are paying for most of the wedding ourselves) and yet in terms of ratio of guests, his family was inviting more than my side.  The lesson learned from this is that I should have put my foot down in the beginning in terms of how many people his family could invite so there wasn't such a large imbalance in terms of how many members were coming from his side, especially since I was footing the majority of the bill.  The other thing that we also checked on was the possibility of cancelling/postponing our honeymoon if I lost my job since there was not way we were getting our deposits back.

The other suggestions above are good too in terms of prioritizing what's really important; we decided to forego dance lessons since we didn't really need them and we didn't really need a photobooth (although when I found out I didn't get laid off, we did end up going with the photobooth).  We're still spending frugally despite us both having our job because I live with the same sense of paranoia as you do unfortunately.

AlmostMrsG - Both my fiance and I work at a top corp law firm in nyc and we defintely don't have enough work for our own associates to do.  Billing 7.5 hours a day to "professional reading" is pretty depressing!

Our firm has been reeally slow.  I work in a banking group too so we've been hit pretty hard.  There haven't been any layoffs yet but there are always rumors.  And of couse there are salary freezes for everyone - admin staff and associates.  I recently told a vendor that I needed more time to think (we might push the wedding back a year) because of the field we work in and how hard we've been hit and he badgered me and told me how next year the prices would be even higher.  What an asshole!  Its a moot point if I don't have a job in a month.  The Wedding industry will never cease to amaze me (especially when it comes to being out of touch with the REAL world).

I totally understand - I'm a new attorney, still looking for legal work. In the meantime I working as an administrative assistant. So not how I pictured things when I started law school and took out all those loans. Thankfully, my fiance's job seems secure, and I make enough to cover bills and put a little away. Its a terrible time. 

I am not in the legal field but I have become a casualty of the economy,  I lost my job last week when my company laid off 25% of its workforce. We just finished putting all the deposits down for our vendors. We are not in freak out mode yet as my company was very generous and gave me two months severance.  So I feel I have time to find another job.  At this point we are not putting the wedding plans on hold (we are paying for it mostly ourselves).  If it gets closer to the end of the two months and I am still without a job (god forbid) then we will have to reevaluate things at that point.  I am still optomistic. However, I do feel a relief of not having to worry if its going to happen to me anymore.  I had that sense for a few days prior and it sucked. Anyway, good luck to all of us out there and heres hoping no more bees loose thier jobs.

Christine

I worked for a big Wall Street law firm and got laid off with about 25 other people.  Yesterday was my first day of unemployment, yay.  We're not paying for our own wedding, so it hasn't affected the wedding THAT much, except for a few major details:

1) We changed our honeymoon plans -- had been wanting to go somehwere exotic, like Bali, for 2 weeks -- but not knowing where I'd be or what the job sitch would be in June meant that we decided to go somewhere closer (Aruba) and for only one week.

2)  I've had FAR more time for DIYing of stuff.  (We lined our own envelopes, I hand-wrote the addresses, I'm creating our guest book right now on MPix, etc)

3) I haven't told a lot of my extended family about the layoff, which means that my friends (who know about it) MAY know something at the wedding that my grandmum/aunts don't know which will lead to stress.  REALLY hoping I find something soon so it's all in the past by then.