Weddingbee boards

Hi everyone...

Just hoping to vent a little bit if it's okay.

My husband and I got married in July of 2009. I wanted to wait until we had enough money to do a beautiful wedding, but we were already living together and since we both come from traditional families, we both felt a bit guilty about it; him more than me I guess, but long story short, he convinced me to forego a wedding and do a civil ceremony - we agreed that we would do a wedding later, and set a date for Sept 19, 2010. It would give us more time to save, since he was trying to straighten out his finances after a few bad breaks from investments gone wrong and serious debts, and we wouldn't be "living in sin" so to speak.

Because it's always been my dream to have a wedding, I started saving. But one thing after another kept happening, all involving finances, and his family. One of his relatives was about to lose their home and needed $2,000.  Since my hubby was still strapped, guess who had to dip completely into her savings? I don't make a lot of money, so this set me back considerably. But I knew his personal financial situation when I married him, and I believe in keeping my vows - his family is my family - his problems are my problems, and I also know that had it been me I would appreciate the help.  So I bit down on the loss and started saving again. 

$5000 of scrimping later and about to try for a deposit on a venue, trouble comes again.  Here I guess I need to give a nutshell of our history.  Before getting married, we'd known each other for 9 years. 7 years out of that 9 was of an 'off again /on again' nature, with us seeing other people and him even getting engaged to and buying a house with someone else.  Things didn't work out there, and I got my happy ending i.e. he decided that our love was worth it.

Fast forward to the present and the house he'd owned with the ex, which was a major financial burden to the both of us, is only just getting sold. In a down economy, the best that could have been done until now was to rent out the house, and when the last tenants moved out, he was left in a bind.  Finally though, the house gets sold, but NOW, there are penalties for getting out of the mortgage early.  $8,000 to be exact.  I believe the ex will have to come up with half, but he has no way to come up with $4K on his own in such a short space of time; closing is in 2 weeks.

As a spouse, I feel obligated to come to the rescue. I can't watch him struggle. The trouble is, it's my wedding money! So far, all I've managed to buy is my dress.  When I look at the situation from a distance, all I see is me giving money and not being able to save for the thing that I want most, while he hasn't given me a dime towards the wedding. I have been understanding and tried not to nag him because as I said, I was aware of the situation going into it, but the agreement was always that he would help whenever he could, and he hasn't. I've been fighting the growing suspicion that I would end up paying for this wedding all by myself - which might even be alright if I could just do that. 

But it's always something.  And now it's looking more likely that the wedding won't happen this year...and my worst fears about doing that civil marriage will be closer to coming true.  I was always afraid that if we got married that way, that I would end up not having a wedding at all as time passed.  Having a  wedding after you've been married for 2 years seems so pointless.  I've been crying a lot about this, and I'm very frustrated.  I've decided to just air this out anonymously because I haven't been able to talk to my family about what I've been going through...they were NOT his biggest fans in the beginning because of our history, and I did a lot of lying to smooth things over.  I can't disclose that he's not helping because that would mean revealing his true financial situation, and I don't want to embarrass him...but at the same time I'm so tired and sad right now...it almost seems as though I don't deserve to have a dream of mine come true; like I'd be selfish to insist on a wedding anymore. 

Anyway...I apologize for the long read...thanks for listening.

Thanks guys.  My family has already given us $2,000, which in my opinion is more than I could hope for seeing as my father was laid off last year.  I would not ask them for anything more.  HIS family is actually not much better off, except they own many expensive things, so it appears that they are rich when in actuality they are struggling to make ends meet.  When we talked about this wedding, we agreed on 2 things:

1 - that we would pay for this ourselves and not put additional strain on our families

2 - that we would NOT under any circumstances go into any further debt

mrsmurray, I really wanted our wedding to be blessed by the church, so yes, I wanted a ceremony and proper reception.  I haven't been trying to go overboard with the spending I don't think; we had a budget of $15,000 and I was prepared to save for that. I figured that between the two of us, a year's worth of saving would have taken care of it.  Most wedding payments are done in installments anyway, and so we agreed we'd handle what we could as we went along.  Except it's turned out it's been ME handling this and every other little expense outside of it.

I would talk to him about this, it's just that when I bring up money he feels badly because he knows he hasn't been pulling his weight.  And when he feels badly, he shuts down and withdraws.  I really don't want to deal with additional tension on the outside - I hate conflict...I really do.  But at the same time I'm feeling very strained by all of this.  Helping him is the mature thing to do. But the little girl in me who never had a chance to be a princess really wants my wedding.  I guess you guys are right. It'll have to go on the back burner. Again.

ejysy8  I understand that his debt is my debt, but he does have his pride and asked for time to clean up his own messes.  He's pretty much done clearing his debt. It's the HOUSE that has been crippling him; since the tenants moved out, he's had to pay the mortgage.  We live elsewhere; when the whole arrangement began, he and the ex split and rented out the house to tenants - he moved in with me.  While the tenants lived there, he'd been paying off his consumer debt. The tenants left a few months ago, and the house is now being sold. With helping out at my place, and handling the expenses for the previous property, his finances have been pretty much tied up.

The wedding means a lot to me, and I suppose part of me just felt as though it isn't fair.  I understand the situation. It's just a bitter pill to swallow is all.

I've given up trying to hound the relatives for money. They couldn't afford to keep their house in the first place, which tells me they probably don't have that $2,000 right now either.