Wedding VS Income
Weddings are no doubt expensive and can be at times very stressful, but the greatest advice one can give to you from the start is to plan your wedding around your income, not your wedding around your dream income.
�Easier said than done though' I can hear you say.
It's true. It is very easy to get carried away when you start planning your wedding, spending a thousand pounds on flowers, a thousand pounds on the dress, five thousand on the food, and another five thousand on venue hire and so on. Then, before you know it your wedding is costing the same amount as a deposit for a house and you're getting out a bank loan just to pay for it. All that money for one day, is it really worth it?
That is not to say that your big day should be planned in the cheapest way possible, or that the importance of the day does not deserve a huge budget. However, it certainly is not worth spending thousands and thousands of pounds on, even if your budget allows, when you could be putting that hard earned money to better use such as your future together.
Before you even start to look at venues or rings for the wedding, you and your other half need to sit down and talk money. No one likes having the money talk, especially when it's about such a special occasion,but if you don't draw up a maximum budget at the start you can easily overspend.One idea is to take your left over monthly income, after all bills and necessary expenses have gone out, including food and fuel, multiplied by how many months you have before the wedding; keeping in mind everyone usually likes to be paid in full four to six weeks before the wedding date.
For example:
Left over income- £800 permonth
- Months before wedding minus one month -15
- Sum: 800 X 15 = 12000
BUDGET:Twelve thousand pounds.
That's a lot of money.
Of course you may even be lucky enough to have family helping out towards the wedding, which is always a welcome bonus. Just remember you're marrying each other, you want to be able to enjoy your lives together, not to be still paying off your wedding five years after it happened.
Stick to your budget, no matter how big or small and you will soon realise that it's not all the material items that makes your day special, it's the person you're marrying, your family and your friends. It's true what they say: "Money can't buy you happiness.�
