Anyone planning a wedding AND buying at a home??

HKD817

I'm sure there has to be a lot of us who are planning and paying for a wedding while also buying a home at the same time. Whoa!! is all i can say. I'm starting to go into panic mode about all the cash that is disappearing before my eyes. My FI and I are buying a home in foreclosure. We are getting it insanely cheap but it does need a lot of work. We most likely wont be able to move into it until about 6 months after the wedding and about 100K later. What are we getting ourselves into? It is exciting and we are happy about it but at the same time i am soooo worried!!!

annagtz82

We're planning on starting to look for a home at the beginning of next year. We've been saving all we can to get a good down payment plus putting money away to pay for the wedding. Luckily we've been coming in under budget on most things for the wedding. I sometimes get overwhelmed and start to panic thinking about all the future expenses and if we will be able to afford both of us going to school and a mortgage payment plus all the other bills at the same time on our current salaries. My fiance just tells me that we'll be fine and to not worry so much.

[Deleted User]

Sometimes I wonder if we are doing something wrong. H did not have much saved when we got married, but I did. He paid for the entire HM and I paid for most of the reception. I have also been taking classes online to get my teaching license and Master's degree. Thankfully, I have no student loans and only a very low cc balance that we are working hard to pay off.

Our savings got severely depleted with the wedding, so I am sure it will be a few years before we can buy a house anyway. H has a lot of student loan debt and we want to try to pay some of that down first. Plus, we want to move back home and not buy a house in this place bc we both hate it here.

jmkes

Congrats on your new home.  They say the true test to any marriage is going through a home remodel, haha! 

FI lives in Fort Worth and I live in Houston.  We will be living in Fort Worth so that means I have to move.  We were planning to buy a house up there but my home here has been on the market for 5 months and no bites.  So now we are facing having to rent out my home and just rent a house up in FW until we get my house here sold.  It's been a huge stress but I know it will all work out.  Hopefully in a year my house will be sold and we can look at buying a home together.

marissa_claire

We moved into our home about six months ago with the wedding in two months.  Perfect timing because I had plenty of time to focus on the house for a few months and now it's back to wedding stuff. 

I'm sure it is stressful, but to be honest if you're not planning on having the house done for the wedding, then I would put that on the back burner.  It's just more stress and depending on your situation, if you're a month later getting something done it probably wouldn't be the end of the world.

quotequeen

I tried to separate them more by going under contract in January, supposedly to close in March, but that didn't happen.  I finally closed a week ago... three and a half weeks before my wedding.  And now I have to move two weeks before my wedding.  Awesome.

barkerspud

That's totally my fear! We are buying new construction and have had to already go back to have them rewrite the condo documents so I'm terrified settlement will get delayed. At this point we have a 40 day buffer but are trying to prepare for settlement that goes late, just in case. 

katiejo86

We are paying for most of the wedding, and trying to build a house......it's crazy, but it's exciting to know we will have our house after we get married.  Then, the only thing left to do is have kids! LOL

frogurt814

DH and I bought our house in October of 2009 and we got married in July of this year.  We were lucky that we had quite a few months to get settled into our house, and that also gave us plenty of time between house buying and the wedding to get our finances straight.

Luckily, our house did not need any major work. We've painted a few rooms, but that's been all.

dieselsmomma

We did it!!!!

Moved in on June 5th 2009, married on Aug 29th, 2009.

We did a few home renovations and it was hard, most of them aren't done but we did some. We reallly worked on planning out our time, I already found that the wedding was absorbing our weekends so right away we decided what needed to be done each weekend so that we didn't feel over loaded.

Don't forget to take time and enjoy some of the wedding tasks, I know I often felt so busy that I just wanted things "done." Although, it did help me not over stress or nit pick about some weddings things that really didn't matter (especially now with hindsight). Decide whats important, what's not, and enjoy time with your FI

kpender

Just closed July 30th. We are lucky our home was turn key! We got the first time home buyer tax credit and it payed for our airfare and hotel to get married in Vegas! We leave in two weeks!

bkail1986

We're in the process of closing on our house and planning a wedding. I'm ready to pull my hair out already between picking paint colors and picking wedding flowers. I don't know what i've gotten myself into! lol

JCM10

You all are brave. FI and I are finishing school right before our wedding...actually, I'll still be working on my masters for a semester after the wedding. We'll have hardly any savings and who knows what jobs. Our parents are paying for the wedding, though, and we have no student loans or car payments or credit card debt. That makes us sound spoiled, but we're not! We just lucked out and had people who were willing to foot the big bills. It'll be nice going into marriage and being able to start saving for a house right away, without worrying about paying off any debts! I can't wait to have a house of our own! Buying one would be super complicated for us, even if we had the money, since we'll be moving right after his graduation and aren't living together until we get married. 

SolaraAsh24

We dropped the idea when we both realized that the homes we could afford were not the homes we truly wanted, but don't get me wrong.... we REALLY wanted to buy before the wedding (Feb 2011). We both moved around so much during college, we just want a place to call home for an extended period of time and these places we can afford are simply not in great areas that are conducive to raising a family. That said, my fiance's parents offered (we never asked, mentioned, or even had this as an idea) to let us stay rent and utility free in their basement apartment that has its own entrance for a few years to help us get on our feet financially. It's definitely not for everyone and I can understand why people might think I'm crazy but we couldn't resist the idea of saving so much money prior to having a mortgage, children, etc. I'm a big worry wart so having this financial piece of mind will really be great for us.

Ashes_3

We are!!!! We made a bid on a house (its been since May of trying to get this house) and have been going through everything. Well, we are now moving into his mom and dads due to our dog being over the weight limit *SHE IS 14 lbs & the weight limit @ our apartment is 12*...ya I know. So, this is going to help us now save more money. Just be patient. It is hard, but it will all pay off in the end!

brit_bell90

We just closed on our house on the 10th. We've already spent about $5000 on basic repairs and we have a lot more to do! Thankfully everything wrong with the house is cosmetic though. We bought an older house (advertised as being built in 1900, but was actually built sometime in the 1800's that has a lot of wallpaper and carpet in peculiar places (hardwood floor everywhere except the kitchen and bathroom which are carpeted, ugh.) we found the previous owners liked to cover things up rather than fix them and every wall needs to be re-plastered and the floors tiled. 

 I still have a lot to pay for with the wedding (which is 9 months out) and I'm definitely getting stressed. It'll all come together though, I hope! lol

flyjawn

yes we're doing both.  it's a race to see which happens first.

SO lives in the US and i'm in Canada though so we'll rent a condo when he moves here until we can pick a house that we like.

i actually think househunting is more exciting that wedding planning but i think i'm in the minority on that opinion.

SmallSails

UGH! You're lucky if you're in a buyer's market where houses are actually low or reasonable. FI and I have just started looking and we live in a Canadian city where the oil industry has caused a major real estate boom. The prices are just insane! A 3 bedroom, 2-bath home is going for about $345,000 right now. We're looking for a place with historicial character but will need some fixing up. It will be a lot smaller than we thought we could afford as well - most likely a real starter home. I adore home design too so house hunting is really fun to me! I should've studied that in school... damn advertising industry!

thesuninherhead

We purchased our home at the start of last year and had the wedding in September. I expected it to be a bigger adjustment than it was, really. My parents covered about half of our wedding expenses, which made it easier, but there still was a lot left over to pay for. I expected the adjustment to household ownership and mortgage repayments to be a bit more difficult than it was- I guess you live to your means, to an extent, and having less disposable income quickly went unnoticed. 

 

Only you know your finances, though- try not to spread yourself too thinly. Like any purchase, weddings and houses always have hidden costs that you're not expecting but will need to be able to cover.

flyjawn

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_chit-chat_anyone-planning-wedding-buying-home?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:14Discussion:0886f2c1-b20c-4dfd-a952-a004e011fc22Post:d5bc9b79-da5b-4916-b187-6ecd00948e2d">Re: Anyone planning a wedding AND buying at a home??</a>:
[QUOTE]UGH! You're lucky if you're in a buyer's market where houses are actually low or reasonable. FI and I have just started looking and we live in a Canadian city where the oil industry has caused a major real estate boom. The prices are just insane! A 3 bedroom, 2-bath home is going for about $345,000 right now. 
Posted by SmallSails[/QUOTE]<div>
</div><div>i think "expensive" is all relative depending on where you live.  if i could find a 3 bedroom house in my neighbourhood for $350k i'd think i just hit the jackpot.  my best friend just bought a small 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house for $500k.  and she needed new electrical and a new roof.  crazy.</div><div>

</div>

SmallSails

Yikes! Yeah, the market here used to be very low but once the oil came, it's boomed so fast that a lot of new buyers are left to come up with more savings for the down payment. What we thought we could get last year for $250,000 is now at least $350,000- $375,000. Market price went up about 30% just over the summer months and continues to climb. This is no big city or urban living either.

Kate61487

I'm likely going to be doing this as well - problem is the wedding's July 23rd and our current lease ends July 31st - so we'll either be closing and moving RIGHT on top of the wedding or we'll be paying some massive lease buyout fees.

Luckily, we're both in lucrative fields; I've already been saving for a year (he was still in school) and we've got about another year to save, plus my parents have very generously taken on almost the entire expense of the wedding.  Financially we'll be fine, but I'm seriously stressing about the timing....

cmyrick75

I thought we were the only one scrazy enough to do that!! Our wedding is Nov 13th and we don't have an exact closing date yet but it is looking like it will be the week before our wedding!!

We had money saved and talked it over because we could have had a large extravagant wedding or we could have bought the house of our dreams but we wanted both so we compromised and we are having a smaller wedding and a we are buying a house that fits our needs but costs less due to it needing some work. (nothing major, just paint and tlc!)