Hi everyone! A bit of background: FI has been married once before, we've been together about a year and a half and have 3 kids between the 2 of us(he has 2 girls, I have 1 boy). We officially became engaged last weekend but picked out the ring together in June and have been talking marriage for almost a year. Now here's where I need some help/advice.
We've talked about plans for how we'd like a wedding to look and all that before. A lot. We both want a small intimate wedding with just our closest family and maybe* a few close friends. Our guest list is literally under 40 people, tentatively. However we never talked about an actual budget before, just said we would save what we could and most would probably come from our tax refunds (he typically gets around 6K and I get anywhere from 3-5K). Since this is his 2nd wedding he could care less if we just ran out to the courthouse and signed papers, but he has said over and over that he doesn't want me to regret or miss out on having the things I really want in our wedding. So I made an essential list - things I would regret not having. It includes: A white dress, bride's bouquet, Photographer, cake, a meal, and a 1st dance (it can be from our iPod even, I don't need a dj or all that jazz). I thought that was very practical and I really don't think it's too much. I really and truly believe that it is the marriage that matter most, not the "wedding" as much. I'm not interested in a huge shindig but I would like a special day to celebrate. He agrees that it's not too much... but - he said last night (as I was mentioning that the photographer I was looking at was only $1600 for the day, prints, and dvd of all the pics) that he wants the ENTIRE thing to cost under $1500. WHAAAAAAT?!?!?! I don't see that as feasible. And on top of that the first thing he said was that if I spent over $500 for a photographer that he would be really pissed... then he got up, went into the other room, and pulled up pics of his first wedding "to prove to me that a family member can do just fine with a nice camera". Ummm... I had mentioned before that I was curious about his wedding, and would love to see a pic of him, BUT I do not think that was a great time to show me 100 pictures of your first wedding I cried. My other sticking point was that he sold one of his houses a few months ago and made about $6000 profit. He immediately went out and bought a 4 wheeler with $4500. I am floored that he wouldn't bat an eye at dropping that amount on a 4-wheeler and yet wont consider more than $1500 on our WEDDING. He says that a 4-wheeler is something we have for years to play and work with, a wedding is one day. Yes, but our memories of that day are forever... he doesn't get it. At this point I told him we were done talking about it for the night because I was upset and we both needed to talk about it when it wasn't 10pm and we could both be more open-minded. I'm done looking at wedding stuff and ideas until we nail down an appropriate budget. He apologized before we went to bed for making me upset but I feel hurt that this makes it seem like "toys" are a bigger financial priority than our wedding would be.
This is obviously nowhere near a life or death crisis for us or our relationship but I am kinda upset that even though we agree on most other financial matters, this appears to be a big difference for us. Spending $ on material things vs spending on "memories" if you will, that leave you with no physical reminder necessarily.