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Wedding Woes
btorres2113
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Please help!
Hi everyone!
I'll start out by saying that I have been engaged for 2 years and started planning 7 months ago (we're both students)
We began planning for a big - ish wedding of about 130 guests and have a venue, photographer, dj, dress, etc., most of the fixings are set up or at least chosen. I personally never really wanted a big wedding, I'm more of a "let's get out there and do it!" type, so I wanted to elope. My FI however, is pretty traditional and didn't want to upset his family by eloping, so now we're about 6 months away from the wedding date and now he too is open to eloping. We just sent out save the dates a couple of weeks ago and as I said most things have been booked or picked. Now here is the problem: We can cut our losses and elope, probably losing out on about 1k (not including the photographer, ill get to that in a bit) or go through with the wedding and end up spending about 15k. So as you might imagine, us being broke college students has lead us to seriously consider eloping, however 2 out of the 3 installments for the photographer have been paid. We considered bringing her along, but then we'd have to pay for her airfare, lodging, and all her meals. That could easily cost us an additional 1.5k on top of the 1k we still owe her for the original contract. BUT if we don't bring her along, we lose out completely on what we've paid thus far since she has a no refund policy. Which totals about 2k.
Any savvy brides out there have any suggestions?
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Re: Please help!
FWIW, I tend to come down on the side of not spending money if you don't have to. If you both had your hearts set on a big wedding, I'd say save your money until you could afford it. But since you're both on board with eloping, that sounds like a good option. There are so many things you can put that money toward: paying off student loans (if either of you have any), grad school, nest egg, house, rainy day fund, retirement fund, travel, etc.
And in my experience, both here and IRL, doing things to make other people happy (or not make them unhappy) never tends to work out the way you hope. There is always something else (holidays, kids, whatever), and you don't want to spend your life doing things you'd rather not. And with all due respect, if FI's family wants a big blowout, then they can either foot the bill, or they can deal.
Also, even if you end up losing your entire photographer deposit, that's still less than you'd have to shell out for a big wedding, so I'd rather take that loss. If you had to choose.
I have a different definition of "broke college student."
It sounds like eloping locally would be your best bet for saving money. You wouldn't have to pay travel for your photographer.
Also, you will need to send out wedding announcements after you elope to the people you sent the STDs.
THIS!!!
You obviously want something you can't afford if $15K is what you're anticipating spending. I hate to be the one to let you know, that unless you're running off to Vegas for the weekend, you're going to be forking over a huge chunk of change to elope. You need to start making cuts to your budget, eloping at this point would be downright rude considering you've already sent out STD's . Flowers - Sam's Club or set a dollar amount and give your florist some flexibility as to what you get. Food - about that $10 pasta dish - sounds yummy! If 130 guests is how many are invited total, not all of them will be able to attend so you'll save some there. Photographer is one that you should leave alone or shrink the size of package you're getting. Decorating - go with what your site and/or caterer has with their basic package - will likely run you $5-8/table but that's cheap compared to what it'd cost you to either DIY or hire the florist to do something. For 130 guests it's possible to have a VERY nice event in the $5K range if you watch your pennies. Also, not sure what your parents are willing to contribute so if you haven't had that chat the time is now!