$$$ Talk

we are paying for the wedding ourselves too....i am working extra hours at work, and getting paid off the books for those hours, and i babysit as well...FH already makes enough money, so he just contributes what he does.

i also stopped using my credit cards!

We are paying for the wedding our selves with some help FMIL is paying for DJ and my parents bought my dress RD and they keep telling us they are giving us a set aamount of money but I know they cant afford that so we will not be accepting that. The way we did it is I bank ALL my checks to the wedding fund and we dont touch that money unless its wedding related FH has been paying ALL our bills CC rent,car insurace,car loans my school loans and such so its been tough. I got a better job and FH got promoted so between the 2 of us we are making $15 more per hour so that helps too. Also I just settled a law suit and we will be getting that money so we should be fine but wwth out the law suit money I think I would be freaking lol. I think we sould be fine but if we need to we will take a cash advance on a CC and epay it right away after the wedding. also I am not doing flower CP's that saved us alot of money, I got my veil from a wonderful 08 bride, and I cut back on any extras we didnt need. We stopped going out as much as possible and we started talking lunch to work,and neither of us shop for ourselves anymore just bare essentials. My advice would be to save as much from each paycheck as possible i realize most people cant do what FH and I are doing but we are fortunate enough to be able to live off of his salary completely.


ETA: to add I also stopped using my CC's I leave them at home so I cant use them and that has helped alot.

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Posted by WishfulRinne

Is there anyone else paying for the wedding with FH alone? I am paying for the wedding with no help
Its ok my parents really cant help and I thought that FH and I would be able to do it alone. BUT that was almost 2 years ago and now with the economy the way it is...things are really hard for us.

How are you guys handling money issues? Fh and I dont go out at all which is hard because we love to do it. I dont spend any extra money, which is super hard for me because I love to shop!

I still have a lot of things to do for the wedding:
invites
favors
BM gifts
GM gifts
bunch of other little stuff

How are you guys doing it?

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FH & I are paying all this ourselves. Because of the crappy economy and everything else, it really brings you to reality. SO during the planning process, we basically put down on paper of what was more important to us and which wasnt. For things like invitations, we actually print it ourselves (i'll put up pics later this week in my album) it came out beautifully. From the beginning i didnt want anything over the top or crazy anyway -- i wanted something easy looking and had a summer feel to it and also representing me and my FH -- our personality, etc. Although i would really liked letterpress on my invites - if you think about it, people are really going to look at it and throw it out.. no one really saves it, unless its a very close family member or yourselves. so that cut my cost on invites. As long u have a nice laser printer you can totally design something urself and print it on good cardstock. better yet, you can just buy the print-it-yourself packages that a lot of companies make and you can simply pick it up at Target, Kmart, Michaels, AC Moore. I personally like Martha Stewart stuff, so we purchased Martha Stewart print it yourself invites. We purchase 120 invites which cost us about $90 dollars. since i'm crafty and all, i put some embellishments on it to make it nicer ;) and that totaled out to about $100ish dollars.

as for favors, we decided to make a donation to a charity. we are thinking about donating $3-5 per guest that we invite. i'm personally NOT a fan of wedding or party favors -- i always throw it out by the end of the year. So i rather use our money and donate it to a good cause rather throwing it away.

BMs&GMs gifts. FH and i decided to purchase all the dresses and suits. i have 5bms and 5gms. I looked all over the place for sales. I purchased my bms dresses from JCREW -- They have wonderful celebration dresses and they go on sale! what makes it even better-- later on, they always have additional percentage off towards their sale/final sale they'll honor you the sale price up to 60 days of purchase. I did that and guess what -- it ended up costing me $35/dress!! yes. The original price was $165/dress!! :)
you basically just got to watch out for their sales,etc (before and after you make your purchase!!). If you order online, you can ask if they can offer u free shipping! that's what i did, and I got free shipping!

for the gms: we were going to rent tuxedos. but i really dont like the look of tuxes, esp for a summer wedding. i wanted a casual fun wedding anyway and i think men look good in suits! so we went to browse around a lot of places and most places only offer rental for tux only and at min. of $159pp!! so that was totally out of the question! so i went to menswarehouse and they have a sale going on, buy 1 get 1 free. since we wanted to rent in the beginning anyway, we decided to buy them suits :) and for easier coordination, we decided the gms will all wear nice blk suits! since some gms already have blk suits they can actually just wear that and i'll just supply them with shirts and ties as gifts.. the ones who doesnt have suits, i'll purchase their suit and they'll hafta buy their own shirt and tie. so that was pretty easy. you may think this is sorta weird, but they are part of ur wedding party for a reason... it's because they are close to you and etc.. so they should understand why you decided to give them their gifts in that sorta order... thankfully mine does.


CPs/flowers -- you can try burtons, they gave me a pretty good quote. but let me tell u this, flowers are flowers, they wilt and die. so we skipped the cps and opted for candle&votives and its the best idea ever! google some images and they have some lovely DIY online! we went to IKEA and purchased all the candle stuff for 17 tables and it costs us a lil' over $100... and i'm talking about over 100 candle votives plus tealights itself! so mainly it'll be my flowers, gms, bms, mob and moh, that all adds up to around $500.


ok, i hope all this helps!


PS!! click on my name and find additional stuff that i put up -- its a bunch of templates and DIYs that can save u $$$

also, dont forget to use ur search engine -- GOOGLE coupons! that is one of the most important things!!

FH and I are paying for everything also. Including bridal shower and RD. lol. So, you are not alone.

Flowers: we are using a local florist who is providing the flowers and I'm buying tall CP vases at a florist supply store. I already saw a sample CP, and it looks like I got it from an expensive vendor, and doing it this way is A LOT cheaper. He's also providing the bok's and the price is a lot less than all other vendors. (i looked into a few) and his work is just as nice.

Favors: We're doing a donation to Angel Man's syndrome.

Limo's: Our vendor worked with us to use one less limo, and the quote dropped by a few hundred dollars.

Ways we have been saving $$$, we stopped going out to eat. We take bf, and lunch to work. I clip coupons and now I'm addicted bc if you havent tried it, it really does save $$$. Neither one of us go shopping anymore unless we completely need something, like for work or gifts, and even then I use coupons only. We also have a large container of change which as soon as it fills up , I deposit, we throw in change and $1, or $5. It totally adds up. If you're paying for your own wedding, these are all things that really help to save $$$.

Put it to you like this:
2 years ago we booked an AMAZING RH, shortly after that we had to cancel it because we KNEW we couldnt handle paying 1300 a month for a RH PLUS paying our rent and other bills.

We are now having a much smaller wedding at a MUCH cheaper hall. I saved on a few things.

Invites: Aunt is doing them

Makeup: Doing it myself-if you have a friend that is pretty good at makeup or you know how to do makeup, then why not do it yourself?

Hair: going right up the block from my house

BM Hair Makeup and Shoes: I told them to wear black open toe shoes and they dont have to do their hair, just blow it out or put a nice clip in it-we did that for my other friends wedding and you couldnt tell the difference

Shoes:Payless(they will be worn ONCE)

Favors: Making a donation to Humane Society and getting Leonida chocolates which are pretty reasonable.

Honeymoon: Waiting till AFTER the wedding-not booking anything now

DJ:Friend of the family

Photographer-I really wanted one of the photogs advertised on here, but ya know what? It was too much, so another friend of the family is doing it.

Video: Friend from HS is charging me 750 for the entire day. His work is good and its in my budget.

Dress:Bought one on clearance and almost done paying it off.

Flowers: I am not using CPs, and didnt get flowers for the church so my tab for the flowers was just under 500 bucks.

Limos:Not sure yet, we might only use one that makes 2 trips.

RH: We booked at a KOC hall in Long Island AFTER cancelling our 1st RH (which still owes us money) and let me tell you the place is amazing AND they didnt put us on a payment schedule. They said as long as you have it 2 weeks before, then we're ok. They also threw in some freebies and didnt charge us tax.

Sorry this is long, anyway, this economy DOES s*ck but try to think about things that you might not need. It definately makes a difference. Believe me its only one day. I learned it after realizing we didnt have enough money to pay for things. Plus you never know what can happen. I had no idea FH was going to get a different job with less pay. So just think about some things and see if you can skimp a little. I really dont think people notice anyway as long as theres an open bar and food and dancing, most people are good to go. Good Luck!

I am not paying for the wedding myself, but my dad's business is hurting and I want to help pay for things like GM gifts, favors, programs.


But I am student teaching which I obviously don't get paid for. So I have to find a job on top of it.