From The Heart: Justifying those wedding things that you *can* afford

Recently, I was spending some time in the Love My Dress *private* Facebook group for brides to be and newlyweds, which is quite possibly my most enjoyed past-time, where I observed a post from a bride-to-be who was awake far too early worrying about that ever-favourite issue for all brides to be; costs. This time however, the bride wasn’t asking for ways to save money, or complaining about the budget-busting effects of the word ‘wedding’, instead, this was a question posed as: how do I justify it? Subtly different from ‘how do I afford it?’, the first question dealt with by any bride, but after that, after I know that I can afford it, how do I justify it?

Love My Dress has provided many an insightful, professional perspective on this topic. Katrina Otter posted two fabulous pieces on budget and planning and Annabel has written two really useful features that I’ve read on several occasions; why are weddings expensive, and why it’s OK to spend money on your wedding day. Whilst the latter of these two posts guided you through why it was ok to spend money on creating the kind of wedding you want, sometimes, how we justify these costs to ourselves can be an issue. As a past bride, I have grappled with this topic head-on and would like to pass on what I learned with you today.

Budget and planning within your means, and thus avoiding debt, is always the first point of any blog post that addresses costs and weddings, and rightly so. We live in a media-fuelled electronic world, within which it is easy to endlessly compare yourself and leave you feeling as though you need to ‘keep up with the Jones’ – or that other person’s wedding at least. It is easy to believe that you need X + Y and an arrival on carnival elephant in order to stand out. It certainly may be that some debt is reasonable, but debt should be your priority to avoid wherever possible. A wedding is a beautiful thing but when you’re carrying large debt over into your new life, when all the sparkle and joy has dissipated, it will take an exceptional character not to start to resent those costs.

I believe that married life should begin with love and laughter, not money-squabbles and resentment. And as a past bride, I can tell you that the elephant would be happiest in the jungle and that Pinterest doesn’t need to vomit on your day for it to be memorable or worthy. Whether you spend £500 (the legal bill) or £50,000; if it is within your means and the two of you turn up, then I promise you, it will be the greatest day of your lives.

With that said, in my experience you can expect any pre-devised wedding budget to steadily vaporise as you get closer to the wedding day itself. This was true for us anyway and in the very least I should expect that your expectations will readily adjust as you approach your wedding. I am a wedding obsessive, but in all my years of wedding stalking (that was pre-engagement!), I’d never delved into the finite details of what things actually cost. So when it came to it, we faithfully and naively plucked a budget from thin-air based on a few astonishingly basic calculations (the average cost is X, my friend spent X on their wedding 3 years ago, it seemed nice, lets add on a few thousand for inflation and that’s probably right). However, until you get into the nitty gritty of what you’re wanting to achieve for that price, unless you’re an event planner by trade, you won’t be fully aware of what the costs are.

We found this out as we went along and worked to the following formula:-

(current savings) + (expected savings) – (total expected cost) = DEFICIT

There was nothing more disheartening than seeing that deficit figure never seeming to come down. At times, it felt like throwing cash onto a fire or watching dry sand slip through your finger-tips. But as we had pre-decided what we did and didn’t want to compromise on, we simply had to come to terms with this. We had to find a way to justify, and make peace with it ourselves. It taught us to accept and understand that we could afford it – and that is the first important piece of advice I want to advise you to do too.

Allocate your earnings

The next important piece of advice I wish to share is, if you can afford it, then focus on how you allocate your earnings. For example, we never went short whilst we were planning our wedding – our usual monthly outgoings and bills were met, but we did skip foreign holidays for a year and continued to drive our 0.99L Kia with >100,000 miles on the clock, we don’t use Sky or iPhones and our social spending was reduced to a minimum. These combined efforts led to cumulative money saving which we put towards our wedding. What always astonished me though was how judgemental people were towards that. It really isn’t up to anyone else to decide if we spent our money correctly or for them to wince on our behalf at the venue cost before emphatically stating they’d have preferred two weeks skiing for that same price.

We weren’t reckless with our wedding spending, we made informed choices that worked for us. I baulk when I go out with my glamorous friends once a year and am expected to contribute £90 for a nightclub table for an evening, yet I chose to spend thousands on my wedding dress. Neither of those choices are better nor worse, they are simply choices. You’re going to have plenty of them to make, combined with plenty of unwanted opinions, so start understanding and making peace with those decisions and opinions today. There is a finite amount of money available. How you allocate that is entirely your business.

Reframe your perspective

As we were a dry hire venue, the cost of some furnishings and fittings was alarming and something I wasn’t expecting to be confronted with. We spent a lot on décor and ambience. If you’re in a similar situation, I advise that it’s important to clarify that what you want, you still need. This might sound like a contradiction in terms since how can anyone need specific lighting? But if you’ve already spent thousands and a fairylight canopy is a truly an integral part of the look and feel of your day and something will be missing without it, then accept it as essential cost for you, budget for it and move on! Don’t spend days/weeks paining over it – it’s a waste of energy and focus. Considering the cost of lighting, chair hire, carpeting and so forth as isolated decisions makes very little sense from a logic perspective and will likely drive you slightly insane. Therefore, piece together a bigger cognitive picture to help yourselves understand and justify these expenses; ‘Do I want to spend £500 on hiring lighting for one day?’ No!’ – or ‘Do I want to spent £500 on lighting that will complete the ambience for my once-only wedding and all our subsequent memories?’ – “Yes, I absolutely do!’.

Once you have your big picture context, you have to understand what this means and why. A quick Google search on the ‘average UK wedding cost’ will throw up such statements as ‘eye-watering’, ‘budget-busting’, ‘astronomical’ and ‘obscene’. Is it really any wonder us brides are rarely at peace with our spending habits when we’re bombarded with such negativity? Another one of my favourites; ‘it’s just one day’. Ahhhh, that old chestnut, it’s just one day. How can you justify spending that much money on ‘just one day’?

Cost per guest, not cost per hour

Here’s what helped reframe our perspective. Firstly, let’s consider for a moment that it is one day. One thing guaranteed to send you plummeting into a sea of depression is ‘cost per hour’. So do yourselves a gigantic favour and don’t work that one out. Instead, try to focus on a ‘cost per guest’ figure. Remember that in the context of ‘just one day’ you are paying for food and drink, entertainment, ambience, staff and facilities for almost an entire day for all your guests. Allow me to put this into context for you: the cheapest VIP ticket for Ascot races is £320 per person. Here you can expect a shared table of 10, Prosecco drinks reception, three course lunch, endless wine, afternoon tea and entrance. Sound like a wedding…? and yet that cost still excludes your evening entertainment, personal details, favours and so forth and I can tell you that there is no ambient lighting in that building. So for those hell bent on reminding you that it is ‘just one day’ – roll with it. You’re footing the bill for Ascot.

Remember you are paying for once-in-a-lifetime memories

If, however, you’re more like me and you see your own wedding as more than just one day, consider this: what you are paying for is a once-in-a-lifetime memory and experience for you and so many other important people. Granted most of the day will be expended in the moment but some mementos will live on and likely outlast even your life-time.

People wouldn’t bat a judgemental eyelid at the ‘how much would you spend on your once-in-a-lifetime holiday?’ question, yet the two are very similar: they are not replicable. Each is mostly expended in the moment, is a life enhancing experience leaving you with a few memorable tokens together with priceless memories and photos. Granted one is shorter than the other but I’ve yet to find someone suggesting they’d take 100 additional guests on their holiday. You’re paying for those peoples’ experience too.

Therefore, in summary: check you can afford it, check it is important to you in the context of all your other priorities, and then ensure you view each decision in the context of a whole.

Perhaps then, ‘justify’ is the wrong word. You do not need to justify your choices. Instead, just make sure you accept, make peace with, and understand them.

With love,

Clare x

 

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Our lovely blog reader Clare has contributed to our ‘From The Heart’ feature – an occasional Sunday spot on Love My Dress, where we hand the blog back over to our readers to write about all matters of love and life.

If you would like to contribute a From The Heart piece, we would dearly love to hear from you. It doesn’t matter what it’s about and it doesn’t have to be related to weddings at all – we’re looking for honest, authentic, personal, sad, happy, family, relationship, marriage, health, light-hearted, serious, baby, trying for baby, children, career, simple, complicated – real life issues.  We just need you to write from your heart. Keep it upbeat, simple and witty, or share your thoughts anonymously on a more challenging or emotional subject.

We’ll edit your final piece to make sure it’s all tip-top.  Please drop me a line on [email protected] with your feature or to ask any questions. Love Annabel x