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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Wedding Planning? Not So Much...

I have been engaged for over a year, and there is a possibility of a wedding happening next summer. Most brides to be would be well into planning their dream wedding. I just don't fit into the category of most brides. In times when the economy is falling apart, it is difficult for any couple to plan a wedding. It's even more difficult when only one is working. There is a limited budget, and it gets even smaller when purchasing a house is entered into the equation. What is one to do?

I play the waiting game. I am waiting for some sort of miracle to happen and put all of my problems aside. I don't want to start planning a wedding until I have a steady job. In order to have a steady job, I would need to actually go ahead and look for one. Take a look at yinthinks.blogspot.com for more details about my unemployment situation (the sadness, the breakdown, the complete lost of hope, etc). I need to find a path for myself before I can start dreaming of the fairytale wedding. Sigh.

How do couples in graduate, medical, and law school do it? Some of them have part time and even full time jobs while going back to school. Others focus on their studies with a lot of time spent in rotations and such. Not only do they run into the problem of money, but they are also busy with their commitment to school. I really do look up to people who can focus on school and planning a wedding.

Then it gets me thinking. Do most people have help from their parents? For most American weddings I see that more and more couples are paying for it on their own. Parents are still chipping in to help for the costs, but more couples are becoming less dependent on their parent's financial help. That's great. I want to be one of those couples too. I would love to plan the wedding without worrying about the costs that would incur to our parents. It would give us the flexibility to plan within our needs and also splurge on things that we would consider necessary. Will our parents contribute? As mentioned before, mine will not. Hubby's parents will most likely help us out, but is that a good thing? I can already imagine his mom planning our wedding for us, cutting cost where she thinks is necessary. Here is one conversation we had...

FMIL: Do you remember the wedding in France that we went to? I asked the bride how much her dress cost. Can you believe she paid $2,000??

Me: Oh. Yeah wedding dresses are very expensive.

(FMIL has the look on her face hoping that I would not dare to purchase a dress that expensive)

FMIL: Hopefully you can find a cheap dress that looks good. Shop around. Find a good sale.

Me: Okay...

At that time I already had a wedding dress in the closet. It's my very old, vintage dress I bought at Goodwill in Pennsauken, New Jersey for a mere $24.99. I'm sure no one was impressed by the dress. It's not really "me," but it is gorgeous and totally vintage. I think FMIL was hoping that I would find a different dress. In this example, I would feel extremely guilty ever spending more than a few hundred dollars for my dream wedding dress. FMIL and pretty much anyone who knows the cost of a very expensive dress would look down upon me. That wouldn't be such a great feeling. In this situation if we had full reign of the finances to pay for our own wedding, then the price of the dress would not be an issue. I would purchase it (whether it be very cheap at $24.99 or somewhat expensive near the $1k mark), and not feel guilty as long as I have Hubby's approval. He knows that I am a reasonable person, and therefore it would not be an issue.

Pulling this back to my original point.. it's a bummer not to have much financial control over the wedding right now. We have no money saved up for this wedding (it's all going towards the house), but somehow we'll make it work. I have confidence that we can pull this together. There will be tons of DIY projects in the future, and I just have to keep my head up high. My vision is coming together slowly, and I just have to make this wedding planning process work for us. *fingers crossed*

Ultimate squishee couple ready for marriage!
Just needs the planning process to work out for them...

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