Family of the bride and groom, if you are reading this, I am going to ask you not to continue. It's not bad, but there is venting involved, and I would really appreciate it if you would allow me privacy for this post.
I really mean it, if you are still reading, please stop.
OK, if you are still reading, I don't want to hear anything about this from you. You are not to speak to me, Daniel, or ANYONE else about what you are reading. You have been warned.
I had the money talk with my future father-in-law last night.
It was actually significantly easier than I thought it would be, but there were ideological differences that I knew would be a problem that came out.
For instance, checking with Daniel's aunts to see if there's anyone they really want to invite before finalizing the guest list. For me, coming from a family who genuinely just wants me to invite people that I want to invite and that is so small that my entire family is about the size of Daniel's absolutely must invite family list, that is just inane. Obviously, Daniel and I should control the list, and I do feel like we should make reasonable allowances for people our immediate family wants to invite, but as far as I'm concerned, anyone beyond that circle has no say whatsoever in what happens. I mean, Daniel is close to his aunts, cousins, and grandparents, but not super, super close which is the only conceivable way that I could justify giving them a real say.
But we're going to talk to them anyway to keep the peace. And by "we," I mean Daniel, and by "talk," I mean let them know gently and with as much accommodation as possible that they don't get to influence the guest list.
OK, OK, enough of that. My FFIL's requests were very reasonable, especially when he is giving us enough money to almost cover our original budget. Mostly, I was worried about how many people he would want to invite in exchange for giving us such a generous amount of money and was prepared to refuse a large chunk of it in order to keep things small, but the number of people he wants to invite is doable. I think we're going to go over the "Do Not Pass" limit that I swore I was going to stick to, but that's OK, especially since a fair number of people now probably are not going to come.
It is also OK because I officially give up on my $10,000 budget. If you remember, I was all about not spending a ridiculous amount of money on the wedding a few months ago and all into the savings, but now that I'm actually looking at everything....I could do it, but I don't want to. More than anything, I don't want the stress of planning my dream wedding on a small (I can barely bring myself to say that word in relation to $10,000) budget, but also....when it comes down to individual things, there are things that I am willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money on. Mainly, the dress, the venue, and photography. And I want the wedding to be beautiful and memorable and everything we want it to be. So I'm going over budget. It will still be reasonable, and I'm not going to plan on using more than $12,000 so that we absolutely do not use more money than we have available and because now I'll be factoring in the honeymoon in addition to that amount. But I'm not going to kill myself trying to save money because it's just not worth it, and Daniel is already seriously worried about my sanity.
I know I'm not as far along as most of you in the planning process, so what do you think about my budget plan? Reasonable? Smart? Is it worth throwing money at the problems you don't want to deal with?
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THROW MONEY AT PROBLEMS. Sorry. I'm such a firm firm firm believer in that.
ReplyDeleteOur original budget was "around 15k". I knew it would be tight, but we thought we could do it. Once we booked our venue and talked to caterers, there was no way food + venue came in under 10k, so I finally sat down with a Google spreadsheet and punched in numbers.
At the time, we were planning to DJ our own wedding, not hire a videographer, DIY our flowers, and reuse my sister's centerpieces. But I tossed in line items for those anyway - $1000 for the DJ, $500 for flowers - amounts I knew were reasonable. I stared at the numbers, the final total, and I felt kinda sick.
A year later, we just booked our DJ, I hired a florist, and even though we didn't get video, we spent 50% more on a photographer than we planned. And it's so worth it.
The bottom line is this: if the money is there, and you have it to spend, your sanity and happiness and time to spend with friends without stressing is going to be worth so much more in the long run. Don't spend money in ways that makes you uncomfortable, but if you want to spend it and you feel good about what you are spending it on, then don't worry so much about the bottom line.