Don't Blow Your Life Savings on a Wedding

People very often think that weddings have to be a grand affair. You have to spend a ton of money to have the perfect dress, venue, food, music; the list goes on and on. This is the beginning of the rest of your lives right? Shouldn't you start it out with a bang? In my eyes, this is a very common misconception. Sure it is fun to have a big wedding, if you have the means to do so and that is what you really want, but the problem is that people will make a lot of sacrifices just for this one day.

The first thing people might do is wait to save up so that way they can have a really big wedding. So they will stay engaged for a really long time until they can save up enough to pay for their big day. It may seem like this is not a big problem, but what can happen with some long engagements is that the couple will start to cohabit. I already talked about a lot of the problems that can arise from cohabiting last week, one of which is that people get comfortable where they are at. They get used to living together but separate (living in the same house, but with separate bank accounts, problems, etc) and when they do eventually get married they may not blend their lives as much as they should to have a strong marriage.

If people do not want to wait, but still want to have a big wedding they will go looking for the money in other places. One of these places is a bank. The problem with going to a bank to get a loan for your wedding is that you start out your marriage in potentially crippling debt. This means that right from the beginning you will be fighting about money and working constantly to try and pay off your debt. This is no way to start your marriage. You should be spending time together, building a life together, not constantly fighting and working.

Another place, and perhaps an even more dangerous one, is to go to either of your parents for money. Now this creates a lot of problems. First of all you are forever indebted to the parents that lent you money. They get first priority when it comes to whose house you go to for holidays, who you will live closest to, and perhaps even what you name your kids (depending on how much then spent on the wedding). This is because if it was not for them, there would not be a wedding, so they get to dictate much of your married life. That also means that they get a big say in a lot of the wedding decisions. Now this is especially dangerous because wedding planning should be a bonding experience between the husband and wife, not the bride and her mother. It is the first big test of how they will work together as a married couple and if they do not go through it together, they will start out their marriage with a wedge between them. Finally a big problem is when you are married you are supposed to be independent. So the longer you rely are your parents, the longer it will take for you to gain that independence and really build a life with your spouse.

Overall, you should focus on saving up and using your money for things like buying a house, not a wedding. A wedding is just one day, but having a strong foundation for the rest of your lives is critical. You can still have a great wedding even if you do not spend a ton of money on it. There are plenty of ways to save money and have an inexpensive wedding. I promise that if you do so your marriage will do just as good, if not better, than if you spent a fortune on your wedding.