Last month we focused on couples finances over in our online community, Your Amazing Financial Life, partially because was the month of love (Valentine’s Day!), but mainly because our Financial Coach, Stuart, is getting married!

And now we’re bringing all of the love and all of Stuart’s wedding budgeting and planning advice to you! Follow along as Stuart and his fiancée navigate this new chapter in their financial journey: getting married!

Part One – The Engagement

“November was a busy month for me and was quickly followed up by an even busier December. The Thanksgiving holiday was highlighted by getting engaged to my long-time partner of five and a half years. We’ve been talking about how we envision our wedding over the last year or two which allowed us to hit the ground running. We quickly realized that discussions, while important, moved the needle a little bit but the real work was still ahead of us.”  

“Fast forward about five weeks, we’ve been nonstop coordinating with all the vendors that come together to make a wedding possible. I feel like we’ve been extremely fortunate with finding vendors that are available for a wedding in the fall of 2022. Our goal was to get as much of the planning done while we were riding the rush of adrenaline of being newly engaged. Me being a financial planner and her being the organized engineer allowed us to reach this goal, but not without learning some valuable lessons that I thought would be good to share!” 

Lesson 1: 

Be as transparent and open in your communication as possible.  

As I mentioned earlier, we had been talking about what we envisioned our wedding day to look like for quite some time. What we did early on was decide on the big things that were important to us. For us this was the food, photographer, and DJ. When we created our budget, we prioritized those three expenses and looked for other places to cut back – flowers, cake and decorations.  

Lesson 2: 

Talk to your parents/family about your budget and get a crystal-clear idea of if/how much they’re willing to help. 

So, this one is difficult. With money being such a taboo topic to begin with, it’s difficult to open up this can of worms. The reason it’s so important to do early on in the planning process, however, is that it helps you build out your budget. We knew how much we had saved for the wedding, so figuring out the extent to which our parents could help allowed us to finalize our budget.  

Lesson 3: 

Stay organized! 

My partner had a spreadsheet ready for us to start working on almost immediately. We had multiple sheets for a guest list, budget, vendor ideas, etc.  

Lesson 4:  

Lean on people who know more than you do. 

We are very fortunate to have people in our lives that have experience in the wedding industry. As with anything, it’s difficult to know what you don’t know. Wedding planning is a prime example of this. My best piece of advice here is to let professionals and those with more experience do their jobs and to place your trust in them – ask your vendors your questions, they are happy to answer and they’re the experts!

 

Want to ask Stuart your questions as he continues to budget for and plan his wedding? Do this >>

1. Join us in Your Amazing Financial Life!

2. Follow us on Instagram for our weekly Ask Me Anythings!