Aug 21

Aug 21 Wedding Bliss

If you remember from my post back in February, my partner Jessica and I got engaged. https://www.atgfinancials.com/home/2018/2/27/break-free-of-your-wedding-paradigm

Flowers and Vases were provided by family members. These beautiful flowers came from their very owner gardens.

We have been planning this wedding since then. And when I say “planning”, it really means putting off planning until about 45 days out. We didn’t even have a date picked out until my sister-in-law announced that she was moving to Germany at the end of August. Well, she was the one who was going to be marrying us, so we started to get serious. We chose a date of August 11, 2018. It turns out that is a popular date for weddings. We couldn’t find any location available to host our wedding. It seems less than 30 days out is not a good enough time period to reserve a wedding venue in the middle of summer.

We finally got everything organized and were married. We couldn’t have done it without the help of our family and friends. It’s amazing what it takes to put together a wedding & reception. Thankfully our family was so supportive, beyond what we ever expected.

Things Jessica and I didn’t plan for but was taken care of by family:

-Flowers (Beautiful flowers from family member’s gardens and local flower stores)

-Decorations (My sister-in-law knocked it out of the park doing a simple burlap and white themed wedding)

-Wedding Vows (My poor sister-in-law had to remind us to get our portion of the vows ready on time, we got everything to her by the night before. She did great! 🙂)

-Drinks (Family members gathered coolers, ice and drinks for us)

-Housing was provided by family

-A car was provided by my mother-in-law

-Meals during our stay

-Photography (Camera provided by my sister-in-law and photographer was by brother-in-law)

Things we planned for and took care of:

-The wedding dresses. See my previous post: https://www.atgfinancials.com/home/2018/8/7/wedding-dress-success

-The food. We’re going to take credit here, but it was really Jessica’s cousin who offered to provide all the food for cost. Many hours of labor were gifted to us for the wedding. She also cooked everything from scratch. Using local, organic and natural ingredients. The food was incredible!

-The wedding license

The home made food after it had been hit by a few of our guest. (The cake was store bought)

-Shelter for the wedding

-Getting ourselves there

-Rings

Our family and friends were wonderful! They turned our simple wedding into a magical moment that Jessica and I will remember forever.

Now, let's get back to my real passion, finances. Ha! Remember what the average American spends on a wedding? Here are the numbers below:

We, by no means, spent anywhere near the above numbers. I wanted this blog to be open and honest. Jessica and I spent the following:

-$95 for the shelter

Our sign in book and yellow flowers picked out by my new niece.

-$300 for food

-$1,091.20 for flights

-$11.84 for table cloths

-$96 for rings

-$129.05 for dresses & shoes

-$550 is estimated family costs

Total Spent: $2,273.09

The above numbers do not include friends and family members travel costs. These are only direct costs to create, in my humble opinion, the BEST WEDDING EVER!!

I know that I’m slightly biased, but it was one of the most beautiful and magical weddings I’ve ever been to. Bonus, we don’t have buyers regret, or months of payments on our credit cards to start our marriage out. We are free to move forward in our life together without financial burden from our wedding.

The moral of the story is, family and friends are essential in our lives. I’m so grateful and excited to have a larger family that I get to learn more about and grow in love for.

The financial moral of the story is that your wedding is YOUR wedding. Do what makes YOU happy, not what makes others happy. What made Jessica and I happy was being outside, with simplicity, friends, family and good food made with love. It just so happens that it doesn’t cost very much to provide those things.