Online Wedding Planning Guide

Arrange a time to discuss the following wedding topics with your fiancé.

Don’t just spring it on him while he’s watching his favorite Monday night TV shows. Tell him that you need to discuss paying for the wedding and ask when would be a good time for that. (Laugh lightheartedly when he replies, "How about the year 2035?")

Talking about money is stressful for most people (probably including you), so give the guy a little warning, would ya?

• Do you want a do-it-yourself type of wedding where you and/or friends and acquaintances do the work?
• Do you want to mix some do-it-yourself with some professional wedding services you’ll pay for with cash?
• Are you both comfortable asking your parents to contribute to your wedding?
• Are you comfortable asking just one set of parents to contribute to your wedding?
• What can you plan to contribute yourselves (financially or creatively) to your wedding?
• Do you have money on hand that could be set aside for wedding costs?
• Can you come up with a savings plan that would allow you to have money on hand by the time the wedding rolls around?
• Would you be willing to take out a loan from a bank to pay for the wedding?

In our next post, we’ll discuss some of the different ways you can divide the expenses of a wedding, and what the various implications of these choices are.

See you then! Tags: 3. Money Talks by Debbie
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You’ve gotten a few wedding planning things under your belt at this point: (1) you’ve agreed to get married and (2) you’ve identified the things about the wedding that are most important to you. Those are big steps. Now, take a deep breath, because this next step is where the wedding planning rubber meets the road.

You have to figure out how much money you’ll have to spend on your wedding. This is where you decide what you’re willing to "pay" (and I don’t just mean financially) to get the things you’ve realized are important to you as you plan for your wedding day.

Imagining a fairy tale wedding with all the trimmings is free. Making it actually happen is going to cost you. You can pay for things with money, hard work, barter, or a piece of your soul (if, for example, you must swap a piece of it for financial help from your mother).

To help us save even more money, we called on friends and family with particular skills to provide other aspects of the wedding and reception. A friend of ours owned a restaurant and he offered to purchase all the food we needed from his wholesale distributors, and he offered us his kitchen for all the preparations. Another friend who is a Lutheran chaplain offered to purchase our flowers with her wholesale flower card. She also offered to create our bouquets, boutonnieres, and centerpieces. Getting the flowers wholesale and not having to pay a florist saved us a considerable amount of money. A third friend, who is a jeweler, designed and created our wedding bands. We got rings we both like at a discounted rate. Two people from my mother-in-law’s church offered to set up and maintain the buffet during the reception. This saved us from having to hire catering staff to manage that aspect of the reception.— Paula

Paying With Time (”Do It Yourself”)

How much time do you want to spend making your own decorations or invitations? Do you have the skills to do that kind of thing without accidentally chopping off an appendage? Do you know people with the kinds of skills a wedding requires (catering, photography, flower arranging, etc.)? Are you going to be able to get the service and quality you want from these friends?

There are plenty of good books on the market about saving money at your wedding. I read several and certainly know the one I couldn’t live without, but every bride’s situation is different, and most books include some good advice.

I followed or modified a few suggestions from other books, for my own wedding, despite the fact that all my friends, every member of my family, my fiancé, and I are all basically without useful skills (there’s very little call for physical therapy or technical writing/editing at a wedding).

Pay By Debt

You can also pay for your wedding with money you get from outside sources, such as parents, in-laws, and bank loans. Those choices come with a different set of costs. Is the wedding important enough that you’re willing to spend several years paying it off? If your parents or in-laws contribute money, will they expect you to plan certain parts of your wedding the way they want you to (the probable answer to that is "yes")? Are you fine with that?

Once again, these are all questions to which there is no right answer. Only you know what you want and what you’re willing to pay to get it. And if you don’t know, then this is when you need to find out. You and your fiancé must talk about how you’d like to see the wedding paid for.

Since my husband and I had no money at the time and my parents had no money to contribute, the entire wedding was financed by my in-laws. I now feel I took the easy way out, by letting them take control – and foot the bill – I missed out a bit on having the wedding be a more comfortable celebration for me and my husband. – Betsy

Prepare to Talk

In the next post, we’ll review your online wedding planning guide homework exercise: talking to your belove about M.O.N.E.Y., including possible topics for The Talk. You might even provide your beloved with that list ahead of time, so he’ll know what topics to expect. . . . Or you might not.

Tags: 3. Money Talks by Debbie
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These paragraphs are where I get to spout off, give advice, and relate some arguing points. I supply grooms with the tips for how they can contribute . . .and how to make it look like they’re paying attention the next time their bride wants to "talk." I wish it were all bubbles, angels, and satin for you and your bride, but somebody has to get down to brass tacks, and I was elected.

The Wedding Notebook is an excellent starter. The two of you should shop for it together. Yeah, I know, but it scores points you’ll need later, especially if you want a bachelor party.

Photo holders make a nice addition to these notebooks after the wedding. That way, she can keep the "after" photos with a sort of "before" journal. She’ll get a kick out of it in later years.

While you’re at it, buy a "Bride’s Bag" for her or suggest that she make one. This would hold her notebook, cell phone, and the like. Notebooks get lost. A lifetime of habit ensures that a woman’s not likely to leave a bag behind. You should also suggest that she make more copies of her handouts than she thinks she’ll ever need, because those get lost, too.

It might be a nice time to invest in a small fire safe, too. You can keep all of the vendor contracts and stuff in there. After the wedding, photos and time capsule kind of stuff could go in there as well.

IMPORTANT: Suggest all these things offhandedly and seemingly unrehearsed or she’ll expect this level of attention throughout.

It’s also vital that you not be the one to close the doors on her dream settings and trappings. If something’s too expensive or impractical, give her time to come to that conclusion on her own.

Okay. Now to "The Talk." Actually there will be many more than one. To fully understand, take as given that there’s the way things ought to be and the way they are. First off, this is not “your wedding, too.”

What does that mean? When your bride asks your opinion, what she actually wants is to tell you why you’re wrong. She’s already made up her mind. If she says she’s flexible on something, she is lying to herself. It’s really not her fault. It’s just that no matter what you say or when you say it, it’s too late for changes. NEWSFLASH: It was too late when you met her. She’s been dreaming this one up since she was old enough to visualize the dream man she gave up on when she settled for you. She really is the one who cares most.

Second, when you have a discussion about the particulars, and you get her to agree that you’ll take time to think about it and settle it later, she means by tomorrow noon. This isn’t her fault, either. The perception of time is gender-specific. This schism in language is a lot like apocalyptic religion; "later" and "soon" mean different things to different people.

Brides decry the male’s "lack of meaningful input." The reality is that men often give up submitting input after a spell because they realize that "meaningful" is synonymous with "agreeable." These consultations are very similar to those all-night discussions where her mind is made up. For some reason she wants you to try to convince her otherwise and fail. To guys, this is pointless and a waste of time.

Maybe you do have ideas and maybe you do care as much about some aspect as she does. You might enjoy debate. It could happen. Tell her now. Don’t wait.

As for the rest of us:

There are things that should not be, like dogs in tutus, cats in sweaters, squirrels on water skis, and grooms picking silver patterns.

You see what I mean. So try explaining it to her.

Tags: 2. Figure Out What Matters by Mike
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“Isn’t this his wedding, too?” you’re asking. Well, yes it is. And it definitely is important to make sure that the wedding you envision isn’t totally out of line with what your beloved has in mind.

The only difficult part of that important task is that, in many cases, your beloved has no idea what he has in mind. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that men do not tend to fall into the Pre-planning wedding crowd that has been imagining this event a hundred different ways since they were five years old.

Men more closely resemble those women for whom it takes some time to realize that just saying you’re willing to get married doesn’t actually get the job done. The difference between men and these non-planner women is that when men realize that somebody needs to get on the ball and make this wedding thing happen, men also know that that someone does not have to be them.

Many women find dealing with their beloved’s lack of meaningful input to be one of the most frustrating parts of planning a wedding. If you are one of those rare women whose fiancé loves nothing more than to page endlessly through catalogues of invitation designs and discuss with you the pros and cons of each, then the following advice is not for you.

For the rest of us:

1. Recognize that when you ask your beloved where he wants to have the ceremony, and he says, "You’re the one who cares. Why do I have to decide?" he’s not totally off the mark. In all probability, you do have some set-in-stone rules about where you’d be willing to be wed.

Be sensitive to each other’s wishes and styles. The wedding should be an expression of the coming together of two individuals and a blend of who they are and where they come from. This came into play in such areas as where we got married, the vows, who stood up with us, and the food we served. — Anne



The last thing you want is to ask your beloved where he wants to have the ceremony only to have him enthusiastically exclaim, "How about at the Star Trek: The Experience exhibit in the Las Vegas Hilton?!"



His first attempted contribution to your nuptials would then be met with (I’m guessing here) you crying, "What are you, crazy?!" in a tone of horror and disappointment. Such an encounter is unlikely to leave him excited about participating in the future.




2. Provide your beloved with limited options and real decision-making power. For example, identify a few locations where it would be acceptable to you to hold your ceremony. Present those to your beloved as options and then let him choose.

If you say, "Would you rather get married on the beach at sunset or in my parents’ church in Vermont? " your beloved is likely to have and be able to voice an opinion. If he chooses your parents’ church in Vermont, you can’t then spend the next two hours trying to have a debate about why the beach would be better. When he gives his opinion, let it count.

Also, don’t be too annoyed if you give him this kind of limited choice and he responds by saying, "Why did you narrow it down to just two choices without talking to me about it more?" This will be despite the fact that you tried to talk to him about it more, but he told you he had no opinion.

Take a deep breath. You’ve meditated and mentally prepared yourself ahead of time.

Smile and look deeply interested as you say, "Oh, fabulous! You have a different option you want to talk about?"

Then sit back and listen to him mumble about how he could have come up with one if only you’d talked to him earlier. Tell him you can’t wait to hear his ideas. A couple days later ask him again about where he’d like to have the wedding (or whatever the topic is). I can almost guarantee that he’ll voice an opinion about those limited options that you provided him with in the first place!

3. If you determine an area of the wedding about which your beloved truly cares more than you do, let him have sole control of that. This means that if he chooses to demonstrate his leadership of that part of the wedding planning by completely ignoring it until the last minute and then running around like a stressed-out headless chicken, so be it. He does things his way, and you do things your way. Better get used to it. (This is excellent practice for your marriage, where you’re going to have to hear that he’s "about to" fix the broken hinge on the cabinet for months—possibly years—before he actually does it.)

In this site, you’ll find a special section set aside for the male point of view at the end of each chapter. WORDS FROM THE GROOM will give you a little insight into what men think about each step of the process their women go through. Be warned, what they think is not pretty!

Tags: 2. Figure Out What Matters by Debbie
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