I am not getting married BUT I have been reading a few bridal magazines lately. I found out that many people tend to go overboard and go over their budgets when a wedding comes around.
Here is a wedding money mistake that people often make.
7. Having The Incredible Growing Guest List
The list of wedding guests starts off small enough and then seems to grow on a daily basis. If you invite Uncle Joe then you think you need to invite his ex-wife, even though they are divorced and have been separated for 5 years.
Then you need to invite their children as well. Their children are dating and want to bring along their significant others….who have stepchildren..and those children have cousins.
Before you know it the list has multiplied like gremlins who got wet and instead of having 30 people it is more like 300.
Having an increasing guest list now means that you have to adjust all other areas of the budget like the
food
drinks
venue
to accommodate more people. This drives up your costs and increases the stress as you try to manage all the people on the list.
Decide in advance what your absolute maximum number of guests will be and then tweak the invites to fit. Do not let people pressure you into adding them to the list….remember you do not need to invite EVERY person you went to high school with to your wedding.
Deciding who to invite to a wedding is always cause for a bit of anxiety. Sometimes just agreeing between bride/groom can be hard.
And some people are really weird about weddings — as in, they get offended if they’re not invited.
I remember seeing this couple whom I hadn’t seen in 5+ years and she made a comment about not being invited. And I thought to myself: “The last time I really knew you was MIDDLE SCHOOL. I’m not sure that’s reason to invite you.”
Anyway, it’s a lot easier to say “have a small wedding guest list” than it is to actually have one. 🙂
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Our wedding ended up costing about $20,000 to host for 185 people. The reception was the bulk of the cost. Looking back almost 6 years later, i do have the thought of “yeah, it would be nice to have the money in the bank” but the wedding was not only for us, but to celebrate with all our friends and family and thank them for their support in our lifes, and we wanted to share the most important day with them. but yeah, we could have paid off car loans, heeh…
Memories last forever so if you are satisfied with what happened during the wedding then I guess it was money well spent.
I guess I wrote this series for those who end up regretting all the money they spent.
I left a comment for you on Friday, but I don’t see it posted yet… did it perhaps get put in your spam comments?
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My wife and I took our wedding money and started our dream business instead (breeding arabian horses) it irked some family members, but they were irked that we were getting married anyways. In retrospect we we’d like to have the memory, but it’s nice to see the horses every day.
-Bill
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