Wedding Finances

IP and I have secured a venue and date for our wedding next year. Before August 2009 is over, my new initials will be one letter away from the translation of a “dirty” word that rhymed with my nickname in Mexico. Let’s just put it this way: the rhyme placed my purity and chastity into question when I was 12. At 31 when I’ll be married, there’s no doubt my purity and chastity are long gone, but I never imagined my new married initials would be close to the English translation of that word. What the hell?

But it doesn’t matter. I’m marrying my best friend.

We did, however, have a serious discussion about wedding finances last night. Neither of us is on the way to the poorhouse, but with our venue selection and the movement towards securing other things (photographer, band or DJ, cake, celebrants, clothes, etc, etc, etc.), the initial budget we set before IP had a new job and before the realities of the wedding industrial complex began to set in are hitting us smack in the face. As an event planner, the prices tend not to faze me, but it’s something I need to start focusing on as I plan – we’re not spending the government’s money here, we’re spending ours. And because of this, there was something of a communication problem between IP and me; I wasn’t keeping him updated as I accepted these realities while he was still working within our initial budget. With the venue and a photographer we’re considering, that budget is blown. The rest of what we’d need? Not even a factor at that point.

So yeah, some discussion was needed.

Neither of us wants the typical southeastern Michigan wedding – a friend of mine acknowledged its existence when she said our wedding website made her event look hickish (it wasn’t hickish [this is], but it wasn’t a New York City wedding, either). Neither of us, conversely, want the lavish New York City wedding – it’s not in keeping with our personalities at all. We want something in the middle – classy but modest. But we’re starting to see that this comes with more cost than we had originally anticipated. We’ve begun to face the fact that we’re not doing an indie-budget wedding. We’re not going to meet the $28,000 average cost, but we’ve gone from what we thought was a hard and workable limit to deciding to carefully examine all options – not being ridiculous but also trying to keep everything on an even keel in terms of cost, appearance, and functionality.

What prompted this discussion was my search for a wedding photographer. Prior to us discussing marriage, I always knew that wedding photography was going to be the thing I desperately wanted done right. That meant seeking out a photojournalist and paying cringe-worthy prices, but it also meant a lot to me to have our pictures reflect us as people, not as statues. That they cost so much is not a surprise to me, but it was to IP. When he began to argue that the cost of the photographer was ridiculous, I took it to mean that my desire for a talented photographer was ridiculous. I was hurt and angry – it’s the one thing I really wanted. Why was he ridiculing me?

But he wasn’t, of course. He was trying to point out the disparity between our declared intentions and what reality was presenting us. He wanted me to acknowledge the cost is a rip-off. If we go with one particular photographer we’re looking at, we’re paying him/her over $300 per hour. And I do acknowledge it – it feels like a rip-off. It’s incommensurate with our initial budget estimations. Something had to give: the budget, the services, or our guest count.

It’s something we’re facing and something we’re accepting. The plan going forward will be to consider all options carefully and proceed as we think best – as I said above, we’re not throwing everything and the kitchen sink out the window and blowing all our money, but we realize that the type of event we both want to have would not have worked within our initial estimates. In the end, our discussion was one of acknowledging that our expectations weren’t lining up with our budget – we’re fine with that, but proceeding as if nothing had changed was what was needling IP the most. Now that those things are reconciled, we feel a lot better about moving forward and will make the best decisions for us as a couple that wants to throw a nice party so our friends can see us get married. We don’t want to argue about the budget again, but we will advise each other as we attempt to wrap this up into a neat little package that’s executed with WordNerd-IP style next August.

Modest but classy. Let’s not spend money willy-nilly, but let’s make sure that we’re getting top services if we do drop a pretty penny. If there’s an economical alternative that we’re both happy with and stays in tune with the wedding as a whole, that’s the way to go. We’ll talk frankly about costs and express our opinions, doubts and preferences without the other person taking offense – after all, it’s the industry we’re criticizing, not each other.

That’s the new philosophy as we plan over the next 300+ days.