SEARCH

The Fantasy Period

My mother calls it the fantasy period. The definition of which is the period of time from when you get engaged to when you actually decide when you're going to get married. Now to some people this might appear to be complete nonsense, but I can tell you that this stage of your engagement is very real and extremely irritating to those around you! I must confess that when John first asked me to marry him I had no idea whatsoever of how much it would cost us to get married. I suddenly realised that hosting a wedding was not as easy as it sounded and what I had in mind for our marriage would not necessarily be what would actually happen. Especially when that involved a full reception for 300 guests at a top notch location with an amazing honeymoon to boot. Trust me, that certainly isn't in the budget.

We were very fortunate in that my parents gave us the option of a fabulous wedding present. Traditionally, the father of the bride pays for the wedding., but we like many couples nowadays have decided to finance it ourselves. So how much does a wedding cost? How much do you need to save? How long is a piece of string?

My best advice to brides to be is to sit down with their fianc�s and do up 3 budgets. The first is the fantasy budget, and what you would REALLY love to have for your wedding. The second is what you can realistically afford for your wedding. And the third is the contingency budget, this is what you will do for your wedding should you have a change in personal circumstances, say you lose your job, or one of you gets extremely ill and you have other financial commitments to take care of before your wedding day.

It's always a good idea to talk to your fianc� as much as possible about your plans. Ok, realistically you can't tell him about your dress of course, but make sure that you consult with each other as much as possible. If you think about it, you will be spending the rest of your lives together, and quite possibly have to share your finances in the future, this is a great chance to practice for future life. Planning for a wedding is certifiably one of the most stressful times in your life together, and communication will be the key to getting past it.

Choosing a date is not as easy as it sounds, especially when John and I work in such different trades. John's time of work is confined to school holidays, and often his calendar can be booked up as much as 2 years in advance, so we had to consult the Department of Education guidelines in relation to the future school years. Once that was done, we then had to decide on a time of the year when all of our family would be around and that wouldn't be too disruptive. We were happy enough that the spring midterm break would be convenient enough for everyone. Setting the year of 2007 gave us both enough time to save money to finance the wedding, and also a chance for John to schedule some time off for the wedding and honeymoon.

But that does mean that we will be getting married the year of my sister's Leaving Certificate, and the week of her mock exams, and also the year of Rebecca's (John's daughters) First Holy Communion. Ah well, sure you can never please em all ;-)

For most, planning for a wedding that's 2 years away seems ludicrous, but we're now beginning to check out hotels and considering what will fit in with our budget. Once we have a hotel selected, we can look at prospective churches in which to hold the ceremony.

We're seriously thinking about moving our wedding celebration away from Dublin City & County and having our ceremony and reception down the country a bit. For several reasons actually. Mainly the value for money which you can get once you get out of the Pale, is far, far better than most venues within the Pale. Whilst we accept that most of our guests would have to travel, we would far prefer to have a large party with all of our friends and family, instead of having to make guest list decisions based on finances alone. For example, for every guest we would invite in Dublin, we could invite an equivalent two down the country. These prices are just for starters, we're very confident that we could make further savings by moving our celebrations out of the city.

Other ways we intend to make savings are by purchasing as much as possible online, where we can prospectively save more than 60% on wedding dresses, bridesmaids dresses and more, like favours and invitations.

Still, with all of the savings we intend to make, it's going to cost us a pretty penny to get married. The saving has already started, and we're looking a frugal 2 years down the nose.