Wedding Budgeting from a Personal Perspective: Part 4

Hello everyone. Continuing Vicki's Wedding Budgeting articles, we have the fourth installment where she shares with us more of her experiences as she plans a great wedding and does it while balancing the budget. Don't forget to read the previous articles if you haven't done so already. Enjoy!

During the last several articles, I've been putting together the essentials of our wedding for you: the location, the type of ceremony we're having, the place of the reception, and the date. Once these details started falling into place (and believe, me, it wasn't as easy as the articles make it sound! Putting on a wedding, even a small-ish one, is a LOT of work,) it was time to start filling in the blanks. I started with my dress. A lot of people say that every girl dreams of their wedding dress all the time, and knows what she wants. This was definitely not the case for me. Not only had I never doodled my name with my future husband's last name dreamily in class, I'd never given a thought to what kind of wedding dress I wanted. From the weddings that were going on around me, I knew people shelled out A LOT OF MONEY for a dress they would wear for around eight hours and then sit in their closet for 20 years, or more, possibly to be passed down, but most likely to hang on the hanger. I know that people spent up to $5000 for a dress. No joke. That was 1/3 of our wedding budget.

So, I decided to nip the problem in the bud and go to David's Bridal, which is like the Target of bridal stores. A lot of people have bad things to say about this store. I am not one of them. Tip: Look online before you go. There are tons of wedding dress designs to chose from, lots of terminology, and it is very easy to get overwhelmed if you don't know what you're getting yourself into. I knew I wanted a ball gown, $600 or less, if possible. For my bridesmaids dresses, since I wasn't paying for them, I wanted something less than $100 per person as well. We went in together on one Saturday, and as luck would have it, I found the dress type that I wanted, for $300! The key was that the style was being discontinued, and they happened to have my size. I don't mean to sound like a walking advertisement for David's Bridal, but they really do have a lot of great sales on dresses, and for me, were more than helpful. It can feel a little bit like everyone's getting married when you go to try stuff on, but I think that's a small sacrifice over going to snooty boutiques. My bridesmaids dresses came out to $80 a piece! Not only is it important to make smart financial choices for yourself, but also for your wedding party, especially if they are young and just starting out.

For the tuxedos, we went to David's Bridal counterpart, Men's Warehouse. We picked it not because so much it was cheap-it cost about $140 for each tuxedo, with Dan's being free-but because it would convenient for our groomsmen, since MW has locations all over the East Coast. A wedding always balances time and money, and this was one of the instances where the convenience of time won over money slightly.

Next time- You're invited!