Saving for a (hopefully) sunny day.

I have been thinking a lot lately about money and how finances work in relationships. Obviously, no financial plan is the right one, per se,  and, what works largely depends on the couple… and even if a financial plan works, it is never without its faults. Love is a powerful card, but when you aren’t on the same page with your goals, money issues can trump all.  

It was a choice by both of us to save money for this wedding. We want certain things for our wedding and we believe those things are, for the most part, our responsibility. As I said before early when I started blogging about this experience, I was shocked about how much weddings cost. A wedding definitely doesn’t have to cost very much. I am so happy for couples that have found a way to keep their wedding under $5000! Click here for a good example! I wish I had found a way to have everything we wanted for that price, but that was not going to happen. And, we are having a big wedding because this is one of those things in life worth celebrating.

I have now seen what the cost is of each part of our wedding day. I have worked very hard to find the best price for everything. And, I have (sort of) accepted that this is what a stack of paper costs….this is what food costs…this is what a person’s time is worth... this is what MY time and peace of mind is worth. What I am trying to say is if something truly does cost X and you really want that something, then you have to pay X to have it for your wedding. Knowing all of this and knowing that I don’t have to have it for my wedding, I don’t feel like I can complain about the cost of a wedding anymore.

To have the things we want, we have been saving our butts off.  It has been sort of difficult to limit our social lives in this way for so long. Coupons have helped. JI just found out that if you go to Target.com that you can print out so many coupons for just about everything to take with you to the store. I. love. Target. (Almost as much as I love Michaels.)

I truly believe saving for our wedding has brought us closer together as well. We are definitely on the same page. We agreed on a savings goal and we talk about how we are doing at meeting that goal at least once a month. We both want to be good savers even after the wedding. It is very comforting to know that I have a partner who cares as much about making sure we save for what we want and that we are financially secure. Wes is going crazy right now worrying about getting a job. (PLEASE New Jersey, give him a job!) We also both want balance in our lives. We said way back in 2010 that we didn’t want saving for the wedding to result in us having no life at all. I think we have done well with that.  The most significant thing is that I am so proud of us for saving as much as we have. We have worked and will continue to work hard. I am very confident that each time we set a goal that we will both work equally to meet it.

We have considered the difficult question of whether our relationship can withstand life’s tests (illness, children that take after their mother haha, our own insecurities, other unforeseeable events). What I know for sure is that we can and want to work together through everything. For that reason, whenever I wonder about those difficult questions, I feel confident that we have something great and that will continue to be great as long as we put in the effort.