House or Wedding?

stenweb

Hi.

Bit of a long one this... please bear with me!

My girlfriend (now Fiancee) and myself recently got engaged... we are currently living togther in a 1 bedroomed flat, that she bought (using a OpenMarket Homebuy scheme), whereby they "lloaned" a 17.5% deposit on a £112,000 1 bed flat (e.g mortgage is around £92,400). She bought the house in July 2008... I'm guessing we are going to be in Negative Equity...

We are looking to pay for the wedding ourselves, with a £12 budget, which we can achieve between now and September 2011 (unfortunately nothing from our parents)....

I'm currently paying off (over 18 months), a £3000 loan.

We also would like to move house to somewhere bigger... this leads onto many questions:

1) Is it better to get married first, then wait another year (September 2012) to have enough money to move?
2) Can people on these house buy schemes go from Single Mortgage to a Joint Mortgage??
3) Who would be the best type of people to advise on this? Mortgage providers? Financial advisors?

At the moment, we both think we need advice (so we don't get 2 years down the line and wish we'd spoken to someone), but not actually sure who we speak to!

I think I've provided most information.... but obviously can post more information if needed.... we are both 30 by the way, earning around £27,000 pa, each.

Alikay

stenweb wrote: »

We are looking to pay for the wedding ourselves, with a £12 budget, which we can achieve between now and September 2011 (unfortunately nothing from our parents)....

I'm guessing you mean £12,000 here? Well, DD and her DH got married 5 weeks ago for a lot less than that! It was a full church wedding with lovely gown, 9 men in formal suits, bridesmaids, photographer, flowers etc. Followed by 3 course dinner for 80 and disco for 130 ish at night. Still only came to £6k. Over on the weddings board there are people with much smaller budgets planning some amazing weddings on a shoestring....just take a look. :j

I guess the answer to your question depends on how important a wedding is to you. It will never make any sense based only on pure finances, as a will to protect your assets if one of you dies will always be cheaper than even the most basic wedding, but you can stll have a great day for a lot less than the brochures from "something or other Golf and Country Club" will have you believe!

JayZed

I'm all in favour of not spending ridiculous amounts on weddings, but £12 is pretty ambitious, even for a MSE!

Seriously though, we had a really fantastic and very memorable wedding day with about 55 guests for under £2,000 (ten years ago, but inflation hasn't been excessive since then. That was a register office with a reception in a room in the town hall, catered (superbly) by a local Lebanese restaurant with booze on a drink-or-return deal from Oddbins. Even if you want to go for something bigger and more glamorous, you can do an awful lot for under £5K.

In terms of moving house, if you're okay living in the one-bedroom flat now, then another year or so isn't going to do any harm. No need to rush into buying something just because you get married. On your combined income you could definitely afford something bigger, so just save patiently until you're out of negative equity and have a decent (15%+) deposit.

I don't know whether you can switch to a joint mortgage on a homebuy scheme, but is there any specific reason that you want to do so?

bosseyed

Personally I'd put house before wedding.

Now £12k is I suppose comparatively cheap for a wedding these days (I know 3 different people who spent £30k plus on theirs), but even so I would suggest (as the post above) that you can still have an awesome day for nothing like that much and that the money would perhaps be better spent setting up your new life together rather than chucking it all at one day.

All personal preference this, and I know I sound a bit of a preachy misery guts, but my own personal view of the current wedding culture is that its become a bit of a 'Look at how much we can spend and how lavish we are' sort of affair, where the point seems to have become about how impressed the guests are by the materialistic trappings of the wedding. Which is a shame - I feel when you get married it should be about the two of you, and not become something which is all about the guests and how much better it is than X or Y's wedding.... Fair enough, theres people out there who like lavish, who enjoy showing off in front of hundreds of people etc etc, in which case go mad, but I think the sensible types spend less and put the money into something with a little more....worth, perhaps. I always think you can spend thousands of pounds and hundreds of man hours planning the perfect day and still have a terrible time if the weather is rubbish or (to draw from a couple of fairly recent wedding stories) the horse pulling the carriage goes mental and flings the bride into a ditch, or the wedding photographer turns out to be completely useless and lops everyones head off in the pictures.

My wife and I got married in Vegas (tacky and horrible to some) and it was the most wonderful, memorable, romantic and happy day ever. Awesome it was, total cost including the flights probably just under £1,000 and the rest of our money went into the house. It also sidestepped the political issue of what do do with her bazillions of relatives who don't all get on :rotfl:

Jowo_2

Cut your wedding budget and don't move until you've repaid your debt.

tessie_bear

id put a house before a wedding everytime....id also put paying off debt before either of them.....good luck

PasturesNew

I went to a wedding earlier this year that was held in a posh hotel, they were married in the posh hotel, everybody was fed, then an evening do, with a DJ, further food, bride etc got a whole room for the day to prepare, bridal suite for the night. She had all the stuff: bouquets, dress, bridesmaids, chairs, chair covers, bows, favours, flowers, table decorations, er cake ... and 1000 other things I couldn't even begin to guess at, but brides would know what "all the stuff" is - total bill £7,500. There was no skimping.

Anyway, choice: house wins over wedding.

tek-monkey

Buying a house together is a bigger commitment than marriage!

Imp

I'd go for wedding, after all, this isn't a one shot chance of buying a house, they will still be for sale in ten years time. If you aren't satisfied with your wedding day, there is nothing you can do about it.

stenweb

Many thanks to the replies so far.... as for the wedding budget - obviously, I meant £12,000k.... and this was with us skimping where possible. As we only plan to get married once, we want the day to be one to remember... we are doing a lot of the "basics" work outselves, to make it as personalised as possible, while keeping costs down..

Believe me, we have looked at about 60 venues now... the average for 80 people (my fiancee has a VERY large family), at a decent venue, seems to be around the £6000 mark.... we certainly don't want one of the (for which we've seen many) posh hotels, where the rooms looks like a souless conference centre, which many do.

We are just trying to way up which to do first - house or wedding, taking into account our current mortgage situation, the housing market, etc ,etc.... hence wanting to know who would be the best people to talk to about this.

Oldernotwiser

A marriage is more important than a house but there are far more important things to a marriage than the wedding!