Young folks weddings: match "projected" quality of life?

Idiophreak

Hi All,

Lame title, but I couldn't think how to phrase it...Just a discussion thread, really, to see how the younger brides/grooms on here view/viewed their wedding day in the context of their whole life.

How much did/do you think about how you'd look back on your wedding when you made decisions, particularly around the budget?

If you get married quite young, probability is that you'll be earning less and have higher debts than you will for the rest of your life - so the wedding day you end up with may reflect your circumstances at a relatively short period of your life, not the whole thing...and you only get one shot!...so do you:

a) have the wedding you can "afford" now and risk looking back and wishing you'd spent more
b) hold off on the wedding for a few years and hope you earn more
c) stretch yourself now, save really hard and try and get a wedding befitting your "projected" quality of life

Personally, I think I pretty much went for c - both the wife and I have pretty good career prospects and I'm always one for "backing myself" to do better. I really quite disliked the idea that, in forty years, I might look back and go "I can't believe I proposed with such a cheap ring" or "I can't believe I settled for...x, y, z to save a few pounds"...

Anyway, anyone see what I'm getting at, at all?

wanchai_2

It may be better to get the opinions of those who have more perspective i.e. those who got married a few years ago. Most people I know who've been married 10+ years never regret anything about their wedding, regardless of how expensive/cheap it was.

Also, it'll be interesting to see whether your own view changes in ten/twenty years' time! Did you borrow money to pay for it? How long will it take to pay off that one day?

For me, OH and I have enough savings to comfortably afford our wedding but NO WAY would I get into debt for it, if we had less money we'd cut our costs. But that's just me.

johannalf88

I think it depends... Our wedding is costing £8 1/2 thousand, but we had a budget of 10...! We just found that what we wanted (afternoon tea, marquee, then fish n chips n a booze up) doesnt actually cost that much! :rotfl: We could stretch it to get better champagne etc, or offer spirits, but I'm pretty sure that's not something I am goig to regret... It's a free bar so no-1 can really complain! :rotfl: I guess I could have got an expensive dress, but for one day don't think I could justify it to myself!

I guess I have taken the best of A & C.

Idiophreak

wanchai wrote: »

It may be better to get the opinions of those who have more perspective i.e. those who got married a few years ago. Most people I know who've been married 10+ years never regret anything about their wedding, regardless of how expensive/cheap it was.

Also, it'll be interesting to see whether your own view changes in ten/twenty years' time! Didn't your wedding cost £30K or something? Did you borrow money to pay for it? How long will it take to pay off that one day?

For me, OH and I have enough savings to comfortably afford our wedding but NO WAY would I get into debt for it, if we had less money we'd cut our costs. But that's just me.

I was hoping that older people would contribute too, assuming they were young brides/grooms once...I think that's the point...I don't know too many people who'd say "oh man, I really regret X, Y and Z"...but I wonder if they sometimes think "I wish we'd had the money we have now when we got married...we could have done A, B, C"...

Ours did cost quite a bit...and we took some debt to pay for it - which will take us a couple of years to pay off gently...(and it's fair to say it was the month-long honeymoon that caused the debt...not just "one day" )

Supporting my original point...the amount of time it's going to take to pay off is reducing all the time, as our wages increase and other debts get settled. It's about 20 months since I proposed now and a lot's changed in that time...our combined wages are now 50% higher than they were then, my student loan is due to finish next month and our fixed rate mortgage will also end, saving us a couple of hundred each month...we've finished paying off our sofa we had on 0%...and so on...So, with every month that passes, our life gets a little easier and the amount we spent on the wedding seems less of an issue.

Would you consider delaying your wedding if you couldn't afford everything you wanted? Or would you just press on and spend what you had?

wanchai_2

If we were in our early 20s, we'd wait and save a bit more, but then I wouldn't have wanted to get married at that age at all! Even so, there is a limit to what I would spend on a wedding. Our combined savings are over £70,000 so we're only dipping into them for the wedding!

Anyway, as we're in our early 30s, we wouldn't want to wait years to get married, so even if we were skint now, we'd just do it on whatever budget we had rather than waiting.

johannalf88

I'm kind of early twenties... (I claim early! :rotfl: OH claims mid!) I guess I don't really think age comes into it now. Once you can get passed the teenage pregnancy jokes! :rotfl:

Torry_Quine

Well I was in my mid twenties so personally I don't consider that young but others may do.

We had the wedding we wanted and we could afford, to me the two are the same thing!

Would never have got into debt to pay for it and honestly can't understand why anyone would! When we got engaged it was a natural progression to be married a year later and that was the most important thing.

Idiophreak

Torry_Quine wrote: »

Well I was in my mid twenties so personally I don't consider that young but others may do.

We had the wedding we wanted and we could afford, to me the two are the same thing!

I don't really mean "young" in terms of the decision to get married etc, though...I meant more in terms of your life...these days, at 25, a lot of people are only just out of uni, at most will have worked for a few years...so they're on year 4/40 - 10% of the way through their working life.

For most people, what they can afford at 10% of the way through their career is vastly different to what they can afford at, say, 50% of the way through their career...and I think this has been the case in the weddings I've attended...the weddings I've been to where the couple are in their 40s have been much more expensive than those for younger couples.

What you can afford *right now* and what you can afford over the course of your lifetime are often very different.

Torry_Quine

Idiophreak wrote: »

I don't really mean "young" in terms of the decision to get married etc, though...I meant more in terms of your life...these days, at 25, a lot of people are only just out of uni, at most will have worked for a few years...so they're on year 4/40 - 10% of the way through their working life.

For most people, what they can afford at 10% of the way through their career is vastly different to what they can afford at, say, 50% of the way through their career...and I think this has been the case in the weddings I've attended...the weddings I've been to where the couple are in their 40s have been much more expensive than those for younger couples.

What you can afford *right now* and what you can afford over the course of your lifetime are often very different.

I see what you're saying although I can't remember any wedding where the couple were in their 40's to compare.

Not everyone goes to university and we didn't so by the time we married we'd been working (although he was unemployed at the time) for seven years. We didn't save specifically to get married but obviously had savings from working.

daisiegg

Idiophreak wrote: »

What you can afford *right now* and what you can afford over the course of your lifetime are often very different.

Unless you have an age gap in your relationship !

I am early/mid twenties, OH is late thirties...we are having the wedding he can afford which is hugely bigger than the wedding I would be able to afford (costing probably around twenty five grand in total although five of that is coming from my parents).

The venue is the main hugely expensive outlay in our wedding and I do think that OH more than me was thinking not only how lovely it is, but how it would look. Whereas I'm almost the opposite - very slightly embarrassed at the excess! But then OH works in the City and to compound it, a lot of his workmates of a similar age to him are earning much much more than he is as he had a career change about four years ago, so is only in the early stages of his career.

That said, we are not getting into debt for our wedding and we wouldn't. If I was marrying someone my own age who was as poor as me and the budget was only my parents' five grand, then that would be all we spent. I think OH is the same - we are spending an amount we can comfortably afford, but we could have really stretched and spent double that - but we're not. We could have stretched even further and gone into debt to spend triple that - but we're not. So I think I am not particularly conscious of how the wedding 'looks', OH is slightly, probably because of the circles he mixes in at work, but not enough to get into debt for it.

Dekazer

I took the 'investment' approach when I took out loans for my degrees, as I knew these would directly impact on my earning potential. I do the reverse when I think about my retirement - I would rather live 'less well' now in order to make life easier later.

When it came to the wedding, we took a rather different approach. We decided if we were happy with debt, or preferred to use savings, and set our budget appropriately. Then we planned the wedding around our budget.

Actually, when I look back (though only 5 months later) in some ways I wish we'd spent less. The wedding day wasn't the 'best day of my life' at all. I enjoyed it well enough, and I like looking at the photos, but I don't even remember most of it. I remember the ceremony well, and a couple of other high points, but I could have had a much smaller cheaper wedding and enjoyed it equally. I'm very pleased that I only spent £100 on my dress, and got a cake from Tesco.

I will never regret what we spent on the honeymoon though, as I loved every single minute of it!!