I remember when my husband and I were getting married; we actually had over a year to plan the festivities, but still things were really stressful and very difficult in some ways. We had the counter productive differences of opinion between ourselves and both sides of parents about what we had to have versus what we wanted to have, and also the battle over finances given the cost of the wedding was being split three ways. Overall we did really well; but of course now that everything is two years done I keep finding new and nifty things that would have been such a huge help to us when we were doing our planning.
For a while we were going to go without favors then at the last minute I hit on making little bookmarks with our picture on and a little poem, and braiding some threads of our colors onto them along with a ring. In retrospect the ‘easy do it yourself’ idea was probably a lot more time, money and energy than if we’d found favors online somewhere like that. Especially as it meant the two nights before the wedding myself and my maid of honor and my bridesmaids were up until past midnight braiding the threads and tying them on; we could have been doing so much more with our time.
I seriously lucked out as I found the perfect purses in a charity shop which matched their dresses, and put jewelry sets into them, and gave each of them a more personal ‘can use outside of the wedding’ gift as well. My husband never actually found anything for his guys however. I think he wound up just buying them drinks when they went out for the bachelor party. A friend of ours who got married recently gave each of his ushers and groomsmen knives. That was very nice of him, but I hate to think how much he wound up putting out on top of everything they were already paying for the wedding itself, given they had much more elaborate suits and dresses than we had had.
I see many people using the, “You’re only supposed to get married once,” as justification for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their ceremony. Personally I was very grateful that we managed to get married so economically; I think the most we spent was on our rings which was around $400 each. A similar amount was spent on my dress and the bridesmaid’s dresses combined. My husband got the cheapest type of tux possible from the rental shop; and they all looked really great. My sister did the catering, our music was mix CDs and we were married in a local city hall and used their chambers for our reception.
I see my husband’s co-workers spending thousands of dollars on engagement rings and I just twitch. I would never feel right spending more than our rent payment on something I was going to wear no matter how ‘pretty’ it is. I really ticked off some jewelers because I wasn’t wanting diamonds or gold.
At the end of the day what was important to my husband and I was that we were together with our family and weren’t killing ourselves financially. The money we didn’t spend could be put aside for finding a place to live and more practical things.
We’re happy, that’s more important than shinies and frillies.
