It seems like there are plenty of posts out there about weddings and how much they cost and all of those things.  Weddings are expensive and I think they can provide the perfect exercise for frugality and value – cut on areas that you dont care about, spend money on quality in areas that you do care about.  That being said plenty of the things I’ve decided to do for my own wedding could be done cheaper or skipped entirely – the reason that I’m spending money on these things is because I believe I’ll get lasting value out of them or because it’s something that I dont mind spending my money on.

Note: These will only be the things that are specifically for me and what I’ll be wearing during the wedding – the cost of things like invites, save the dates, facility rental and all of that are not included.  Below is what I’ll be purchasing for my wedding.

A New Suit – Growing up in the western US, I never needed a suit (and I still dont) because no one frequently wears a suit.  The only ones that do are bankers and lawyers, of which I am neither.  Formal here is considered a nice pair of blue jeans or stretchy wranglers with a this sport coat – both of which were quickly nixed by my fiancee.  I didnt even own a suit that fit until right after I finished grad school and through connections I was able to land an interview with a firm in the DC area.  My friend that worked there asked what I was wearing – so I told him kakhis, shirt, tie.  Apparently, that doesnt cut it on the east coast, so the night before I left I went down and bought a suit and had it tailored.  The guy who was helping me was pretty shocked when he asked when I needed it done and I told him “tomorrow” – but everything worked out.  Since this is my only suit, I’d like to get a new one in a different color, and I’d also like a 3 piece suit for the wedding.  Due to the fact that I’m fairly tall and lean, in most suits I look like I’m wearing a tent.  I’ve found some that fit well, but they are quite expensive, around 1,000.  The one thing that’s really committed me to making this decision is the fact that I’ll be able to wear this around to events and other things, driving the cost per wear down significantly over my lifetime –  unfortunately for brides, the wedding dress is a 1 day only thing.
Cost: $840

Shirt – I’d also like to get a new custom shirt with my new suit.  As mentioned in the preceding paragraph I’m tall and lean, so like most suits, most shirts don’t fit all that well either.  I seem to run into three problems – it’s too short in the tail and wont stay tucked in when I move around (and I’ll surely be dancing the night away) or if it is long enough the arms and body have way too much fabric in them, or, the neck is waaaay too tight.  This usually makes it fit weird and uncomfortable, which annoys me.  Since I’ll also be wearing this for the rest of my life, I don’t mind spending more money than normal for a shirt – so I’m getting one custom made.  I can pick fabric, collar type, pocket or no pocket, and wether or not I want my initials on the cuff.  Pretty awesome stuff, I think.
Cost: $112

Tie: H has been bothering me about getting a tie basically since we got engaged.  She quite literally wanted to pick what color tie I was going to wear and base the rest of my outfit off of that.  I was able to put the kibosh on that, because I didnt want to lock myself into a certain suit and shirt color because of some tie that was picked out when everything in the wedding planning game was fluid and no colors had really been nailed down.  After a while, I was told I could pick basically any color tie I wanted as long as it was yellow-ish.  I havent picked one out yet, but Ive found a few that could go up for “vetting” soon.
Cost: $60 

Shoes:  I’ve got a pair of solid black shoes that I’ll be wearing for this – it’s probably the only thing that wont be new for my wedding, but that’s fine – I’m happy to save the money and I happen to find the shoes rather comfortable.
Cost: $0

Grand total: $1,012

So, as you can see, I kind of got quite a bit of stuff here for my wedding.  This wont be the case for most people I imagine, but before this I only had 1 suit (I think others have more) and I didnt have to get a custom made shirt either.  However, I figure that this will be a day I’ll remember for a while, and looking nice is something I’d like to do – It also gave me a pretty good excuse to get something that I’ve wanted for a while (the shirt) and have a nice place to wear it.

Honestly, I really dont think this is that bad – if you look at my grand total, that’s the cost of a relatively low priced wedding dress (though correct me if I’m wrong, ladies), and that is all I need.  In addition, I have yet to hear of an instance where women can wear their original wedding dress again, and I will be able to wear each one of these items more than once, bringing down the cost per wear significantly.

Readers: How much did you spend on your wedding clothing?  Were you able to wear it again or is it sitting unused in the closet somewhere?  Do you think that I went overboard or is this reasonable?

Last summer,  I’ve been to more weddings than I have in my life up to this point (combined).  These weddings have involved some amount of travel, wether it was a 2 hour drive or a long flight.  It goes without saying that the costs of attending a wedding (and being there for your friends) adds up quickly. There is the obvious costs like tux rental and gifts for the couple,  and there is also the costs not directly associated with the wedding, such as lodging and the like.   I’m obviously no expert, but I was looking to save money anywhere I could.  I’ve got a wedding of my own to pay for too.

1. Split the hotel – If  it’s an out of town wedding, you may need a hotel.  Find one of your friends who is also attending the wedding and offer to share.  Most of the weddings that I went to this summer were out of town, and I was able to do this for all but one of them.  Even better than splitting the hotel is staying with friends in the area (or family)!
2. Watch your wayside costs – These are costs that are not directly related to the wedding, but are related to getting there.  This includes everything from food at the airport to extra drinks after the wedding.  Keeping these low will help you stay focused on the reason that you’re there, which is to celebrate with your friends or family members.
3. Travel Cheap - While you may not have all the time in the world to plan for wedding travel, usually you get plenty of advance notice.  Set up a reminder with your favorite airline for a cheap fare to your destination, so they can email you when a price drops.
4. Don’t go overboard on the gift – Most couples set up a wedding registry, and you dont get a prize for buying the most expensive thing on there, nor does it display your name next to the “fulfilled” box on the registry website. Buy within your means, or better yet, make something.
5. Wear what You’ve got – you dont have to have new clothing to go to a wedding – if you’ve got some formal or semi clothing on hand that you like, then simply wear that.  I know this is much easier for guy than it is for gals, but who is going to remember if you wore the same dress to a wedding last year?
6. Take advantage of what’s offered – there’s no reason to save 20 bucks on a hotel by not booking at the wedding hotel and staying at some place a few miles away.  The wedding hotel may have a shuttle from the reception, or it may be the reception location.  You could save a few bucks on the hotel cost, but pay it back in cab fees.
7. Find free activities in the area - Typically weddings are a weekend event if you’ve got to travel to them, so take advantage of the area.  When I went to a wedding in Iowa this summer, we spent a morning at the farmers market the day of the wedding.  It was a great time, and I didnt spend anything.

First and most importantly, I’d like to say thank you to all the veterans.  I know that it is because of all of you that I can sit her comfortably behind a laptop and blab about whatever I feel like blabbing about.  I appreciate your sacrifice and will forever be indebted to you.  

A while back on Get Rich Slowly, they had a post about what they called “The Foolywed Game“.  When I read it I thought it was interesting, and knowing that I had plans to get married sometime in the future, I made a mental bookmark to get around to sitting down with H and playing the game.  After we got some downtime, we decided to play recently.  Honestly, I wasnt quite sure what to expect, I just figured it would be something interesting we could do for a half hour.

There obviously were some areas that we knew exactly what each other would say, and others were we only had best guesses, but couldn’t be sure.   One of the things that it did point out was that we saw things differently for different reasons.  For instance, the first question asks you to put some things that basically every couple needs to buy in order of importance.  I ranked the things in terms of how important they were to me, while she ranked them based on how much each cost (or she anticipated that they would cost in the future).  I thought this was important because I feel like you really need to know why someone answers a question the way they do.  Obviously, understanding that she’s ordering them by projected cost will help us determine what to spend our resources on in the future.

It was also nice to know that she’s at least interested in learning all of the details of our finance system in case I die unexpectedly.  Right now, we keep our finances mostly seperate, but we have a few joint accounts.  One is for bill pay, and we have 2 goal savings accounts for the future.  She typically pays the bills that come by paper mail with a check (I think this is just the trash bill) and all of the other bills are on autopay out of our joint account.  I look at the bill statement every  month to make sure that everything jives with what I expect it to be and leave it at that.  I’m glad that she wants to learn about everything that works (because I’d make her learn anyway), and it will be much easier to teach her if she wants to learn.

We each obviously had different financial role models, but we both looked up to them for the same reasons.  It wasn’t because they were wealthy, but more because they are frugal and have more of a DIY approach when it comes to finances.  Frugality and thrift isnt completely lost on the two of us, but I think that there are ways where we can do more of the good stuff and a bit less of the stuff that’s not so good.

I also learned that our financial values line up pretty well, but because she’s not too interested in finances (aside from that whole spend less than you earn thing), she doesn’t know that there is a ton of ways to earn money with the money that you already have.  Surely at some point in the future when we have spare money, there will be talk about how best to allocate it for the future, which will be a learning experience for both of us.

We also view money a little differently, and I think that’s partially because I’ve been reading extensively on it from blogs and the like for about 4 years.  Over those four years, I’ve learned so much, so I know where I want to be with my money in the future, and I know the difference between financial independence and retirement.  While I thought I knew where I wanted to be with my money 4 years ago, where I wanted to be was defined by different things than it is now, so it has obviously changed.  I’m excited to have more talks about this with H and hopefully we can get on a similar playing field with our money and our goals.  We arent that far apart as it is, but being in sync would make things much easier.

H and I have a few decisions to make regarding finances and goals in life.  I cant wait to make them and will be excited for the day that our goals come to fruition.

Overall, I think this was a solid exercise to do with H.  We both got a better understanding of what the other one things about money and how they operate, which will only help out in the future.  This obviously won’t be the last conversation of its kind, but it was a good first one.

Readers: how often do you talk about money with your spouse/significant other?  Are you of very different money habits, or do you both tack towards the same line?  Has it always been this way?