Wedding Blog

To be very honest, I think that once you’re married to the person, neither person should feel the need to be ‘reimbursed’ by the other. I think this is an event for the both of you and for you to want to spend the rest of your life with him, the ‘yours, mine and ours’ mentality should be gone as soon as the engagement happened. I understand that it’s hard to see that all your savings are going into something when he can only input his two cents, but at the same time, come the future and there are kids in the picture, he may be the one forking out for tuition and other expenses and you wouldn’t want him feeling the same way you do. But I think that once you’re married, all the yours and mines will be an ours so it shouldn’t matter.

I agree with Beverly. I feel that once you’re married money is no longer his or hers, it is ours.

My fiance is not nearly as good with money as I am, but over the course of the past year has greatly improved. Every now and then I still have a hard time with his past spending, but the debt will be gone before we are married.

We have friends who each have an “allowance”. It is in the budget that each person gets a certain amount of money each month to spend on whatever they want. We plan to do the same. Other than the allowance, all expenses must be agreed upon and in our budget.

Agreed with the above. I have more money saved up than my fiance and am paying for the wedding rings, the honeymoon, and a lot of the incidentals that our parents are not paying for. Although I know we’ll be getting cash as wedding presents, I see it as “our money” for the future, just like any savings that I have will be ours.

But then again, I do not intend to have individual accounts - we plan to merge everything once we get married.

I know I’ll get a lot of crap for this… but if your man is not financially secure or just plain irresponsible in handling money or just doesn’t have any $$ to at least pay for part of the wedding….you really shouldn’t get married in the first place. If you’re having financial/mis-trust/mis-use money problems now, it’s going to be a bigger issue after you get married. My comment really applies to the mid-twenties something who should have had enough time to go out into the real world and make some money

Just off the top of my head, don’t know how sneaky you want to be (I have the feeling I will be in the same situation when the time comes). It seems as if you have very good credit. Why don’t you open a credit card with your name and put all the wedding expenses on there, “pay it off” with the money from the wedding, when in actuality, you have already paid it off with your savings (not accruing any interest), and just put the new wedding money back into your savings. It’s horrible, I know, but it’s not exactly lying and I will probably have to do something similar myself. You can then make a deal about the savings- either he has to start to equal yours, or you only contribute (from your original savings) to a joint account when he puts money in as well.

I understand your feeling, my fi has credit card debt that he is still about 7 months away from paying off. I feel like I end up absorbing more costs since I want all of his extra money to go towards paying off debt that he accrued before we met. It is annoying because I will end up putting up more money when we buy a house because I was frugal while he was having fun. I feel like we are more on the same page now though, and since he makes more money it will even out. We have joint checking and savings as well as personal checking and savings to give us independence. You do have to let it go/deal with it with him though, otherwise your feelings of resentment will cause big problems.

I agree with the view that once your married you shouldn’t feel the need to be reimbursed, but the bigger issue for me is what is his view for the wedding. If he has grand wedding plans that will cost big bucks, then I think heck yes, he should have been responsible with his money in order to provide for the type of wedding he wanted. If he doesn’t mind getting married in a family/friends backyard, then I think your on your own with the expenses. Maybe you can both compromise and recoup half what you spend, and share everything over that.

I have to agree with many of those who have commented, and I’ll share my experience with you. I have a significant amount of debt from law school, and have tended to be a bit loose with getting bills paid on-time over the years; FH carries no debt, saves and invests meticulously, and has probably never paid a late fee; he also earns about twice what I do.

When we decided to get married, we set the wedding budget based on what we could afford to contribute - all our bonuses, plus an amount from each of our paychecks each month. He chose to add some savings he felt comfortable contributing - not all, of course, and in no way does it touch the “six-month-reserve-in-case-the-economy-collapses-and-we -both-wind-up-unemployed” fund. And, we agreed at the outset that our motto would be “No wedding debt!” - and we’ve stuck to it.

We’ve lived together for the last year, so we’ve addressed most of the day-to-day financial issues - he makes the house payment, and I pay for utilities, groceries, and insurance. He pays for most of our entertainment - restaurants, concerts, etc.

Once the wedding is paid for, we’ve agreed to take the same amount we’ve been setting aside for that expense to pay down my debt. This way, when it comes time to either add on to our home, or sell this house and move into something larger, my debt-to-income ratio will have improved significantly.

As hard as it will be, you must have detailed financial conversations with your FH. Since I fall into the role of your FH, as you’ve described the situation, let me tell you that it’s VERY difficult for the less financially secure partner to bring up the issue (for me, there’s a lot of emotional baggage attached to money, stemming from my parents marriage (and eventual divorce). There were a lot of tears from me and confusion from FH until I was able to articulate the emotional aspects of money to me — because it’s just not an emotional issue for him.

Because we’ve had the difficult conversations, I understand his expectations for our financial future, and I now share them (and take them seriously). I feel a great sense of responsibility for saving money, paying bills promptly, and bringing up financial issues when they arise rather than using my old tact of simply hoping the problem will fix itself.

If you’re feeling burdened and uncomfortable talking about your differences in dealing with money while you’re planning the wedding, you probably recognize it’s only going to get worse once you’re married — and the challenge is how to have the conversation now without judging your FH negatively. If you feel superior to him because you’ve saved and he hasn’t, I guarantee you he will pick up on that - and for a guy, I’d imagine there’s a lot of additional angst from being the historical “provider” that goes into it.

Good luck to you!

I had the EXACT same situation. Here is how we came to an agreement.

My fiance felt bad that I had socked away so much money and he had been irresponsible, but his parents didn’t teach him otherwise. We’ve been together 6 years and the light finally went off in his head 2 years ago. Since then he’s been getting much better about saving money, he paid off his credit card debt, bought a ring and a vacation for us for the proposal and paid that off, too.

While he still wasn’t as good at saving as I was, he was getitng better. Fast forward to money talks. We wanted to buy a house. I had enough money saved up for the down payment and then some. Fi had zero. Recently he moved in. WE split everything down the middle. I fronted the money for the house, but in the mean time, fi has been packing away money. I’m saving too, but he makes more and we discovered he can even save more than me. So…all of my money is going towards the house. Fi is paying for the honeymoon. Any money we have left over will be spent on home inprovements.

There is one thing he’s paying me back each month for…dancing lessons. We decided together to take lessons. They were quite expensive (read $5000 total) for 18 months. If we paid upfront we got a 10% discount. Soooo, I paid upfront and we agreed that fi would pay my back 150 each month so we were splitting it. His half will be paid off by the wedding.

I really don’t agree with the paying you back method, or that you get all of the money after the wedding. It’s starting out kinda hostile. money is already a sensitive issue. If you put all of the money a joint account to be used for the house things after the wedding, you’d still be getting half of the money.

Who wants the wedding? If fi would be fine with a small wedding, even though you’re paying for it, isn’t it kind of for you? I have no clue what your wedding is going to be like or who wants what, but it’s just something else to consider.

It’s difficult, but part of marriage is about sharing and giving yourself to one another. I’d be leary of starting off on the wrong foot. Is he getting better with saving money? Does he see the importance now?

I completely disagree with Natakie16’s approach. That is the sort of thing that can breed distrust in what should be your most trusting relationship. If I did something like that, it’d bother me forever.

I agree that you should calmly and succinctly talk it out with your fiance to figure out a solution for you two. I’ve heard friends’ firsthand accounts of all joint to almost all separate, and it works both ways, it just depends on the couple.

I come from the other side - when we first started talking marriage, I was heavily in student loan & credit card debt. Although, Mr. Lime didn’t ask, I made it a personal goal to pay down as much of that debt as I could before engagement or at least marriage. I did not want to carry that debt over or make him pay for something that was my responsibility. That was one reason that we decided to wait a year or two more than original “timeline.” While I did start to get impatient, I know look back and see how the new timing is a lot better in a lot of ways.

We did talk about it and his thoughts/opinions in helping me pay down the debt post wedding, but in the end, through a lot of hard work, frugality, and seriously divine intervention, I’ve been able to pay most of it off AND save my half for our wedding. It does take a HUGE attitude adjustment and change in lifestyle, though, and I don’t know your man, so I’m not sure if he’d be willing to do this to marry sooner. This antsy girl was ;).

I’m somewhat in the opposite position. I’m in grad school, and while I get a stipend, it isn’t much. I’m pretty responsible with my expenses, but my FI already bought and sold one house, and makes over twice what I do, so he had a lot more saved up than I do. We recently bought a condo in both our names and he paid for the downpayment and closing costs. I still feel a little guilty about not being able to chip in more, but he says he’s already looking at things as being ‘our’ money. Plus, he really wanted the condo (moreso than I did), and I’m hoping to contribute most of the money for our honeymoon costs.

So maybe it’s hard for me to sympathize with what it feels like to part with all your savings for the wedding, when it should be more of a joint thing - but if the money you get back is going to be purely ‘yours’ instead of ‘ours’, what would you do with it? If you’re worried that after putting it in a joint account, he might spend a lot of it with his less stringent spending habits, I can see that concern. But when I think of savings, the things that come to mind are: emergency funds, house downpayment, furniture, vacations, finances for children one day… all things that are shared for a married couple. I’d recommend putting it in a joint account but after discussing your goals, and agreeing not to touch it for frivolous expenses. It comes down to what a lot of people have already said - you need to discuss it openly, as hard as that may be… good luck!

My fiance recognizes he has a hard time saving money. And is trying. His spending habits have rubbed off on me a bit but the difference between us is I would never let myself get into debt. Not even anywhere near it.

When we’re married, I’ll be in charge of our finances (for obvious reasons). We decided to have both a joint and personal accounts. We’re contributing equally into the joint account and since he makes more than me, he’ll be able to save more in his personal account. The joint account will pay for joint expenses like mortgage, utilities, etc. My personal would pay for my little shopping sprees. I would never want his money to go towards that.

Paula, thanks for reminding me that it’s hard for him to talk about his finances. He once told me he was embarrased about his situation and didn’t want to talk about it. Besides knowing he had credit card debt, I didn’t know much more until we started planning the wedding.

So, after thinking about this some more. I think I will let it go. I’m happy spending the money for our wedding. I think I freaked out a little when I realized I no longer have a cushion to fall back on if I needed it. We’ll most likely need the gift money to furnish our new place any way.

We have an open and honest relationship. I’m sure most of us don’t immediately run to our significant other the second an emotion or thought pops into our head. I just needed a little clarity on this issue. Thanks for all your input.

After re-reading, I will say my response was a bit tactless, so compromise, maybe he can start saving for a down payment on the house, and then both contribute to a mutual savings fund

Something to consider, especially since he has already mentioned that he is embarrassed, maybe he is also self-concious because you are obviously better with money that he is, my boyfriend and I are in that situation, I’m not saying lie, but try to think of something that you spend too much on, and then I would definitely consider sitting down and saying, look I have such and such and issue (in my case I spend too much on shoes) and I need to cut back on my spending, why don’t you and I both work together to save more instead of spending so much. If its approached as a team effort you might have better luck.

I first approached him by getting angry and saying he was spending too much and telling him how much a month he was spending that he could have been saving, it made him think, but then he got angry at me too. Once I took the team approach and showed him that I wasn’t exactly flawless in the matter he was much more willing to work on the money issue. Now he even has a budget and a jar of change and a balanced checkbook!!!! Good Luck!!

I think before you settle on a wedding date or move forward with anything marriage related, you two need to sit down and have a heart to heart about money; about the current situation and about damage control, plus how to manage money in the future.

After my fiance spent his savings on the engagement ring, we were living pay check to pay check. With student loans and him taking a major pay cut for a new/better job, money wasn’t coming in readily. At the same time, I was spending my expendable cash on wedding stuff that my parents were not covering. I briefly thought about asking for reinbursement, but I realized that going to med school in a few months, I will have to rely on him for money. Also the wedding gift monehy will be going towards our future house, which is an investment in itself.

I truly believe that everything evens out, as long as both parties are aware of the financial situation. There are things that we will be responsible separately: student loans and credit card debt (from before the marriage).

Trust me, I HATE talking about money, but we had to do it, and I don’t regret it. He helped me realize that I can easily pay off my debt by moving some funds around that I didn’t even think about. Communication is key. The biggest fights after marriage is about money. So eliminating that factor will help your marriage in the long run. Good luck!

I am in the same situation (have saved up, whereas he hasn’t). Our solution was that once we decided to get married, we’re both contributing the same amount every month into a joint wedding account, and all wedding expenses will be paid from that account based on our wedding budget. If either of us decides to go over the budgeted amount, the overage has to be paid on our own (i.e. if I spend more than the $1k budgeted for my dress, that’s coming out of my savings). We gave ourselves a year before our wedding date, so we won’t have any wedding debt. It also helps establish a savings routine, which we’ll continue after we’re married.