Weddingbee Blog

In June, I got a Groupon for a 30-day pass at Bikram Yoga Harlem and, after months of procrastinating, finally got myself up there! It was A-mazing! Especially after two years of an unbelievably sedentary lifestyle (like, literally 20 hours a day sitting or lying in bed!).

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In the 30 days, I took 17 classes and truly fell in LOVE with Bikram. For all of you that don’t know, Bikram classes run exactly 90 minutes and consist of a set series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises. Bikram yoga is practiced in a room heated to 105°F with a humidity of 40 percent.

Unfortunately I can’t stay at Bikram Yoga Harlem because the studio is WAY too expensive for me (like $150 a month), but I still have months until the wedding, so I am not sure what I am going to do!!

That being said, I wonder why I didn’t budget my own health into my wedding budget. I budgeted skin care, jewelry, and even new undergarments, but I didn’t even think to budget a gym membership or even a yoga DVD!!

This last weekend, I finally sat down and decided on a firm budget. Until now we have been working with very vague estimates because I had a really hard time understanding how much things should cost and how much I was willing to spend. Now that we’ve secured a few of the more important (expensive) items (location, dress, suit, wedding planner, and photographer), it was much easier to get an idea of how much money we had left to play with and how we wanted to distribute that money. I think it’s REALLY important to revisit your budget, and not just to ADD to the budget but also to make adjustments as necessary! (And it WILL be necessary.)

I also created this matrix to help me think about all the various wedding-related expenses:

The idea is that things that are the most important to us as a couple and those that will last the longest deserve the most attention (AKA largest percentage of the budget). On the other hand, for those things that we don’t care about and that won’t really have a lasting impact, we should consider spending little to no money on.

So all the items that fall in the upper right quadrant are those things that we are willing to really splurge on, those in the upper left and lower right are the items that we want but shouldn’t blow the bank to get, and last but not least are the items in the lower left. These are items that we really shouldn’t bend over backwards to get and perhaps could even live without. (Shocking, I know, but there ARE things that we may not need!)

So my preliminary matrix would look something like this:

Now there are two caveats:

1. I really have to be honest with myself about how important each detail is to us as a couple. It’s important to think of things on a sliding scale and not just as important and unimportant.

2. It doesn’t actually help us figure out how much we should spend on each item; it just helps us think about what percentage of the total budget we are willing to spend on each item.

So I guess the question still stands: Where would health/exercise fall? Somewhere in the lower right quadrant?? Perhaps even the upper right??

Does anyone have any advice regarding good workout DVDs or free resources online?