Weddingbee

How did you pay for your wedding?

So far, my Fiance and I have been paying straight cash for everything or charging it (for protection purposes) and then immediately paying it off. We are planning and paying for not one, but two weddings with two different sets of vendors. However, it’s been a bit frustrating for me because I am not used to living check to check.

All of my vendors have approximately the same payment schedule so every couple of weeks, the next installment of several hundreds to thousands of dollars is due - an extreme source of stress. In December/January, my venue’s second payment, my final gown payment (when the dress comes in), and my photographer’s second installments are all due - this comes to around $8k in payments at once. Wouldn’t that freak you out as well?

I’m one of those people who feels uncomfortable leaving a revolving balance on my credit card month to month. My Fiance tells me I’m weird. However, most of my stress has come from the inability to make a decision on the vendors that are left. No doubt - booking the reception/ceremony venue was the most stressful/difficult part of the entire process. Thank goodness that part is over!

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I was reading David Bach’s national bestseller Smart Couples Finish Rich the other night, and in it he discusses prenuptial agreements. We all know that this is a touchy subject for most couples but it should not be ignored. He suggests most couples should discuss them early on in the engagement, even before getting engaged. He also says asking your husband/wife to sign a prenup doesn’t mean there is something wrong with the relationship - it just proves how serious they are about their financial future.

Between myself and my fiance, we don’t know of anyone who has gotten one done before their wedding. But then again this issue is kind of personal so maybe they haven’t said anything about it.

I was wondering if anyone has discussed this subject with their prospective spouses and what kind of reactions they have received, both positive and negative.

My fiance says that if he were a lawyer advising me about prenuptial agreements, he would tell all of his clients to get a prenup to mitigate any future disputes, but that as a spouse he would feel a bit hurt/insulted. But he generally supports whatever I want to do regarding this issue. I am a bit on the fence…..any thoughts ladies?

What is the best online wedding program? I know “theknot” has an online guest list manager, there’s also “wedding tracker.” I’d like something web based, so my mom and I can both use it.

Thanks

Bella

As much as I try to pay off my credit card debt in full each month, sometimes it’s hard to do so, especially when it comes to my wedding. You see, I love reward points. It’s like free money to me, since the more points I get, the more cash I get back, which I use to pay down the debt.

Unfortunately, as of late, since I have been on a shopping frenzy, the debt has been piling on faster than I can pay it down. Plus, the money that my parents are giving me for the wedding hasn’t come in yet. Also, almost everything I’ve bought (favors, invitations, accessories, etc) were purchased online, meaning they only take credit cards.

So I decided to call my credit card companies to get them to lower my interest rates.

I tell all of my friends this: Call your credit card companies once a year to discuss your interest rates. I try to never pay above 10%. How do I do this? It’s easy.

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As a full-time University student and mildly neurotic bride to be, I can’t live without my Post-It notes! I use them constantly and have them in several colors, sizes, and patterns. And guess what? Now you can have the same thing, only on your computer!

There are several programs available; and after doing some research Mr. Blueberry told me this would be the best for my needs. It’s a free program and though I haven’t used it very much yet, I’m really impressed with it so far. The only caveat is you have to download a program called “free download manager” before you can download the post-it program itself, but that was easy enough that even I could figure it out for myself.

The one thing Mr. Blueberry had me do is un-check the box with something along the lines of “Run Free Download Manager at startup” as I was installing it (it’s one of the options on the steps to download). After I downloaded that program, the post-it program started to download automatically.

All in all it was a pretty painless process, and now I’ve got a great new program to help keep my life in order! I’ve already made notes about “blog entries to make” and “to-do for the wedding,” as well as “emails to reply to.” Already, I can’t imagine how I got along without this gem of a program!

I hope you find it useful for your own wedding planning or everyday use :).

As much as I hate to use the phrase “B-List Guests,” I think it’s sometimes inevitable that we have them. It’s especially unavoidable if you have parents who want to send out invitations to certain guests just in case they want to come - mostly to be polite and to announce that I was getting married. I gave my mom 24 “seats” and only 10 are coming - maybe 9. So now my guest count is all off and I’m barely making my 85 minimum guarantee.

My problem is not so much that I have B-List guests, but that I only ordered 60 full invitations. I have extras of just the invitation layer, but I’m out of the backing layers and pocketfolds. Tonight after work, I will be at Kate’s Paperie looking for these items, or I will be stuck sending out the incomplete versions - just the invitations and the RSVP card with tissue paper.

Tip 1: Order much more invitations than you think you need.

Speaking of RSVP cards…

I feel bad about inviting the B-List people because my reply card says to respond by October 1, which is this Sunday. Any person would be able to figure out that they were on the B-List. I’m racking my brain to see if there is a tactful way to give these people their invitations while letting them know that they are “second-choice”. I can just imagine: “Hi, here are your invites. Sorry that they are late, but we didn’t think we would be inviting you.”

Had I known that I was going to end up with B-List guests, I would have had some reply cards printed with a later date.

Tip 2: If you expect to have a B-List, I would highly suggest getting two sets of reply cards, one set with a slightly later due date.

Are you having any B-List people at your wedding? If so, how did you end up inviting them?

The TSA has updated what you can and can’t bring onto planes:

Travelers may now carry through security checkpoints travel-size toiletries (3 ounces or less) that fit comfortably in ONE, QUART-SIZE, clear plastic, zip-top bag.

After clearing security, travelers can now bring beverages and other items purchased in the secure boarding area on-board aircraft.

At the checkpoint travelers will be asked to remove the zip-top bag of liquids and place it in a bin or on the conveyor belt. X-raying separately will allow TSA security officers to more easily examine the declared items.

Some airports have implemented a prescreening program where you pay a yearly fee (around $100) and get fingerprinted, your eyeball scanned and a background check. You still have to go through a metal detector and get your bags scanned to get to the gate, but you don’t have to wait in line anymore.

Is that something you’d sign up for? I would.

(via lifehacker)

I may be biased, but I am pretty excited about some stuff going on at the Wedding Library…! They just launched a new newsletter and have introduced some pretty convenient services (plus, they used a bee motif-how cute?):

• THREAD bridesmaid dresses: Starting this month, the Wedding Library is exclusively doing NY sales for Thread, which is stopping sales out of its NY showroom. Since I use both Thread (for my maids dresses) and the Wedding Library (for planning), I am, especially excited to have them both under one roof.
• The Stylish Bride/ Wedding Stylist: Apparently Julie Sabatino runs the Stylish Bride and basically can be hired to help you shop for/style/coordinate your entire wedding day ensemble. Although I’m not sure I actually needed a stylist, I can imagine that, had I worked with one, I would have had a far easier veil shopping experience.
• Travel Siblings / Travel agent: This is kind of self explanatory-they do honeymoons, guest hotels, destination wedding resos, etc. Though I had my wedding planner (at the WL) help me book/block my out-of-town hotel rooms, I definitely appreciated the guidance.

And best of all-Free gift! If anyone uses the new styling, travel or bridesmaid services, they’ll get a free white wedding day umbrella. Not that any of us hope for a rainy wedding day, but you never know! (The promotion is good through the end of the year!)

And I completely admit that I get disproportionately excited when something has a “free gift.” Even if the gift is like, let’s say, return address labels with kittens on them. The whole something for nothing thing just gets me every time.

AHHHHHHH!! Now that the day is drawing nearer, I had to make a schedule of the day’s events. It still hasn’t hit me yet that I am actually getting married. But making the schedule definitely helped cement that fact. This is what’s happening on the wedding weekend.

November xx, 2006 - The Day before the Wedding

Until 1pm
Drop off everything at the venue and check that I packed everything for the weekend

1:30pm
Check in at hotel with my girls

1:30pm - 2:30pm
Have lunch

2:30pm - 5:30pm
Relax

5:30pm - 7:30pm
Rehearsal Dinner

7:30pm - not too late
Hang out with wedding party

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I’ve mentioned a few times that both Mr. Butterfly and I are huge Excel geeks. Seriously - we do everything in Excel. My personal budget is on Excel, our guest list is on Excel, our school and work is in Excel, etc. In fact, the only other program that I use as much (aside from the Internet and email of course) is PowerPoint.

Anyway, back to Excel. On Sunday, after we finished our registry, we updated our budget spreadsheet. The one we have is slightly complex, consisting of actual costs, payments made to date, payments due, when the expenses go out on a weekly basis, whether it’s cash, credit or check, and the balances of each type of money on a weekly basis. Ok - that made it sound way too complicated.

This is an image of what my budget looks like. (Mouse over the bottom righthand corner and click on the arrows to expand the image to original size.) The next page groups all of the expenses together into cash, credit and check to see how much cash I will need vs. what is being charged on the credit card. Then I can see how much cash I have to pay off the wedding charges on the credit card.

I’ve blanked out all of the amounts on here for now. But I promise to post this complete version, with formulas and amounts, and make it downloadable after my wedding.

I will say this though. Once I finished adding up my expenses, I realized that I went about 15% over my original budget. It’s not that much considering that I added other expenses that were not included in my original budget (i.e. personal trainer). But I’m starting to think that no matter how much you try, you’re going to go over.

What do you think?