Treat your wedding as part of a bigger plan
Priya Naicker
Many couples spend time and money on achieving their dream wedding, but not nearly enough on achieving their ideal marriage. It’s important to consider your goals for the marriage and the financial resources required to achieve them. Your wedding should be viewed as one part of the bigger plan.
Here are five tips to help you make your dream wedding a reality without breaking the bank. 1.
Understanding what you want to do, be and have together (and individually) for the future helps place the priorities of your wedding in the right context. This helps you plan the ideal wedding that complements,
Plan your financial future and goals
rather than compromises your future married life by assisting you to make decisions based on what is truly important for the wedding and your years ahead. 2.
Consider what is most important to you when it comes to the wedding experience. Then think about what’s essential to delivering it. Prioritise and compromise on the details that have lesser impact on outcomes. 3.
Start by creating a budget and actively finding ways to better apportion your spend. Make an informed decision on how much you’re comfortable with spending on your wedding and use your budget to balance your current spend with saving toward amounts still required for
Decide on what’s most important Turn the dream into a goal and the goal into a plan
the wedding. If you do go over budget, agree on what trade-offs will be required. 4.
It’s now easier than ever to do your research. However, be aware of the potential for information overload and unverifiable information. It’s often helpful to complement research with recommendations from family and friends or people who have used suppliers. 5.
Find ways of making the exercise playful and use it to garner excitement for your future plans. This could include creating a spend challenge between you and your partner. Divide wedding planning aspects and challenge each other to produce the best outcome within budget.
Priya Naicker is an advice manager at Old Mutual Personal Finance
Do your research Make it fun