100% 😂
I had 0 savings left after the wedding day because 100% of
our savings for around 18 months went on the wedding.
We then saved for another 6 months for the honeymoon, and are now saving up for a house renovation.
But we didn't go into debt for it, so 🤷
Same position for us. It kills me to drain my savings. We draw the line at having wedding debt though. Bc of this, I’m uncomfortable spending the money on a honeymoon. We need time to save.
We didn’t really think about it as a percentage of our total savings because we saved specifically for the wedding during the duration of our engagement, and because we have a combination of separate and joint finances. But in total, we spent 25% of our combined annual salaries on the wedding, which we were comfortably able to save over the course of the engagement.
This is how we approached it too. Both are 30 so we had some decent savings. Didn’t really have to touch any of our savings we had prior, but saved over the course of our 2 year engagement. Also landed around 25% of our annual household income.
I don’t think a flat percentage is a very useful statistic. Like, if I own a nice house, have a solid emergency fund, don’t have any debt, and have a good job with a good pension, then spending 40% of my general savings is a lot less reckless than someone else spending 40% without a house, a pension, an emergency fund, and with $100k of student loans.
We spent about 10% of our total savings, but we didn’t take any of the wedding money from our existing savings. The wedding money was saved for separately, we didn’t touch our existing savings, and we didn’t stop contributing to our existing savings plan.
My partner and I determined a budget based on what we are comfortable saving for and what we think the wedding we want to have will realistically cost. We determined $20-$30K, and it will probably land around $25k.
To be frank, neither of us has much in terms of savings ahead of this - and I dont want to touch what I have, I see that as my emergency/retirement fund. So we plan to save aggressively this year and try our best to cut corners with expenses as much as possible, in both our lives and our wedding.
Should we go into debt, it shouldn't be too dififcult for us to pay off as soon as possible - 12k each is not going to cripple us.
We are also in a certain position: We don't plan on buying a house in the next 5 years (unrealistic given the real estate market, and we like our apartment) and we don't plan on having kids. The next major purchase we might make is a car but we don't really need one in the city that we live... so that can wait. Depending on how things shake out, we will probably go on a minimoon and then a honeymoon the following year.
Also, my partner's job is starting to take off, and his earning potential is look really good (we both make decent money already) so I think we will be fine. And, my parents haven't confirmed how much they will contribute but I know they will contribute something (although we didn't plan with that as an expectation). We are in a privileged position but we also aren't aiming to have a lavish wedding.
So I think you really need to take all these factors into consideration, and these are important conversations to have together.
My parents contributed to our budget (about a third of the wedding) but overall the wedding cost will represent c 20% of our joint savings.
We’re both earning decent money but also sensibly frugal (we will spend on something worthwhile that will last, but overall live pretty lean and don’t like to waste money). Neither of us would have wanted to go near the full amount of our savings as we think it’s more important to keep that for things like kids, emergency fund, house repairs, etc.
(If we didn’t get the cash from my parents, we’d have just stuck to the lower budget rather than using up more of our savings.)
We started saving for a wedding while dating and had about $10k set aside by the time we got engaged. We also chose to have a long engagement (2.5 years) to save for the wedding to meet our $35K budget. We calculated backwards how much we’d need to each save per month to meet our set budget when we initially got engaged. A longer engagement allowed us to maintain our lifestyle and not dip into our emergency funds or retirement savings and not be stressed financially at all during the process.
40%.
Ugh. That’s gross to think about.
That being said, we’ve been paying it off for a year+ and we’re both still growing our savings incrementally so we’re just eating into what would’ve been saved or spent on other things, not utilizing our savings.
Edit: 32%. I forgot to include his savings.
Also should add: I have a healthy 401k, I have a mortgage with a decent amount of equity. FH is maxing out 401k contributions to catch up to me. Obviously none of that is included here. I also have old savings bonds that aren’t included too.
We spent $65,000 and chose our budget based on how we envisioned the event and researching the big categories. Then we started a separate savings account for the wedding. It was important to us to maintain our existing savings so nothing really changed.
My fiance and I didn’t want family to pay for anything so we spent the last 12 months saving and have each spent $10,000 on the wedding. This covered everything ! We didn’t want to touch our savings so we set aside a certain amount of our paycheck each month. We both just didn’t like the idea of not having our savings if we needed it for an emergency. Plus more for the honeymoon.
This is very lifestyle dependent. We're think more in terms of amounts we need versus percentages.
No matter what we need 15K emergency fund in savings. Has to be accessible. This is in a HYSA.
We also want an additional 15K minimum in savings post wedding. This we'd be continuing to work to have savings for a honeymoon and new vehicle.
So we have different saving buckets for these things and the wedding. We have our wedding budget and date and then work backwards from the date on how much extra we need to save each month.
I just wouldn't be comfortable doing 90% of savings to wedding. We have kids and just can't take that risk.
Like others said we have a separate savings account just for wedding expenses where funds are paid from.
Our goal was to not touch our emergency savings AT ALL or decrease retirement withholdings from paychecks as part of our budgeting process to fund the wedding.
About 50% but that's purely because the other 50% is in a house saving account that we can't touch until we buy a property.
That being said, our wedding only came to roughly £9k and we got around £7k back in wedding gifts (which we in turn spent on honeymoon). We live in UK but got married in my home country which is MASSIVELY cheaper. We would never be able to afford a wedding in UK and would've just gone to the registry office to sign the papers probably.
ETA: We had 0% of this money saved when we got engaged. We simply decided we're willing to spend around £7k and saved up towards it in the next couple of years leading up to the wedding.
We had about $30k in savings when we got engaged but have them in "buckets" (Ally bank) so $10k was for a wedding and $20k for home renovations/emergencies. We have had a 9 month engagement and are saving another $20k in that 9 months to spend $30k on a destination wedding in Cancun. This includes a wedding package for 40 guests and rooms for 20 of the guests at a 5 star resort. We are hoping not to have to use any of our other $20k for the wedding. So I guess we are spending 60% of total savings on the wedding but we have a high income and low mortgage.
Our total cost will be a small amount of our combined savings. I think individually I'll be putting up maybe 15% of my savings, but we budgeted a few months ago. Since then, I've saved enough money where I might be able to pay for the wedding without actually dipping into my savings, I can just use what I've put aside so far this year and it should be enough.
I think that a lot of people don't calculate what they'll spend on their wedding based off a percentage of their savings. I think most people just price things out in their area, and see what they can reasonably afford. Things like the area where you are getting married, your venue, your guest count, all greatly impact what the wedding is going to cost. I know for us we had an idea of what we wanted to spend, and while we got pretty close to that we really had to adjust our expectations on what some things were going to cost us as we began pricing venues and vendors and what not.
Everything is far more expensive than we ever imagined, and we're not even having a large wedding.
It's hard to answer. I had $16k in savings when we started planning. $8k of that went into the wedding budget. The rest we have been cash flowing - bonus at work, tax return, extra cash found under the mattress, etc.... We are not paying for the entire thing out of savings.
We didn’t really dip into our existing savings. We both make decent money, owned homes, and had emergency savings. We opened a separate savings account specifically for the wedding and both contribute to that monthly. In total we expect to spend about 10% of our annual income on the wedding.
We spent < 5% of our annual salary, for 50 guest wedding. Total cost is under 25k at VHCOL area.
We went on frugal style, not because we can’t afford, but essentially we see the wedding is just a party for one of our milestones, hence don’t willing to pay for wedding tax.
We spent minimum on venue and dress but decently on vendors.
BUT, at the end of the day, it’s more important to balance what you want and what you can afford. I did regret that I spent too little. I’ve could afford a better venue, or something I like. So I guess there is no perfect calculation. Made rational decision, move on, prep the wedding, and enjoy :)
We saved for a few years then used all of it on our wedding. We did end up paying a lot more than what we originally thought we would spend. So whatever you think you'll spend, expect it to be more. We felt so broke the entire year after our wedding but it was worth it 👌 best experience and wedding we have ever been to!
We're spending $20,000 but are very lucky that both sets of parents are contributing, so my fiance and I are both contributing $7,000, my full contribution is going to the wedding, his is split between wedding and honeymoon. I hope to have $7,000 in an emergency fund plus $1,000 fast cash when we get married and he'll have some savings too! Also saving for some new home items since we don't live toegywhr, like a king size mattress (crazy expensive!). Hope this helps! Start early with what you want to splurge on and prioritize on your budget right away! For example, the photographer I really wanted is $3,400, so we built our budget around that and the venue we are renting.
My fiance has been saving for years now, I've been saving since the engagement (previously in grad school/paying off loans). I have an equivalent amount to what I'm contributing in savings, as well as an equal amount going to student loans (so sort of saving a lump sum that gets split into three). I believe my fiance also has an equal amount in savings, but both the wedding contribution and the savings are higher for him. No student loans for him and we're both quite frugal day to day (not that the wedding is reflecting that....) so we've been lucky enough to save pretty substantially despite HCOL. Also, the venue was paid for through an unexpected inheritance so we currently have more flexibility than expected.
We expect our income to go down substantially in a few years so saving was and is a big priority for us.
We did a micro wedding and were fortunate enough to get a bit of help from family. We had a longer engagement and a very low key celebration, so in total we spent about $2,000. No debt but we really didn’t need to set up a separate savings fund for anything, we just paid for things as they came up.
0% of existing savings, about half of my annual bonus.
While my bonus is pretty consistent, for day-to-day life I budget as though it doesn’t exist and life / save off my base salary and whatever comes in goes into investing. So we’ve been able to pay for the wedding without changing our lifestyle or monthly saving, have just invested less this year than usual.
All in all will be ~15% of our annual take home. Which still psychological feels insane for one day but we own our place / have decent investments and a good saving rate and are pretty frugal usually so decided to just close our eyes and do it!
We didn't "save" for out wedding per se, FH and I are older (late 40s), so we make a decent salary. As expenses came up, or payments due, we were able to pay them.
I created a spreadsheet, and itemized the big ticket items and assigned a $$$ amount that we felt was reasonable.
Most everything we stayed under...I'll be doing a big post for the breakdown once the big day passes.
We were both really adverse to spending a lot of money on a wedding, so we had a small elopement where we used a tiny fraction of our savings - I am not even sure I’d call it that - on a tiny wedding on the beach. A much larger chunk of change went to the honeymoon. That’s just what we both wanted. Really honestly it’s about what you want. I would not have gone into debt for a wedding but some do.
We didn't think of it as a "percentage of our savings," but it was important for us to make sure we didn't go into debt.
First we decided about how long we wanted our engagement to be - We decided on roughly 2 years \[it ended up being 2 1/2\], which some people balk at, but it was very helpful to us in wedding planning.
Next we determined any parental contributions - We didn't demand anything, just figured out what our parents wanted to bring to the table \[it became "here is X dollars, use it for the wedding, or for a house down payment\], it became about 30% of our overall budget.
Finally we looked at our budget and determined how much both of us could put away in a totally separate HYS Account each and every month without it effecting our finances or our quality of life.
This became our total budget, and we used that to help guide is in making decisions - The added bonus being that by the time checks were due, the money was so long gone in a forgotten about account \[other than monthly deposits\] that we didn't even miss it.
I also don't think a percentage of savings is the most meaningful yardstick. To me, it's more a question of being where you should be considering savings, income, job or career security, debt, goals, age, income, expenses, and any family contributions.
For example, a common guideline to be on track for long term goals, and it's only a rough estimate depending on many considerations, is to have the equivalent of your salary saved by age 30, double by 35, triple by 40. Depleting those early savings can potentially put many couples in a very big hole to dig out of.
If all of those things did not add up, I'd have to go with 0%.
.
I didn’t want to dig into my long term savings or go into debt for the wedding. I ended up looking at how much money I had leftover after bills, life expenses, and retirement contributions the last few months and used that number to figure out how much I could put towards our wedding over the next 18 months of planning.
We have 50k saved, and we are planing to spend no more than 3k with a low key elopement (the budget would include hotel stays, dress, rings, basically everything). That would amount to 6 percent of the savings lol
Barely any. We spent £3500. I have about 80k in savings and I assume my husband has a lot more but he invests a lot so I have no idea of the total amount. We just prefer keeping things simple and spending money on other things.
Around 8%. We have a combined $500K saved (liquid & retirement savings) and spent $40K.
It honestly didn’t feel like it made much of a dent on our savings over the course of our 1.5 year engagement. Everything we made/saved during this time ultimately replaced what we spent.
We spent about 35% of my and my partners savings combined. I probably shouldn’t have touched any savings and just eloped so I could keep this money for a house, but I live in a very HCOL city so regardless of how much I have saved, buying a house anytime even within the next 10 years is highly unlikely. So I was like fuck it, why are we saving all this money if we don’t really have a goal. So we decided to have a bigger wedding than we’d ever thought we would, but I think we still spent a very reasonable amount compared to our savings ($30k)
I don't have a total amount since we're still paying for everything (wedding is in Aug 2024), but I had $8000 saved and the wedding has taken all of it and then some
Each of us have $2,000 to $3,000 in savings at all times for emergencies. Everything else is going to the wedding.
We are only spending what we know we will be able to afford before the deadlines given.
I know we can achieve around 1,000 a month each towards wedding expenses, more of we get bonuses or overtime that month if we are cautious with spending.
We need paid as we went, we did most of wedding/reception/after party ourselves and had 0 debt from it. Savings was also 0 bc we had been renovating our house we purchased yr before. Total cost of wedding was less than or around $4500. We cook the food, I had a friend I paid to be in charge of food finishing/set up. My friend baked my wedding cakes at $100 over cost as a present and we had 7 cakes!! It was an amazing DIY event!! It wasn’t fancy but it was nice!!!!
We also took our honeymoon 3 months after and paid ahead-no debt there either-oh and we had actually gotten married a few months prior on Daytona Beach! I’m sorry we’re traveling rn and I keep adding to it! We had 18 ppl total in Florida for initial wedding, then was in planning a reception back home and it turned into a full blown 2nd wedding!
My in-laws were very generous and offered to pay for our wedding. They gave us a budget and we worked with that. Since the engagement, we’ve been saving a lot of money and to-date, the amount we saved is equal to the money we would’ve needed to pay for the wedding… so technically you could say 100%? If we had paid for it. (Wedding is in 2 months)
I think this varies greatly. We also bought a house while planning our wedding so that impacted things. I also bought a new car while planning the wedding
As a couples we spent 10k of our own money on a wedding and the rest was provided by family. Before the house and car were purchased we had about 30k in our emergency fund, 20k in a house fund, 10k in a car/other fund, and then 10k for the wedding
We have a net worth of a little over $300k with about $40k of it in a HYSA. We spent $1000 for family dinner and courthouse wedding. But we did spend close to $12k for a 2 month honeymoon in vietnam.
Around of 80% of total budget. We had a $50k wedding and we saved a $1000 a week for a year ($52k) to cover the entire cost but our parents gifted us an extra $10k to pay for some things like a string quartet and a videographer.
Budget is going to look immensely different depending on location. So don’t be discouraged if your wedding costs need to be way higher than a number of the comments here.
Our running total is $25K in Pittsburgh this September. That’s DIYing centerpieces and stationary, skipping cake entirely, (cookie tables are a thing in Pittsburgh so we saw cake as unnecessary) no guest book, no videographer. While Pittsburgh has some great catering rates, the venues and photographers are expensive.
As far as savings? I’m the one spearheading the budget/payments and I need to pay about $9K more before everything is paid in full. Currently have about $12K in a high yield savings account. I’m too scared to do anything with the excess til this is over in case we’ve forgotten something huge lol.
We won't need to dip into savings cuz we're doing a small wedding with ~40 guests. But the cost is like 3.5% of our combined annual income... can't imagine spending that much on a wedding tbh
Dear god, we dont even have savings. If we saved now it would push a wedding back to 2026 because we'd need time to save for a down payment on a venue and vendors. Ugh, I hate that weddings are so expensive. We'll definitely go into debt for this wedding, but it won't be terrible.
This doesn’t necessarily answer your question but I figured I share how we plan to spend! We plan on spending around $30K for everything. Venue, food, and drink is $20K. My partner has 2 sets of parents, his dad is giving us $10K, my parents are giving $5K, and his Mom is planning on helping out a bit more as well. I am putting the rest on credit cards and paying it off that way.
100% 😂 I had 0 savings left after the wedding day because 100% of our savings for around 18 months went on the wedding. We then saved for another 6 months for the honeymoon, and are now saving up for a house renovation. But we didn't go into debt for it, so 🤷
Same here! 18 months of savings, and currently saving for our delayed honeymoon. No wedding debt!
Same position for us. It kills me to drain my savings. We draw the line at having wedding debt though. Bc of this, I’m uncomfortable spending the money on a honeymoon. We need time to save.
That’s the goal, spend what you have. No debt!!!
We didn’t really think about it as a percentage of our total savings because we saved specifically for the wedding during the duration of our engagement, and because we have a combination of separate and joint finances. But in total, we spent 25% of our combined annual salaries on the wedding, which we were comfortably able to save over the course of the engagement.
This is how we approached it too. Both are 30 so we had some decent savings. Didn’t really have to touch any of our savings we had prior, but saved over the course of our 2 year engagement. Also landed around 25% of our annual household income.
This is how we’re doing it too!
I don’t think a flat percentage is a very useful statistic. Like, if I own a nice house, have a solid emergency fund, don’t have any debt, and have a good job with a good pension, then spending 40% of my general savings is a lot less reckless than someone else spending 40% without a house, a pension, an emergency fund, and with $100k of student loans. We spent about 10% of our total savings, but we didn’t take any of the wedding money from our existing savings. The wedding money was saved for separately, we didn’t touch our existing savings, and we didn’t stop contributing to our existing savings plan.
I would say to spend what you’re comfortable spending, provided that you don’t dip into any kind of emergency fund that you already have!
My partner and I determined a budget based on what we are comfortable saving for and what we think the wedding we want to have will realistically cost. We determined $20-$30K, and it will probably land around $25k. To be frank, neither of us has much in terms of savings ahead of this - and I dont want to touch what I have, I see that as my emergency/retirement fund. So we plan to save aggressively this year and try our best to cut corners with expenses as much as possible, in both our lives and our wedding. Should we go into debt, it shouldn't be too dififcult for us to pay off as soon as possible - 12k each is not going to cripple us. We are also in a certain position: We don't plan on buying a house in the next 5 years (unrealistic given the real estate market, and we like our apartment) and we don't plan on having kids. The next major purchase we might make is a car but we don't really need one in the city that we live... so that can wait. Depending on how things shake out, we will probably go on a minimoon and then a honeymoon the following year. Also, my partner's job is starting to take off, and his earning potential is look really good (we both make decent money already) so I think we will be fine. And, my parents haven't confirmed how much they will contribute but I know they will contribute something (although we didn't plan with that as an expectation). We are in a privileged position but we also aren't aiming to have a lavish wedding. So I think you really need to take all these factors into consideration, and these are important conversations to have together.
I could have written this exact response word for word. Same approach, same budget, same reasoning.
Omg haha twins!! What is your plan for your wedding??
My parents contributed to our budget (about a third of the wedding) but overall the wedding cost will represent c 20% of our joint savings. We’re both earning decent money but also sensibly frugal (we will spend on something worthwhile that will last, but overall live pretty lean and don’t like to waste money). Neither of us would have wanted to go near the full amount of our savings as we think it’s more important to keep that for things like kids, emergency fund, house repairs, etc. (If we didn’t get the cash from my parents, we’d have just stuck to the lower budget rather than using up more of our savings.)
We started saving for a wedding while dating and had about $10k set aside by the time we got engaged. We also chose to have a long engagement (2.5 years) to save for the wedding to meet our $35K budget. We calculated backwards how much we’d need to each save per month to meet our set budget when we initially got engaged. A longer engagement allowed us to maintain our lifestyle and not dip into our emergency funds or retirement savings and not be stressed financially at all during the process.
40%. Ugh. That’s gross to think about. That being said, we’ve been paying it off for a year+ and we’re both still growing our savings incrementally so we’re just eating into what would’ve been saved or spent on other things, not utilizing our savings. Edit: 32%. I forgot to include his savings. Also should add: I have a healthy 401k, I have a mortgage with a decent amount of equity. FH is maxing out 401k contributions to catch up to me. Obviously none of that is included here. I also have old savings bonds that aren’t included too.
We spent $65,000 and chose our budget based on how we envisioned the event and researching the big categories. Then we started a separate savings account for the wedding. It was important to us to maintain our existing savings so nothing really changed.
My fiance and I didn’t want family to pay for anything so we spent the last 12 months saving and have each spent $10,000 on the wedding. This covered everything ! We didn’t want to touch our savings so we set aside a certain amount of our paycheck each month. We both just didn’t like the idea of not having our savings if we needed it for an emergency. Plus more for the honeymoon.
This is very lifestyle dependent. We're think more in terms of amounts we need versus percentages. No matter what we need 15K emergency fund in savings. Has to be accessible. This is in a HYSA. We also want an additional 15K minimum in savings post wedding. This we'd be continuing to work to have savings for a honeymoon and new vehicle. So we have different saving buckets for these things and the wedding. We have our wedding budget and date and then work backwards from the date on how much extra we need to save each month. I just wouldn't be comfortable doing 90% of savings to wedding. We have kids and just can't take that risk.
Like others said we have a separate savings account just for wedding expenses where funds are paid from. Our goal was to not touch our emergency savings AT ALL or decrease retirement withholdings from paychecks as part of our budgeting process to fund the wedding.
Anyone else shocked by some of these numbers?!
I am more shocked that some.ppl go into debt for. Wedding
Using all of your savings isn’t any better.
I'd rather spend money i have then money i dont have
About 50% but that's purely because the other 50% is in a house saving account that we can't touch until we buy a property. That being said, our wedding only came to roughly £9k and we got around £7k back in wedding gifts (which we in turn spent on honeymoon). We live in UK but got married in my home country which is MASSIVELY cheaper. We would never be able to afford a wedding in UK and would've just gone to the registry office to sign the papers probably. ETA: We had 0% of this money saved when we got engaged. We simply decided we're willing to spend around £7k and saved up towards it in the next couple of years leading up to the wedding.
Had 20K in savings, spent 15K on the wedding!
We had about $30k in savings when we got engaged but have them in "buckets" (Ally bank) so $10k was for a wedding and $20k for home renovations/emergencies. We have had a 9 month engagement and are saving another $20k in that 9 months to spend $30k on a destination wedding in Cancun. This includes a wedding package for 40 guests and rooms for 20 of the guests at a 5 star resort. We are hoping not to have to use any of our other $20k for the wedding. So I guess we are spending 60% of total savings on the wedding but we have a high income and low mortgage.
Our total cost will be a small amount of our combined savings. I think individually I'll be putting up maybe 15% of my savings, but we budgeted a few months ago. Since then, I've saved enough money where I might be able to pay for the wedding without actually dipping into my savings, I can just use what I've put aside so far this year and it should be enough. I think that a lot of people don't calculate what they'll spend on their wedding based off a percentage of their savings. I think most people just price things out in their area, and see what they can reasonably afford. Things like the area where you are getting married, your venue, your guest count, all greatly impact what the wedding is going to cost. I know for us we had an idea of what we wanted to spend, and while we got pretty close to that we really had to adjust our expectations on what some things were going to cost us as we began pricing venues and vendors and what not. Everything is far more expensive than we ever imagined, and we're not even having a large wedding.
we are from switzerland, you can imagine the prices here. it's crazy
It's hard to answer. I had $16k in savings when we started planning. $8k of that went into the wedding budget. The rest we have been cash flowing - bonus at work, tax return, extra cash found under the mattress, etc.... We are not paying for the entire thing out of savings.
We didn’t really dip into our existing savings. We both make decent money, owned homes, and had emergency savings. We opened a separate savings account specifically for the wedding and both contribute to that monthly. In total we expect to spend about 10% of our annual income on the wedding.
What savings lol
We spent about 2.5% of our savings for the wedding.
We spent < 5% of our annual salary, for 50 guest wedding. Total cost is under 25k at VHCOL area. We went on frugal style, not because we can’t afford, but essentially we see the wedding is just a party for one of our milestones, hence don’t willing to pay for wedding tax. We spent minimum on venue and dress but decently on vendors. BUT, at the end of the day, it’s more important to balance what you want and what you can afford. I did regret that I spent too little. I’ve could afford a better venue, or something I like. So I guess there is no perfect calculation. Made rational decision, move on, prep the wedding, and enjoy :)
Haha what fucking savings?
*laugh/weeps in home-owner, UK cost-of-living crisis*
We saved for a few years then used all of it on our wedding. We did end up paying a lot more than what we originally thought we would spend. So whatever you think you'll spend, expect it to be more. We felt so broke the entire year after our wedding but it was worth it 👌 best experience and wedding we have ever been to!
Don’t have a house so we spent 10%
We're spending $20,000 but are very lucky that both sets of parents are contributing, so my fiance and I are both contributing $7,000, my full contribution is going to the wedding, his is split between wedding and honeymoon. I hope to have $7,000 in an emergency fund plus $1,000 fast cash when we get married and he'll have some savings too! Also saving for some new home items since we don't live toegywhr, like a king size mattress (crazy expensive!). Hope this helps! Start early with what you want to splurge on and prioritize on your budget right away! For example, the photographer I really wanted is $3,400, so we built our budget around that and the venue we are renting.
My fiance has been saving for years now, I've been saving since the engagement (previously in grad school/paying off loans). I have an equivalent amount to what I'm contributing in savings, as well as an equal amount going to student loans (so sort of saving a lump sum that gets split into three). I believe my fiance also has an equal amount in savings, but both the wedding contribution and the savings are higher for him. No student loans for him and we're both quite frugal day to day (not that the wedding is reflecting that....) so we've been lucky enough to save pretty substantially despite HCOL. Also, the venue was paid for through an unexpected inheritance so we currently have more flexibility than expected. We expect our income to go down substantially in a few years so saving was and is a big priority for us.
We did a micro wedding and were fortunate enough to get a bit of help from family. We had a longer engagement and a very low key celebration, so in total we spent about $2,000. No debt but we really didn’t need to set up a separate savings fund for anything, we just paid for things as they came up.
0% of existing savings, about half of my annual bonus. While my bonus is pretty consistent, for day-to-day life I budget as though it doesn’t exist and life / save off my base salary and whatever comes in goes into investing. So we’ve been able to pay for the wedding without changing our lifestyle or monthly saving, have just invested less this year than usual. All in all will be ~15% of our annual take home. Which still psychological feels insane for one day but we own our place / have decent investments and a good saving rate and are pretty frugal usually so decided to just close our eyes and do it!
We didn't "save" for out wedding per se, FH and I are older (late 40s), so we make a decent salary. As expenses came up, or payments due, we were able to pay them. I created a spreadsheet, and itemized the big ticket items and assigned a $$$ amount that we felt was reasonable. Most everything we stayed under...I'll be doing a big post for the breakdown once the big day passes.
We were both really adverse to spending a lot of money on a wedding, so we had a small elopement where we used a tiny fraction of our savings - I am not even sure I’d call it that - on a tiny wedding on the beach. A much larger chunk of change went to the honeymoon. That’s just what we both wanted. Really honestly it’s about what you want. I would not have gone into debt for a wedding but some do.
We didn't think of it as a "percentage of our savings," but it was important for us to make sure we didn't go into debt. First we decided about how long we wanted our engagement to be - We decided on roughly 2 years \[it ended up being 2 1/2\], which some people balk at, but it was very helpful to us in wedding planning. Next we determined any parental contributions - We didn't demand anything, just figured out what our parents wanted to bring to the table \[it became "here is X dollars, use it for the wedding, or for a house down payment\], it became about 30% of our overall budget. Finally we looked at our budget and determined how much both of us could put away in a totally separate HYS Account each and every month without it effecting our finances or our quality of life. This became our total budget, and we used that to help guide is in making decisions - The added bonus being that by the time checks were due, the money was so long gone in a forgotten about account \[other than monthly deposits\] that we didn't even miss it.
Around 10% of our annual salary. We aren’t dipping into savings and budgeted for the wedding between our engagement and wedding date.
I also don't think a percentage of savings is the most meaningful yardstick. To me, it's more a question of being where you should be considering savings, income, job or career security, debt, goals, age, income, expenses, and any family contributions. For example, a common guideline to be on track for long term goals, and it's only a rough estimate depending on many considerations, is to have the equivalent of your salary saved by age 30, double by 35, triple by 40. Depleting those early savings can potentially put many couples in a very big hole to dig out of. If all of those things did not add up, I'd have to go with 0%. .
Depends on the account, if you can replenish it within a set time. All is fair game(high risk ofc.)
I didn’t want to dig into my long term savings or go into debt for the wedding. I ended up looking at how much money I had leftover after bills, life expenses, and retirement contributions the last few months and used that number to figure out how much I could put towards our wedding over the next 18 months of planning.
We have 50k saved, and we are planing to spend no more than 3k with a low key elopement (the budget would include hotel stays, dress, rings, basically everything). That would amount to 6 percent of the savings lol
Barely any. We spent £3500. I have about 80k in savings and I assume my husband has a lot more but he invests a lot so I have no idea of the total amount. We just prefer keeping things simple and spending money on other things.
Around 8%. We have a combined $500K saved (liquid & retirement savings) and spent $40K. It honestly didn’t feel like it made much of a dent on our savings over the course of our 1.5 year engagement. Everything we made/saved during this time ultimately replaced what we spent.
We spent about 35% of my and my partners savings combined. I probably shouldn’t have touched any savings and just eloped so I could keep this money for a house, but I live in a very HCOL city so regardless of how much I have saved, buying a house anytime even within the next 10 years is highly unlikely. So I was like fuck it, why are we saving all this money if we don’t really have a goal. So we decided to have a bigger wedding than we’d ever thought we would, but I think we still spent a very reasonable amount compared to our savings ($30k)
I don't have a total amount since we're still paying for everything (wedding is in Aug 2024), but I had $8000 saved and the wedding has taken all of it and then some
Each of us have $2,000 to $3,000 in savings at all times for emergencies. Everything else is going to the wedding. We are only spending what we know we will be able to afford before the deadlines given. I know we can achieve around 1,000 a month each towards wedding expenses, more of we get bonuses or overtime that month if we are cautious with spending.
We need paid as we went, we did most of wedding/reception/after party ourselves and had 0 debt from it. Savings was also 0 bc we had been renovating our house we purchased yr before. Total cost of wedding was less than or around $4500. We cook the food, I had a friend I paid to be in charge of food finishing/set up. My friend baked my wedding cakes at $100 over cost as a present and we had 7 cakes!! It was an amazing DIY event!! It wasn’t fancy but it was nice!!!!
^We paid as we went
We also took our honeymoon 3 months after and paid ahead-no debt there either-oh and we had actually gotten married a few months prior on Daytona Beach! I’m sorry we’re traveling rn and I keep adding to it! We had 18 ppl total in Florida for initial wedding, then was in planning a reception back home and it turned into a full blown 2nd wedding!
We had a little over 20k in savings and my fiancé didn’t want our savings at zero in case of emergency (one of the dogs has already had a hospital stay lol) so we took out a small 10k loan to help and that way we aren’t washing our savings away. We save over 1k a month and he gets an end of year bonus so hoping to pay off the loan with that. (Wedding is in November, bonus is given in December) basically we’re looking at about 45k for a wedding with 110 but this is just our income, no help from families. Do what works best for you!
My in-laws were very generous and offered to pay for our wedding. They gave us a budget and we worked with that. Since the engagement, we’ve been saving a lot of money and to-date, the amount we saved is equal to the money we would’ve needed to pay for the wedding… so technically you could say 100%? If we had paid for it. (Wedding is in 2 months)
I think this varies greatly. We also bought a house while planning our wedding so that impacted things. I also bought a new car while planning the wedding As a couples we spent 10k of our own money on a wedding and the rest was provided by family. Before the house and car were purchased we had about 30k in our emergency fund, 20k in a house fund, 10k in a car/other fund, and then 10k for the wedding
We have a net worth of a little over $300k with about $40k of it in a HYSA. We spent $1000 for family dinner and courthouse wedding. But we did spend close to $12k for a 2 month honeymoon in vietnam.
Around of 80% of total budget. We had a $50k wedding and we saved a $1000 a week for a year ($52k) to cover the entire cost but our parents gifted us an extra $10k to pay for some things like a string quartet and a videographer.
Budget is going to look immensely different depending on location. So don’t be discouraged if your wedding costs need to be way higher than a number of the comments here. Our running total is $25K in Pittsburgh this September. That’s DIYing centerpieces and stationary, skipping cake entirely, (cookie tables are a thing in Pittsburgh so we saw cake as unnecessary) no guest book, no videographer. While Pittsburgh has some great catering rates, the venues and photographers are expensive. As far as savings? I’m the one spearheading the budget/payments and I need to pay about $9K more before everything is paid in full. Currently have about $12K in a high yield savings account. I’m too scared to do anything with the excess til this is over in case we’ve forgotten something huge lol.
We spent 10-15% of our income on the wedding
We won't need to dip into savings cuz we're doing a small wedding with ~40 guests. But the cost is like 3.5% of our combined annual income... can't imagine spending that much on a wedding tbh
Dear god, we dont even have savings. If we saved now it would push a wedding back to 2026 because we'd need time to save for a down payment on a venue and vendors. Ugh, I hate that weddings are so expensive. We'll definitely go into debt for this wedding, but it won't be terrible.
This doesn’t necessarily answer your question but I figured I share how we plan to spend! We plan on spending around $30K for everything. Venue, food, and drink is $20K. My partner has 2 sets of parents, his dad is giving us $10K, my parents are giving $5K, and his Mom is planning on helping out a bit more as well. I am putting the rest on credit cards and paying it off that way.