on a Budget Scottish wedding planning may seem daunting. Especially when you try to decide which Scottish wedding traditions you'll use to develop a wedding theme, within your wedding budget. You’ve already answered that big question of will you? But there are a hundred more questions flying through your head, at about the speed of a freight train! As you begin your Scottish wedding planning, you’re asking, "Where will it be? What do we wear? What kind of Scottish wedding traditions are there and how can we use them?
Before you can really answer those questions, there are three major issues you must address:
Figuring what money you can spend on your wedding isn’t exciting or glamorous…but it is essential. Last year, the average cost for a wedding in the US was $26,327. What amount of money have you budgeted into your Scottish wedding planning? What if you didn’t figure out your budget and bought an $8,000 wedding dress? Everything you and the groom are going to wear usually figures 10% of the expense. Are you going to have an $80,000 wedding or a naked groom? Each of us has a wedding budget, whether it’s vast or meager, whether we acknowledge it or not. Either you control the budget or it controls you. If you don’t figure the budget as you plan for your wedding, you’re doing a disservice to yourself, your groom, and all parents involved.
If you won’t budget now, you won’t budget within your marriage either. And the number one cause for divorce is financial problems and stress.
To work out a budget, within your Scottish wedding planning, is a process. If you take the time to learn how, you can accomplish more with a lot less stress.Set your marriage on a good, firm, foundation Plan a budget together…then make it work
The best source I’ve found for planning the logistics is wedding planning software, Fire Your Wedding Planner, by Stephi Stewart. The author learned for herself how to achieve her wedding dreams without spending a fortune. Now she’s sharing this important information with other brides.
Without someone’s advice, you’ll likely walk into the bridal shops with these words stamped on your forehead.Stephi can teach you how to negotiate prices for products and services, until you get what you want. A fact sheet on each phase of planning tells you what questions to ask vendors, what scams to watch out for, and how to negotiate the terms in the contracts you’ll be offered.
On the negative side, I signed up for her free newsletter and often receive 2 emails a day. Go ahead and sign up ~ I’m sure that you’ll find the e-mails quite helpful.
Stephi tells you how to build your own Wedding Organizer, with materials from your local office supply store. Then she offers advice on how to divide the sections and what to put in the organizer.
With what you save just by following her advice on building your own Wedding Organizer, you’ll have paid for a good portion of her book.
With 21 key areas, Fire Your Wedding Planner covers subjects from budgeting and handling guest lists to locations, caterers, legal documents, and more.
There are two bonuses that come with the book ~ one is a group of wedding calculators, checklists and worksheets. The second is a name change kit. Online Name Change Kits can often cost as much as Stephi’s whole software program. So between what you can save on your Wedding Organizer and the Name Change Kit, you’ve more than paid for the cost of her book.
If you have more money to spare than time, you might want to hire a wedding planner. They make their money doing the running and arranging for you. If you simply don’t have that time, and can afford it, go ahead.
Either way, take a closer look at Fire Your Wedding Planner. add Scottish-Wedding-Dreams.com as an allowed site] It can help you with your Scottish wedding planning. Who's Paying For All This?Even if one or both sets of parents are willing to foot the bill, there are questions to be answered before you accept. Can they really afford it? Are they dipping into their life savings to give you everything you’ve always wanted?In the last five years, the retirement funds of many couples have disappeared. There are couples working into their late 60’s and even their 70’s, in hopes of recouping their losses and re-building their ‘nest egg’.
Find out the exact sources for any money they are offering. Ask where that money fits into their retirement plans. Then, as part of your Scottish wedding planning, step back and do some thinking.
Let’s say your parents take $20,000 from their retirement fund or savings for your wedding. Over the next 20 years, with compound interest of 10%, they will have given up $32,891 in interest. Added to the principal, that’s $52,891 that would have been in their retirement fund. About the time they’re retiring, you’ll have children heading to college, or planning weddings of their own. What if your parents are short the amount they spent on your wedding and can't retire?
Do you want to also be helping Mom and Dad just get by? At today’s prices, $52,000 would pay for 13 months in a nursing home for one parent, figured at $4,000 per month.
You also need to apply the same type of thinking to a home equity loan to pay for your wedding. Many lenders have no scruples about lending more money than the selling price for a home. That’s called being ‘upside down’ on your mortgage. I’ve seen too many people have to forfeit on their mortgage and lose their home, or bring $10,000 plus to the closing when they sell their home. You simply must weigh your options. Parents are parents, and they’ll give you just about anything you ask for.
Which is more important, a big posh wedding at your parents’ expense or financial responsibility? Do you really have the right to hit them up for a typical American wedding, if they can’t afford it?
If you’re thinking of running your credit cards up to the max to pay for your wedding, again, stop…and think it through. How long would it take you to pay off even $10,000, making minimum payments? How much interest would accrue? How much could you be putting toward your own retirement fund, or a college fund for your children ~ if you didn’t have those monthly payments.
Or bringing it closer to today, how much sooner could you buy your first home, if you didn’t have those monthly credit card bills?
Another advantage to planning a budget is that you can add the experience to your resume skill sheet. Any employer will be impressed if they see that you planned a budget and carried it through successfully. If you come in below budget, state exactly how much. Don’t say 5 to 10% - be specific. State 7.6%. Emphasize how you still had your important extras and fulfilled your dreams, while entering into marriage with minimal debt, or none.
Point out that you are now able to work toward a home, retirement, savings for yourselves, or a college fund for your children ~ not just servicing credit card debt. That’s impressive! Satisfying Those Wedding DreamsEven if he doesn’t freely offer his ideas on what a wedding should be, the groom needs to figure out what’s important to him.His ideal wedding might be by his favorite trout stream, in jeans and a flannel shirt, with beer and brats for the reception. Meanwhile you’ve dreamed about a Cinderella wedding gown, endless flutes of champagne, and dancing ‘til dawn to Strauss waltzes ~ without tired feet.
In your Scottish wedding planning, you need to strike a balance between his dream and yours. One way to do this is to sit down, separately, and each write down how you imagine your wedding…all the dreams, the little nuances, how you see your wedding day in your mind.
When you’re both done, go over the lists together and figure out how you can use ideas from both lists. Sometimes a close friend or parent can act as a negotiator to help in this process. Somehow these two opposites have to mesh together, giving both of you parts of your ideal wedding day. You can always find a lovely flowing stream and be married with the water babbling in the background. Many a wedding reception has sausage served, in one form or another, to the guests.
If the groom opts for a kilt, it doesn’t need to be formal...it can be a more casual style. One nice thing about Scottish wedding planning is that you’re exploring unknown territory. Most people won’t know if you’re violating any traditions. In the past many a bride has dressed to the ‘T’s’, while her groom was in his cowboy, miner, or railroad worker clothes. This will help you decide which items are worth going over the average budget, and what can be pared down to compensate for the overages. Because of the unique nature of your wedding, some of these percentages will have to be adjusted. Some Scottish wedding traditions will cost more ~ some will cost less. As an example, it costs more to rent a kilt and accessories than a tuxedo.
the who, what, where, when and why
For answers to these questions, look at
Wedding Etiquette
. These apply to planning any wedding, not just Scottish wedding planning.
As you work on through your Scottish Wedding Planning, you’ll be choosing a site for your wedding. This is no different than deciding where you’ll have any wedding.The location, or venue, can be anywhere you’re dreams take you. There are no hard-set rules. Only practicality and your budget set the bounds for your wedding site.
If you’re not sure, or just can’t get your creative juices flowing, take a look at
Scottish Wedding Planning Venues A Scottish Theme ~
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