Weddings can be ridiculously expensive - make sure you're financially ready for marital bliss!
Sections
Get your finances in shape early
Set up a joint account
If there’s one thing you are guaranteed to argue about once you’re married it’s money.
To reduce this likelihood, set up a joint account to cover the essentials – the food shop, the gas bill, etc. You can then each access this account whenever you need to make a payment. However, it pays to keep a separate current account each to cover your own spending each month. Just be sure to set up a direct debit to transfer over a fixed amount to the joint account each month.
Ditch past ties
Don’t let your past ruin your future – make sure you are disentangled from any previous financial relationships.
A 'financial association' occurs when you take out credit together. Examples include taking out a joint account together, or being jointly responsible for a mortgage. Be sure to check your credit report to see whether you have any such associations.
Start saving
Weddings are exceptionally expensive occasions, and while some helpful parents are only too happy to make a contribution, very few of them can afford to shell out for the whole thing. So make sure you are putting money aside each month to cover your side of the bargain.
And be sure to put that money in a savings account that both pays a decent rate of interest, but also allows easy access so you can get at your cash.
Get protected
Make sure you have wedding insurance
If anything does go wrong on your big day, you want to make sure you are adequately compensated, so wedding insurance is a must. For an outlay of £50-£100, you have real peace of mind, whether the church burns down, the reception venue goes out of business, the suits disappear in transit or the wedding car breaks down.
Sort out your life insurance
It’s important to make sure the person you love is adequately provided for, whatever happens to you. This means taking out life insurance – and also considering critical illness cover and income protection.
Have a read of our guides How to get thr right type of life insurance and Why It's Vital To Protect Your Income for more on these different types of cover.
Cover your rings!
Your wedding rings are not only significant emotionally – chances are they cost a bit as well. So it’s daft to ignore insuring them. Ask your home insurance policy provider whether your engagement and wedding rings would be covered for accident, loss and theft within the home. Each ring may need to be declared separately on your policy, if it's worth over £1,500.
And if you have personal possessions cover which includes wedding and engagement rings as part of your home insurance policy, this should also cover you outside of the home. Personal possessions cover should actually prove far better value than any insurance offered by a ring retailer, because not only will you be protecting your rings, but all the other possessions you regularly carry.
Make sure your home insurance covers gifts
Expensive gifts will increase your need for cover, though you may not have to pay for this. Some home contents insurance providers, such as Norwich Union Direct and Asda, automatically increase your cover by 10% for a month before and after a wedding.
Other insurers, such as Halifax, offer unlimited cover as standard. Make sure you have a chat with your provider to ascertain where you stand.
Do all your spending on a credit card
The best way to pay for anything that costs more than £100 is by credit card. This ensures you have the protection of Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.
Under this Act, if the goods or services you buy haven’t been described accurately or fail to live up to expectations (or if the seller goes bankrupt before you receive what you bought) you'll have the right to full compensation from your credit card issuer.
Cut the cost of the wedding
Consider an off-peak wedding
Getting married on a Saturday in the middle of July is, funnily enough, quite expensive. However, getting married on a Friday or Sunday can drastically cut the costs of everything from the church and reception venue to the DJ and wedding transport.
Cut out the non-essentials
There are hosts of ‘must-haves’ according to the wedding magazines that are nothing of the sort.
Do you really need to send out Save the Date cards to your guests, only to follow them up with formal invitations a month or two later? And will any of your guests care if they don’t get favours on the table? Probably not, so why are you spending good money on them?
Rope in your friends
Do you have a friend who is great on a set of decks, or knows how to handle a camera? Or perhaps you are best mates with a florist, or have a friend with a massive garden you can use for the reception?
Chances are, at least someone in your family or group of friends will be able to help out in some respect at the wedding and help you keep the costs down. Make sure you ask around!
Rent, don’t buy
After the wedding day, will you ever wear your wedding dress again? Probably not – it will just sit in the cupboard gathering dust. So instead of dropping thousands on a dress to keep, why not spend hundreds on a dress for the day.
It’s exactly the same with the gents’ suits – when are you ever going to need a morning suit besides on your wedding day?
Negotiate!
Most firms that deal with weddings will have set options, but that doesn’t mean they are inflexible. So when discussing the menu with your reception venue, why not see whether they can do a buffet instead of a sit down meal?
Save money on the honeymoon
Get your guests to pay for the honeymoon
If you already live with your partner, don’t just ask them for slightly upgraded versions of the cutlery and toaster you already have and that work perfectly well.
Ask them to instead contribute towards the cost of your honeymoon and with a bit of luck you’ll get it for free! You can do this formally by setting up an account with a travel agent, or informally by asking for cheques.
Go off season
It costs a fortune to go on holiday during the school holidays. Why not save a fortune by going off for your honeymoon when it’s a bit cheaper, in the weeks either just before or after the summer holidays?
Use loyalty points
If you're a frequent flyer, you might have lots of points already stacked up ready to use. If you're not, there are ways you can earn points to redeem against flights.
The biggest scheme is Avios (formerly Airmiles), which you can obtain in loads of ways, for example by spending on an Avios credit card, by collecting Tesco Clubcard points, using eBay or trading in your old mobile phone. And it can make a massive difference to just how much you fork out for your flights.
Alternatively, if you're a regular Sainsbury's shopper, you can use Nectar points to pay for easyJet flights and holidays.
Use a cashback credit card
If you don't want to go down the air miles route when booking your honeymoon, why not use a cashback credit card instead? You can get upwards of 1% of the money you spend on the break – you are spending that money anyway, so it makes sense to try and get some money back for your expenditure!
There are more great tips on having a wedding on a budget in Donna Ferguson's My Big Fat Frugal Wedding blog.