Justifying a wedding (financially)

One of my passions is to "defend" a wedding against attacks of superficiality, materialism, or over-consumption. Why? Because I believe RITUALS are extremely powerful and we have almost none in America. A prom is probably the first ritual (or debutant ball if you're in the south.) High school and college graduations are rituals, and funerals are rituals. But notice most are very public for a mass of people, and then one is a last-minute, sad event where someone has to DIE for the event to happen.

So here we sit, my husband and I. We're on a new, slow ramp to more financial freedom after taking massive pay cuts to switch careers (more soul-fulfilling but not so good at bill-paying!) We're going to acquire a small pot of money from an estate sale and the question is what to do with the money.

Sometimes this is when your parents agree to put a chunk into your wedding. Or perhaps you're considering taking on a second job, or consulting gig, or dipping into savings, to help bring in more cash for your big day. No matter the situation, it is a very vulnerable thing to put a lot of money into ONE day, particularly when it's not a single object with great financial loan options (like with cars or homes.) In our situation, we're considering remodeling our basement (doing all the labor ourselves, which will save a lot of money.)

Some of the emotion is inside your head. "A basement remodel?" It sounds so silly compared to what we could spend our money on. We could all go to the dentist (no dental insurance), we could upgrade my car (small sedan and our tall kids legs are up against the front seats), on and on. But we spend 90% of our non-kid time (evenings and naptimes) in the basement and it would greatly improve not just our daily lives but our home value and family life as the kids get older.

In the case of a wedding, you hear all the comments. Flowers die in a day. The dress can only be worn once. Guests don't use the favors. A cake is eaten and gone. You're only in the limo for a short time.

On the flip side, every vendor has a sale pitch to counter any negative thoughts. Flowers/music/food set the entire TONE of the day. The dress is an icon of a wedding and can be passed on for generations. The music is what makes the experience enjoyable for guests.

Money. Such a frustrating, fascinating topic. We all have our patterns of how we spend or save, and we all have opinions on how OTHERS should spend or save! This is one reason we're happy to sell our Money Habitudes card game - a fantastic way to quickly, easily, and without feeling bad (or overly proud), figure out your own money motivations as well as your partners. Check it out and maybe get your friends to do the game, or your parents. I was surprised to learn how much money represents security and safety to me, because I'm sort of frugal, but not to the point of overly spending time on bargain hunting, or "DIY projects." Growing up babysitting, I was able to afford spending a summer in Europe on my $2/hour babysitting jobs, which just sat in the bank account!

How have YOU justified the money or are you having issues defending your decisions? Do comment!

Wedding DJ Ideas and Wisdom

In our new routine of seeking out professionals in every aspect of wedding planning, we have a fabulous Q&A with an LA DJ company. I laughed out loud, I gasped at some stories, and all around I am much more informed, even though I've already gotten married and didn't think I could really learn THAT much more.

Take a look at the wedding DJ wisdom. Share any stories you have or just share that web page with your fellow engaged friends!

Wedding Tuxedos

Women often race to the wedding dress shops as soon as they get engaged. Men on the other hand? The tuxedo shopping may be exciting or it may be one of the most dreary tasks since it not only involves him but his bestman, groomsmen, and trying on clothes.

We asked a tuxedo rental company for some advice and got some great answers! They mentioned the tuxedo shop being the meeting place before the rehearsal dinner and that is exactly right! It was wild to go to my local mall and run into our wedding party (the men, anyway), as they were walking to and out of, the tux rental shop. They were all out of towners, so it was an extra stress that they had been fitted properly, planes were on time, and they could get to the shop before it closed.

I remember not having many opinions at all and being glad I wasn't a man. I knew I wanted my groom in a tux and fortunately he wanted one as well. All those details of a suit were lost on me, but I was lucky that he cared. In fact it was a bit of a role reversal - not really wanting to be there for long, bored, wishing I could be anywhere else.

Hope the Q&A on wedding tuxedo rentals on our website is as interesting to you as it was to me. Enjoy!

Simple wedding budget tip

If you know how much you can spend on a wedding dress, follow these rules:

• tell your sales person that you can not go a penny over and do not want to see any dress above that rate
• if you aren't sure of the wedding dress shop, call and find out their wedding dress options in YOUR price point. maybe call ones you know are high end to get a sense of how many dresses in your price point they would even carry
• do not shop at stores where you've got free range to look at all dresses in all price points (or rather, do not look but let your sales person or wedding party pick out dresses in your price point)
• find designers who sell dresses at your price point, then go to their websites and find the retailers that sell their dresses.
• do not try on a high priced dress out of curiosity. It can sometimes really mess with our minds to see a high end item and all the sudden see our "favorite" in a new, less attractive light
• do confirm if you have any restrictions from your religious institution
• talk with your fiance on whether he has any strong feelings about general style (great example is whether the two of you agree on whether brides should have clevage or not!)
• once you commit to a dress do NOT TRY ON ANY MORE WEDDING DRESSES. There is no faster way to lose money than to have to sell a dress because you bought a second one.

Wedding Vendor Quotes

Wedding Vendor Quotes

Wedding vendors and couples are in a fascinating co-dependent relationship. Without wedding vendors you don't have a wedding but without engaged couples, wedding vendors can't exist. Engaged couples are trying to maximize their savings while wedding vendors are trying to maximize their profit. Couples may or may not shop around, but wedding vendors know what people in their industry are charging and the games wedding vendors play. How do you know if your wedding vendor is trying to rip you off or is too good of a deal?

The number one complaint of wedding vendors is when engaged couples first ask, "how much do you cost?" They sometimes feel like you would feel if instead of being asked, "What do you do for a living?" you were asked, "how much do you make?" The notion that money is more important than their skills, background, or that they could even give you a fast number without knowing the details (when, where, how many people, what exactly you want from them.)

What To Know Before Getting Wedding Vendor Quotes

read more....

Working with wedding vendors

I've been thinking a lot about the economy and how scary it must be to be planning a wedding right now, especially if you or your fiance are in an industry with a lot of lay offs. It's also hard when family and friends, including your wedding party, may be hit with devastating job loss just as they're supposed to be happy for you and be there financially and with their time for parties and logistics.

One of the joys and frustrations of wedding vendors from my own bridal experiences and even in my role as a "wedding vendor" of sorts, is to maximize their wisdom and experiences without denying your own wedding needs or wedding values.

As you've likely seen, meeting with wedding vendors can be an exhausting, fascinating, nerve wracking experience. Depending on their personality you may leave the first meeting excited, uncertain, stressed out (hard sales pitches are never fun) or maybe you leave laughing at the AWFUL style or crazy prices they are trying to charge. You may also leave not feeling heard - you want THIS, not THAT, you don't need that part of the package but you DO need this other thing. Wedding vendors are always trying to make packages and wedding couples are always trying to tailor their specific budget and needs. Sometimes this works and often it doesn't, or things get lost in translation (the wedding vendor agrees and then when the bill comes, or product is delivered, it's NOT AT ALL what you agreed to.)

One bit of advice my husband and I were given that proved to be wise was knowing how you operate as a couple and being able to not commit to anything in a vendor meeting. My husband and I have bad luck with sales people no matter where we go. We generally are on the same page without talking and have "that look" we give each other that says, "oh my GOSH, seriously, can you believe this sales person? GAH!" Then when the sales person lets us be alone, we groan or laugh, whispering frantically about our plan of attack.... leave the store, try AGAIN to explain what we want, or decide to maybe come back later and find a new sales person.

When you're putting big bucks into this day, you may not always be able to control the personalities of your wedding vendors, but you SHOULD be able to get control over exactly what you want or know exactly why you can't have what you want (the hotel won't allow open flames, or the caterer had bad experiences with cakes they didn't bake so they refuse to tarnish their reputation when guests think a bad cake was made by them...true story of my caterer.)

So back to the economy. My fantasy is some of you are able to find those AMAZING wedding vendors where you can be brutally honest and get their absolute best service, even if it means they're not making tons of money off you. Like finding a florist who says, "hey, if you use THIS flower with some funky favors, you can save a ton of money and still get the wow factor." Or a photographer who admits in her experience, friends do a fine job with the wedding preparation photos and the best use of your money is to hire her for the ceremony, do photos after, and have a few of the big photo-ops done right away. Then have a good friend take the final farewell photos. You'd feel a lot better if your photographer "blessed" that idea and says it works great. Most of us do not feel good when we read that sort of advice in "how to save money" but don't actually know anyone who has done it!

I am thinking about you all. Let me know if you'd like to see any specific advice related to the family or friend dynamics when the economy is in turmoil and nothing seems to be going as planned.

Wedding Vendor Complaints

One of the many things I love from where I sit in the wedding industry is that I have intimate access to everyone. Wedding vendors will share things with me that they can't share with brides directly. Brides and families share intimate things with us they can't share with just anyone.

So instead of just listening to complaints, we like to cull out wisdom to be learned from the issues underlying the complaints. For wedding vendors it's often a simple case of brides not being vendors and not being aware of all that goes into the "business of weddings." Brides have no idea that for every wedding a wedding vendor books, there may be easily 10 or more sales calls, often requiring hours and hours of time, phone calls, and emails. For every sales call, that is hours not being spent either preparing for the upcoming weddings, gaining new skills for their trade, improving or updating their offerings, or simply being able to unwind and relax!

I asked a friend of mine whose husband does photography and while it varies greatly, 23 weddings a year is a number she threw out. If there are 52 weeks in the year, and many weddings don't happen in off seasons, you can see how weekends vanish, week days are spent preparing the post-wedding photos, or dealing with pre-wedding questions, and sales for the next years wedding season.

The irony of life is that to "pursue your dreams" requires a lot of other skills to get there. So whether you're an amazing photographer, but really bad doing "sales pitches", or you're a great cake baker but not so good at marketing yourself, the end result can be frustrated brides who are left uncertain about the wedding vendor or crabby at the perceived lack of poor service.

And coming out of the world of Human Resources, I can assure you that just because YOU have never needed the HR department until you have a benefits question does not mean everyone else isn't keeping the HR people crazy busy! So while you have "one simple question" for your wedding vendor, without being aware, your "one little question" may be one of 200 emails and 15 voicemails the wedding vendor is supposed to respond to BETWEEN the sales calls and actual work of the weddings themselves. And perhaps your question is so low-priority, the wedding vendor won't say that, but the actions will show that it takes two weeks to get back to you. This is simply the wedding vendor trying to stay afloat and meed the pressing needs of immediate weddings or of signing contracts for future weddings rather than, say, responding ASAP to a simple question when your wedding isn't for another 10 months.

But of course the questions are still there and the greater understanding may build empathy but you still want your questions answered!! So how DO you appreciate the hard work of wedding vendors and get your needs met? We address that too.

I'll keep building this article and wedding vendors, please submit your complaints and I will hold them confidentially but share the wisdom you have to offer.

http://www.thefirstdance.com/weddingvendorcomplaints.php

So much untapped talent in wedding land

I'm starting the arduous task of building advertising on our website so we can continue to build our wedding relationship website. I am an internet bride and I know what I like and don't like. I am thrilled to be finding very unique businesses that get hidden away in "special category" pages in some random city or state page. The reality is advertising is prohibitively expensive for many in the wedding industry. This is really bad news for you, trying to have as many wedding planning choices at your disposal. One tiny ad on theknot.com can be $120-$150 per month. And that gives you one little listing in one little category in one city of one state. As a knottie I know many of us do not visit those vendor listings! But they bill themselves as 3 million visitors a month (nevermind only 2.1 million weddings happen a YEAR).

But the reality is there are more options than you realize. It's a question of where to find these unique people or websites or products? Like us - we were boosted by winning a Modern Bride Magazine Trendsetter award, and getting some great publicity, but ultimately where do we break from being "yet another wedding directory website."

Well, I'm proud to say we're the only purely wedding relationship website out there. I'm proud that our advice is the only one that comes from a deep understanding of couples and families and the ugly reality of "family life." All the communication skills in the world won't help with crazy Uncle Bob. You can't tell him he's crazy and therefor not invited to the wedding. He doesn't think he's crazy, he'll go to his sibling (your mom or dad), and grandparents, and create world war 3 in your family. So what do you do? There are options - we help you sort through that sort of thing on our website and in our wedding relationship book. Visit our website often - there is so, so much more to share.

Most advice out there is the same old, same old. It just doesn't come from a grounded reality, from a sense that your wedding is the beginning of your *marriage*, and in MARRIAGE, life is yucky, your relationship isn't just a private affair, and sometimes it's better to let things go than create more drama in the name of "this is my day, my way!"

There is a lot of passion out there of people wanting to offer their talents, products, or services to engaged couples. And the wedding industry is set up in such a way that it's nearly impossible for start-ups to get in the door. (Especially of web-based, national small businesses.) That leaves us with the same old, same old vendors in the same websites, same magazines and same print directories. Those vendors are probably awesome - but at some point there is only 52 weekends a year and only so many weddings you can book. The "free listings" for wedding vendors is a bit of a rouse - those want to get the traffic going so they can sell expensive ads around the free ads. This of course leads to a cluttery mess and information overload.

Nobody is trying to screw over anyone. It's just the nature of it. When aunts and uncles and moms and dads stopped having the backyard wedding, with homemade wedding cake, near potluck quality food, flowers from the garden and simple wedding invitations - things got more fun, more expensive and more intense! Too bad there are a lot of losers in the equation.