Funding Your Wedding

Yuck…. the worst part of wedding planning….that feckin’ budget. Alright, dry the tears and get saving. Weddingsonline reported that Irish wedding couples spend an average of €22,000 inc Honeymoon on their wedding. When you scoop your jaw up off the ground, lets look at how you can fund your wedding.

Once you book your venue, you will have a good idea of how much you will need to save. The venue takes up the majority of your budget. There is a lot of money to try to save this in one year.

Bear in mind, when you start to book your wedding suppliers, you will need to pay deposits. A venue is usually €1000 and then each vendor after that is roughly €100 – €500. You can see that even before you get in to really paying for your wedding, your initial deposit costs can be quite high. The key is to avoid debt and not have the wedding bill hanging over you for the rest of your life!

When you start to think about budget, the core funding will come from the following:

• Savings
• Loan
• Parents
• Credit Card

Savings:

You may have some savings already in the bank and well done if you do. You may be starting out to save. If you are planning on saving for your wedding, you will need to know your end goal budget and start saving a figure that will get you there at least a month before your wedding as that is when a lot of final payments are due. Banks offer fixed term savings accounts with interest rates so you could make your savings work a bit harder for you. Bonkers.ie allows you to compare savings rates. One thing to bear in mind is that some savings deal won’t let you draw down any funds until a certain date. If you think you’ll need funds to release during your planning stages, you should avoid accounts of this nature.

Parents:

This is now something that lives in the past. Gone are the days where parents pay for the full wedding. Parents may give you a cash gift to help you out with your wedding day. I always recommend not putting pressure on your parents as they may not be in a position to help and may feel very mixed emotions with your wedding. They are excited that you are getting married but may be anxious as to how they will be able to financially support you.

Bank / Credit Union loan:

A very popular option is getting a loan. One thing to remember is that you have to pay it back! Most rates are from apx 9% APR. You can compare rates on Bonkers.ie. Some banks let you differ your repayments for up to 3 months so you could start to repay after your wedding.

Here is an example of how much a loan may cost you.

Ref: Bank of Ireland January 2017 – Lending rate from 7.5% APR

Loan Amount: €7,000

Rate: 7.5% APR

Term of Loan: 5 years

Per Month Re-payment: €139.46

Total Cost of Credit: €1367.60

As you can see, borrowing money is not cheap and the more you can save, the better.

Credit Card:

The good thing about paying with credit card is that if there is a problem with the supplier, you can cancel the payment within a specific time frame. Credit Card costs can vary between providers and in general, the cost of credit could be anything from 10% to 30% of the debt you have clocked up. It is also very easy to lose the run of yourself with a credit card.

It is ideal for your online shopping. I pretty much spent a year in Etsy buying small craft bits and bobs.

My main advise would be to save as much as you can and only buy within your means. The last thing you want in a heap of debt hanging over you for the years after your wedding. Once you get married, you will more than likely be on to the next big projects such as mortgage!