Money, money and money

Every extra cent u can spear put away. We keep an envelope that has the amount in it and what we need to have

I have a very low budget wedding of $2000 so starting this January we have both put aside $100 every two weeks to pay for it. Plus my dad has contributd $500 and I have a 3 paycheque month in March (wedding is in April) so we are good to go. I have purchased things over the last few months for decorations, invitations save the dates etc so in September to November I spent about $100 a month on those items which is why I just started saving for the actual wedding. I am also putting aside $200 a month since January for our honeymoon which will cost us $1000.

We don't want to afford more than that since our priority is our 5 kids.

My FH and I made a joint account a year before our wedding and started to save a bit per month. I matched whatever the amount FH could save per month. As soon as we got the paycheck, the first thing we did was to move the money to the joint account. As we didn't have to spent the entire wedding money all in short period of time, saving bit by bit helped a lot for putting down the contract money, etc throughout the year.

My FH and I committed to a frugal lifestyle last year with the goal of retiring early... When he proposed we had enough for the wedding saved already... Unfortunately he had a large dental bill (wedding related, I want him smiling in those pictures) that wiped out those funds... Now we are taking half of our budgeted retirement savings for the wedding... I suggest writing down everything you spend for a few weeks... It's amazing how much money you can free up with small lifestyle changes.

So far, I've been automatically moving $100 per pay to my savings. I was given a bit of money from my Gramma in December before I was engaged but I held on to that and used it for my venue deposit. I know that in a couple of months I'll be able to put more aside (I'm trying to get rid of a couple of debts) and I know that my FH will be making a lot of money in the summer.

My budget is fairly low ($10-12K) and I'm still stressing about it but my plan is to secure all the essentials and pick out things early so I can wait for sales. I'm also trying to stay off pinterest LOL.

Im honestly stressing about this too. We are just about to move out together (in the next few months) and due to disability Im not working right now and the payments I recieve arent very much. My parents and his dad have offered to contribute bit we dont know the ammounts, and his mom has offered to do the wedding party gifts for us. Still we arent sure how much we can put aside each month and so our wedding budget doesnt exist yet, which kind of halts planning... Im glad I got to read this thread so thanks for starting it!

You're welcome Jenn! Let us know what ideas have worked out best for you! You can also click "reply" to our comments so that we get a notification with your answer. I love to keep this conversation going! It's super useful!

I've tried to put away X amount of dollars off of every paychque the second I get paid - I'm taking the 'pay yourself first" motto very seriously, and its helping. I'm learning to spend less as if I never had more to begin with. My fiance gets paid by salary and commission, so he's been putting away a bit off each regular cheque, but his entire commission cheque is getting put straight into savings. I didn't think we could do it, but its working very well!

Thanks everyone😀😀

We have just been putting aside an extra $100 from every pay ... we also cut out all the little extras we use to do just for the time being .... I am hoping a nice tax refund maybe in this years future as well ... pretty much any extra money we had laying around or that came in that we werent expecting ... we picked a vendor and EMT them ... we have been paying things off little by little and it has helped big time ... numbers arent so scary this way either lol

We pretty much just cut out all extras! No going out for lunch or dinner, no movies or subscription boxes (we sometimes got them for food and nerdy things).

Ohhhh that makes sense, thanks! I've had a lot of cold medication this evening

Oh! I think I may have mis-communicated...

The tax papers I reffered to are the ones you fill out when you get hired by your employer. they arent papers you fill out when youre filing your taxes. I do believe if you ask your employer, you can re-fill out the papers and have them deduct the extra.

Just wanted to make that a little clearer!

Neat! I'm actually doing my taxes for the first time this year (always had a family member do it before), so I learned something new today! That's pretty awesome
Ohhh another thing I thought of: I'm asking for wedding related things for Christmas this year from my family, instead of gifts. I'd really love a day-of coordinator under the tree!

When you fill out your tax papers, there is actually a spot (on the federal form i do believe), where you can have additional money deducted. my fiance and i both get an additional $100 taken off of every cheque and we get paid bi-weekly. He is full time so he alone gets $2600 back

Damn.. that's a nice refund! Why are you both overtaxed so much on your pay cheques?

It's whatever works for you.

We've been putting money aside but we also have a "money jar"

We put small bills, some large bills, loonies and twoonies in there. You'd be surprised how much that adds up too.

I made a "monthly budget". I took all of our monthly expenses, and rounded up to the next $25, then totaled it up. then i took our combined monthly income and subtracted our expenses. rounding up to the next $25 allows for a litlle bit of give in the budget, so you could still go to a movie or have a small date night if you wanted. and we put everything else into a savings account. im a seasonal worker so we only put money away the months that i workfull time, which is only 7 months out of the year, and we can put away about $1000 a month for those 7 months. but we are using our tax refunds too. We both have extra money taken off of every cheque to kinda give us a substantial sum of money when we get our refunds. We dont even see this money so its kind of a built in savings plan... we are expecting our refund to be $4200+

Thanks for sharing!!!

So we are taking portions of each of our pay checks and putting them aside for the wedding. That gives us a baseline budget. If we don't spend that much in the two week period we can out even more aside, which is nice because I can tell myself I don't need another lipstick right now...but I can buy more flowers for the ceremony later!
We're lucky enough to be able to other aside at least 1k a month without affecting much. We are also forgoing any vacations or expensive birthday gifts until the wedding. oh and no more starbucks daily haha