| Feb 09, 2010 1:07 pm |   |
The wedding stress train has officially hit.
I spent yesterday trying to catch up on stuff that needed to be done, and it was an expensive day, even with the do-it-yourself invitations and Walgreens save-the-date cards.
I dropped off the deposit to reserve the church and fee for the music coordinators and wedding coordinator. Yeow that was a bit more expensive than I had planned for.
Ordered gifts for the bridesmaids, groomsmen, ushers and flower girl. (all siblings, nieces and nephews)
Ordered blank invitations to print on my computer
Ordered save the date cards with our picture on it from Walgreens
Bought wedding favors from Oriental Trader for the reception. (mints in tulle bags and little bottles of bubbles in the shape of wedding cakes, better than rice or birdseed)
Sent in the engagement announcement for the newspaper. (Used to be free, now they're charging for it)
I get home and it's game night with the guys at our house for Fiance, so I locked myself in the back room with the cats and finished the guest list.
Then I emailed it to the mothers. That's when the stress really started. (after checking my credit card statement for all those purchases, it still stings) Fiance's mom is pretty easygoing about all this, but I know there are some more relatives she wants to invite and didn't, relatives my fiance was fairly close to growing up. We only have 120 spaces for the reception and we get fined if we go over that, so we've been pretty conservative on who we're inviting. Then my mom responds and tells me she wants to put on a couple of her friends from work and the third cousins she was close to as a kid, who are sweet people but seriously I don't know them that well and I see them MAYBE once a year. But they invited mom to their kid's wedding so she wants to invite them to mine.
That puts us at *1* spot left in the reception, and what if people bring unexpected girlfriends or boyfriends? And what about fiance's relatives? I pointed this out to her, to which she suggested I take off a few people here and there that are not really people I want to take off. (like my friends)
I told her we'd have no choice but to up the contract for the reception to include more people, which is an expense I really don't need right now with my second income on hold at the moment. (haven't been able to do massage for 6 weeks now)
Here's the conundrum, and I apologize in advance if it makes me sound like a spoiled brat. I'm really trying to take great pains to NOT be a bridezilla and appreciate what I do have and consider how fortunate I am to even be able to have this wedding when so many other couldn't, even priding myself on being able to cut and slash on unecessaries and find cheaper prices than otherwise when I can. My sister's wedding was an extravagant day. My sister got the cathedral downtown, the old governor's mansion as a reception center, 7 various showers, luncheons and parties and a cruise to the Bahamas, all more or less paid for by my parents. (The groom's parents really dropped the ball on us) I know that was alot of money that could have been better spent on such things as house and car payments, and later supplies for my baby niece. But part of me still says "Well SHE got (insert whatever) but I'm not good enough for the same?" I'm trying to quiet that voice but it isn't easy.
I have a limit on what I will comfortably pay for a wedding before I start feeling guilty and eyeballing the flowers and limo and thinking about the home renovations we could have done instead. I am at that point right now. I don't want to spend much more than I have. If my mom wants all this extra stuff, fine, but she can pay for it, because I can't afford it.
I know my sister's wedding put a crimp in my parents' finances. I don't want to ask them for much nor do I want to drive myself into debt again.
Because Fiance and I are older and settled in our jobs, we were determined to pay for as much of this as we could. And so far so good. His parents are retired and on a fixed income, my mom's retired and they still have debt, so we didn't want to ask them for much. But I didn't expect total reluctance on the part of my parents to help at all. Especially with crap THEY want, like extra people at the reception, a bridal sitting with the photographer. I also didn't expect to not have my second income get suspended right before the last few, and most expensive months, of planning started up.
I asked my mom about renting a limo, she said it was too expensive, but I noticed it wasn't expensive when my sister wanted one. (yes I know that makes me sound like a jealous whiny baby) So Fiance and I are renting a luxury car from Enterprise and getting a friend to play chauffeur.
Mom wants to add another $1,000 to the reception contract just so we can have room for relatives I barely know, OR she wants me to remove friends of ours from the list. This is exactly what my grandmother did to her that she swore she wouldn't do to us. Yeah right. I'd be more willing if she were willing to pick up the extra cost, which she said she'd do with other stuff months back but never did so we paid for it anyway.
Meanwhile Fiance's mom is wanting to pay for all the tux rentals, and we're trying to convince her that her grown sons are more than capable of paying for their own tux rentals as well as their sons'. She's paying for the rehearsal dinner and I've already decided to back out on the place I wanted because it's too expensive and I don't want her paying that much money on it. Currently looking for other restaurants.
So I have Fiance's mom wanting to pay for everything but not really financially able to, and my parents wanting all these extras, probably able to pay for it, but neglecting to do so.
So what will end up happening is me and Fiance end up paying for all the extras my parents want but likely wont' contribute to, while convincing his mom that she doesn't have to pay for anything else, even though she wants to, because she can't. (they still have hurricane damage repair payments they're trying to meet because insurance wouldn't cover putting a new roof on the house) Hell, his parents have already contributed their timeshare time to the honeymoon to Hawaii, which still needs saving up for since we've already used the honeymoon fund to pay for the wedding stuff that ended up being more expensive than we had budgeted for.
When is enough enough? And why the hell didn't we elope?
(sigh)
I spent yesterday trying to catch up on stuff that needed to be done, and it was an expensive day, even with the do-it-yourself invitations and Walgreens save-the-date cards.
I dropped off the deposit to reserve the church and fee for the music coordinators and wedding coordinator. Yeow that was a bit more expensive than I had planned for.
Ordered gifts for the bridesmaids, groomsmen, ushers and flower girl. (all siblings, nieces and nephews)
Ordered blank invitations to print on my computer
Ordered save the date cards with our picture on it from Walgreens
Bought wedding favors from Oriental Trader for the reception. (mints in tulle bags and little bottles of bubbles in the shape of wedding cakes, better than rice or birdseed)
Sent in the engagement announcement for the newspaper. (Used to be free, now they're charging for it)
I get home and it's game night with the guys at our house for Fiance, so I locked myself in the back room with the cats and finished the guest list.
Then I emailed it to the mothers. That's when the stress really started. (after checking my credit card statement for all those purchases, it still stings) Fiance's mom is pretty easygoing about all this, but I know there are some more relatives she wants to invite and didn't, relatives my fiance was fairly close to growing up. We only have 120 spaces for the reception and we get fined if we go over that, so we've been pretty conservative on who we're inviting. Then my mom responds and tells me she wants to put on a couple of her friends from work and the third cousins she was close to as a kid, who are sweet people but seriously I don't know them that well and I see them MAYBE once a year. But they invited mom to their kid's wedding so she wants to invite them to mine.
That puts us at *1* spot left in the reception, and what if people bring unexpected girlfriends or boyfriends? And what about fiance's relatives? I pointed this out to her, to which she suggested I take off a few people here and there that are not really people I want to take off. (like my friends)
I told her we'd have no choice but to up the contract for the reception to include more people, which is an expense I really don't need right now with my second income on hold at the moment. (haven't been able to do massage for 6 weeks now)
Here's the conundrum, and I apologize in advance if it makes me sound like a spoiled brat. I'm really trying to take great pains to NOT be a bridezilla and appreciate what I do have and consider how fortunate I am to even be able to have this wedding when so many other couldn't, even priding myself on being able to cut and slash on unecessaries and find cheaper prices than otherwise when I can. My sister's wedding was an extravagant day. My sister got the cathedral downtown, the old governor's mansion as a reception center, 7 various showers, luncheons and parties and a cruise to the Bahamas, all more or less paid for by my parents. (The groom's parents really dropped the ball on us) I know that was alot of money that could have been better spent on such things as house and car payments, and later supplies for my baby niece. But part of me still says "Well SHE got (insert whatever) but I'm not good enough for the same?" I'm trying to quiet that voice but it isn't easy.
I have a limit on what I will comfortably pay for a wedding before I start feeling guilty and eyeballing the flowers and limo and thinking about the home renovations we could have done instead. I am at that point right now. I don't want to spend much more than I have. If my mom wants all this extra stuff, fine, but she can pay for it, because I can't afford it.
I know my sister's wedding put a crimp in my parents' finances. I don't want to ask them for much nor do I want to drive myself into debt again.
Because Fiance and I are older and settled in our jobs, we were determined to pay for as much of this as we could. And so far so good. His parents are retired and on a fixed income, my mom's retired and they still have debt, so we didn't want to ask them for much. But I didn't expect total reluctance on the part of my parents to help at all. Especially with crap THEY want, like extra people at the reception, a bridal sitting with the photographer. I also didn't expect to not have my second income get suspended right before the last few, and most expensive months, of planning started up.
I asked my mom about renting a limo, she said it was too expensive, but I noticed it wasn't expensive when my sister wanted one. (yes I know that makes me sound like a jealous whiny baby) So Fiance and I are renting a luxury car from Enterprise and getting a friend to play chauffeur.
Mom wants to add another $1,000 to the reception contract just so we can have room for relatives I barely know, OR she wants me to remove friends of ours from the list. This is exactly what my grandmother did to her that she swore she wouldn't do to us. Yeah right. I'd be more willing if she were willing to pick up the extra cost, which she said she'd do with other stuff months back but never did so we paid for it anyway.
Meanwhile Fiance's mom is wanting to pay for all the tux rentals, and we're trying to convince her that her grown sons are more than capable of paying for their own tux rentals as well as their sons'. She's paying for the rehearsal dinner and I've already decided to back out on the place I wanted because it's too expensive and I don't want her paying that much money on it. Currently looking for other restaurants.
So I have Fiance's mom wanting to pay for everything but not really financially able to, and my parents wanting all these extras, probably able to pay for it, but neglecting to do so.
So what will end up happening is me and Fiance end up paying for all the extras my parents want but likely wont' contribute to, while convincing his mom that she doesn't have to pay for anything else, even though she wants to, because she can't. (they still have hurricane damage repair payments they're trying to meet because insurance wouldn't cover putting a new roof on the house) Hell, his parents have already contributed their timeshare time to the honeymoon to Hawaii, which still needs saving up for since we've already used the honeymoon fund to pay for the wedding stuff that ended up being more expensive than we had budgeted for.
When is enough enough? And why the hell didn't we elope?
(sigh)
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