[zq8colorado04]

Me and my fiance are getting married June 5th, we've been planning it ourselves and are operating on a VERY tight budget as far as weddings go.

We're spending $3,000 but we're doing things kind of unconventionally. We (she) wanted a reception, just a way to kind of hang out with everyone and to have a good time with family and friends but we couldn't afford food for 100 people. (All but 9 people are family) so we rented a room at a nice restaurant and it's gonna be dutch. We discussed it with all of our family members before hand and they all said they were cool paying for their own meal...if we had to pay for the food it would've been another $4000...more than doubling our budget and we just can't swing that on our income just starting out.

I think we spent $1,000 on the dress, $450 on the reception room at the restaurant, $400 photographer, $200 flowers, $200 wedding bands, $86 invitations, $93 marriage license, and then a bunch of smaller stuff as well.

I've been trying to help out as much as possible with the planning, I try to let her do what she wants because honestly it doesn't really matter to me I only care about the fact that I'm marrying her...but my role has kind of been the "bad guy" role...I hold our feet to the fire about sticking to our $3,000 budget...and now with everything paid for I think we did a pretty good job of it we started out with a $3,000 budget and after the wedding we'll have only spent $3,200 so not TOO far over budget.

But the part that I'm very happy about is that after the wedding we won't owe anything on the wedding, I can't believe people go into debt over what is essentially a party.

We're not going on a honeymoon til' a while after the wedding...we've got to save up some both me and my fiance are big believers in paying off our debt (my car, her Jeep she got when her 96 Camry went to the big junkyard in the sky, and her student loans) and then living debt free and saving for all our purchases and saving for retirement aggressively.