We got engaged 3 years ago last night! Honest to God after saying yes and kissing him and squealing, I was like WHY NOW?! . Just 7 months prior we bought a house, I was 8 months into a new job and we had plans to renovate our kitchen and bathroom. We didn’t have money or time to plan a wedding. Correction I didn’t have time to plan a wedding, I love my fiancé but event planning is not his thing at all. . I didn’t realize the mountain of external pressure that would come when we got engaged. Everyone, include random coworkers wanted to know “the plan” or “when’s the big day.” CALM DOWN! I played off nicely, but I wanted to scream WHEN WE HAVE THE MONEY TO PAY FOR IT. I also wanted to say T and I DONT HAVE STRONG RELATIONSHIPS WITH MOST OF OUR FAMILY (long history of strained family relationship) SO ALL THE HEAVY LIFTING WILL BE ON ME! . Sometimes when I was feeling extra sharp I’d say we’re not having kids so we’re not on a timeline. That would sometimes flabbergast people. Oh well. This is our life, stay out of my lane. However the people pleaser in me was eager to answer their questions and lay out our plans. However I refused to go into debt paying for a wedding. . It wasn’t until late 2018 when I started getting seeeerious about finances. I knew we wanted to have a small beachy destination and we didn’t want to change our plan because of money. We needed to figure out a plan. After I laid out our home renovation payment goals and forecasted my side hustle income generation the easier it was to see how we could realistically save $30K for our wedding and honeymoon. In 2019 we focused on paying down the loan and saving 25% of our wedding budget to cover deposits and whatnot. Now that the renovation loan is paid off our focus from now until October is funding the other 75% of our wedding budget and building up our savings. . I cannot wait to be in Portugal for our wedding knowing that we will have no debt from the wedding. What a great way to start our marriage! We’ve been making choices and sacrifices “for the team” for years now so our wedding will just be an official cherry on top! . #bridetobe #weddingbudget #debtfreewedding #debtfreecommunity https://www.instagram.com/p/B81bx_VBiBF/?igshid=dtr3wktbawu8
