As our first wedding anniversary approaches in July and the official summer wedding season kicks off down here in central Florida, I’ve been reflecting back on our wedding last year and looking over the budget spreadsheet to see if there was anything I regretted on it.

Chris and I were married last year for just under $9000 (including the rehearsal dinner, rings, clothing, marriage license, all vendor fees, decorations, and food) for a wedding with around 120 guests. We fully planned on paying for the entire wedding ourselves with a budget of $5000-$7000 and a guest list of around 80 people, but our parents surprised us by contributing lump sum gifts ($5000 from my parents, and $1800 from DH’s parents) for us to use as we chose and by picking up the costs of the cakes ($175 from my parents) and rehearsal dinner (~$800 from DH’s parents). I know that a lot of people would simply add the parental contributions to their original budget and up the total for the wedding to $11800-$13800, but we opted instead to stay as close to our original amount as possible while squeezing in the 40 additional guests that our parents more or less made us invite, LOL. Between the unexpected help from our parents and the monetary gifts received from our guests, our out of pocket cost for the wedding was only $704. We are definitely not one of those couples who will still be paying off the wedding 10 years down the road.

Since I have more of a frugal male geek’s attitude toward most things, including weddings, I would have been perfectly happy with a rented dress (bridal gown rentals are pretty popular in my birth country of Taiwan–my mother wore a rental on her wedding day) for myself, origami flowers, 30 guests from my side, a reception dinner held at my favorite Asian fusion buffet at $16.99/person, and a DJ that could also provide karaoke services. Alas, DH is apparently more romantic and traditional about this sort of thing than I am, and I ended up buying a dress after all ($99 David’s Bridal clearance with free minor alterations from my younger sister; it pays to be a stock size 6), paying for flowers (I almost threw up when I placed the order at the florist 2 weeks before the ceremony–I will NEVER spend that much on plant material that I can’t plant in the ground and eat later again), extra required guests, and a reception and ceremony at our local country club that was $25 per guest plus beer, wine, and appetizers.

Well, at least I did get my karaoke DJ.

We did a lot of things ourselves and shopped around for the best bargains on venue (a friend of the family was a member of the country club and got us the $25 per guest rate; the regular price was $30 per guest), favors, decorations, jewelry, and apparel. We used friends for photography and videography, designed and printed our own invitations, ordered many supplies online with coupon codes and free shipping, ordered half a dozen delicious, regular-sized cakes in different flavors from the local Asian bakery and Publix grocery store instead of paying hundreds for an overpriced tower of dry cake coated with fondant, and generally tried to make things nice without paying inflated wedding industry prices.

The only thing I’d change if I could do it all again is to allot some time to learn how to do flower arrangements myself. And maybe to have the wait staff set aside some of those yummy cakes for us. The desserts must have been great, because there was absolutely none left by the time Chris and I finished talking to all of the tables and had a chance to look for some, LOL.

I plan to do what my parents did and contribute a lump sum amount of around $5000 (adjusted for inflation) to the weddings of any children DH and I may have, but we won’t be paying for a $20k extravaganza even if we have a daughter and our finances allow for it. I like the idea of letting the kids know early that they need to foot most of the bill for the extras in their lives and at least half of the bill for grown up things like college and weddings as well. If we do have more to give beyond $5000, we would prefer to earmark that as a gift to help the couple get a start on a downpayment on their home.

Oh, and I will teach myself how to do flowers WAY ahead of time so I can handle that portion of the wedding for my kids and spare them the nauseating “OMG, I just squandered $823 on flowers that will die in 3 days. ARGH!” feeling that I had last July! I may even take up cake decorating.

How much did you pay for your wedding, and is there anything you regret purchasing for it? Did you receive any help from your family and/or friends (monetary or service)? Do you plan on helping your children out with their wedding expenses?

UPDATE: As of 12:30 PM Friday, 5/2/08, size 34B in black AND white are back in stock on the site!

Okay ladies, I thought that the $19.99 Champion sports bra sale last month was a good deal, but oh my…this one is even better!

Onehanesplace.com has my favorite
Sport Shape t-back bra on clearance for $9.99. These are the high motion control rated sports bras with the wicking fabric and shaped seam design that won’t squash you flat like most compression bras. They normally run $33 or so retail.

The sizes are a bit limited if you are lacking in the cup department, but when I checked, 34C and 36B were still in stock. Alas, no 34A/34B for yours truly, though the back-order notice said that they would be back in stock around May 19. I was also kind of bummed that the cute light blue color shown in the pictures was not available in the lower size ranges, but hey, the black and white options that ARE offered are perfectly serviceable, too.

And to make the deal even better, here are some non-stackable coupon codes you can use:

15% off entire order (Expires 5/2/08): 611080
Free shipping on orders $60 and up (Expires 5/2/08): 611081
$3 flat rate shipping (Expires 5/2/08): 611082
10% off $50+, 15% off $75+, or 20% off $100+ (Expires 7/31/08): 470802
Free shipping (Expiration unknown, but still good 5/11/08): 608910

Good luck! I hope some of you get in on this deal.

I’m going to go back to my corner now and sulk about the shortage of sizes for rack-deficient chicas like me.

It’s been four months since Chris and I began our slightly modified Total Money Makeover plan, and despite our lack of what author Dave Ramsey dubs “gazelle intensity,” we’ve made some decent progress toward eliminating out non-mortgage debt. If you count the $4200 home equity line of credit we knocked out from September 2007-January 2008 for our new air conditioner, we have paid off $17,830 in non-primary mortgage debt so far.

I say that we aren’t gazelle intense because we haven’t done most of the things that Ramsey’s less fortunate listeners often have to do in order to dig themselves out of debt:

- Work a second or third part-time job
- Sell off leveraged big ticket items
- Cut off ALL entertainment and travel
- Eat a lot of rice and beans

Because our debt was largely comprised of low-interest rate student, auto, and home loans, not credit card balances, and we are fortunate enough to have a dual income household that brings in enough to cover basic living expenses, retirement funding, a reasonable amount of entertainment spending, and debt payments on those loans without ever being at risk of falling behind, we have been able to throw a lot of money at our debt snowball without changing our lifestyle very much. Granted, I have had tightwad impulses since early childhood, and Chris has been pretty responsible with his finances since an ex-girlfriend set him straight years ago, so you could say that the only thing holding us back from paying my car and his student loan off early was complacency. It was easy to just keep on making those minimum payments according to the bank’s schedule, especially since we were doing all the right things in terms of retirement savings and budgeting.

We also had no big ticket toys like boats or over-priced new cars to sell off, but we’ve done pretty well just by doing the following:

- Temporarily reduced retirement savings to just 4% of our gross income (down from 15% for Chris and 20% for me)
- Cut back on movie theater outings and used the 12 free Blockbuster rental coupons I earned via e-Rewards instead
- Cut back on dining out
- Chris started making his own sandwiches for lunch at least 2-3 days per week and brews his own coffee at home instead of buying some on the road
- Reduced untracked spending on hobbies, clothing, electronics, games, and other non-essentials.
- Put any bonus income (tax refunds, sales commissions, mileage bonuses, gifts, etc.) toward the snowball

Here’s where we failed to be gazelles: Some of the extra things that we did spend on probably could save us several months on the debt snowball, but we made the choice to budget for these items and deal with the extra 2 months it would cost us.

- Chris built a new desktop computer system with $1200 from our 2007 tax refund.
- I set aside $800 for the Pink Dumbbells/John Stone Fitness Bahamas cruise in August.
- I threw in $400 for a new mattress and box spring set in February. (The old mattress was sagging badly and made my back hurt every day. I consider this preventive health care. Chris’s mother threw in another $300 toward this as a gift.)
- Chris paid for the roundtrip airfare for us to visit his father in Alabama (~$400) and for his friends’ out of town wedding in June (another $400).
- Chris spent $350 or so on the materials needed to re-pave our small walled courtyard.

Reducing our retirement contributions for 2008 has probably made the biggest difference in our progress, followed by our unspoken agreement to control impulse spending on both lattes and gazingus pins. Although we both budget around $50/month for fun money, neither of us has spent much of our allowances. We’ve decided to really take advantage of the forgotten entertainment and hobby materials we have on hand instead of accumulating more. Chris has been geeking out with D&D and cards (World of Warcraft collectible card game, not poker) at his friends’ houses instead of going out and spending money on movies and dining out. I’ve been outfitting myself and Chris with home-sewn clothes made strictly from my existing stash of fabric, patterns, notions, and oversized free t-shirts. We both check out books and audio books from the library instead of purchasing them from Amazon.com.

I haven’t bought a Wii yet, and Chris hasn’t acquired a new car stereo system. No new fitness gear has appeared in the house since I the Cardio Coach New Year’s deal in January.

And you know what? We haven’t been bored at all.

$31,782 more until financial freedom!