In August 2011, James and Rox got married. Throughout their engagement, James blogged for Y&YW about his experiences as an enthusiastic fiancé. Now married, he re-joins us in his new role as Groom With a View. Same guy, just a little further under the thumb. Every month James will be tackling wedding topics from the man’s perspective. So grab your impending grooms and get them to tune in – they might just learn something…

It’s easy to get carried away when you first get engaged. In the beginning your head will be spinning with endless possibilities and unrealistic intentions, so just enjoy the moment. But eventually, when the dust settles and you sit down to figure this whole thing out, reality will bite and you’ll start to comprehend the scale of the costs. Of course, this won’t be the case for everyone. For the fortunate few, ‘budget’ will be a dirty word. But for the rest of us, setting budgets and establishing good money management are absolutely crucial. How romantic! Granted, it’s not the sexiest subject or even the most interesting, but it’s absolutely essential to get a grip on your costs from day one. Unless of course you’re a banker, in which case if you get into financial trouble you’ll qualify for a Government bail out.

Everyone’s budgets are different, so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. But the basic principles should remain, regardless of how much you’ve got in the pot. As a rough guide, try to obey The Golden Rule: Don’t Get Into Debt Over Your Wedding. In other words, whacking it all on a credit card is a bad idea, unless it’s not your card! Starting married life in debt isn’t ideal, so if possible you should try to save up for your wedding, or at least a large part of it. It might mean months or even years of hardship and belt tightening, but the end result is more than worth the pain.

Write Everything Down
It’s really important not to allow your wedding to become an exercise in project management. Being too clinical about the costs will suck the soul out of the process. But if you want to keep a handle on everything, then you’ll have to get used to keeping records of what you spend. Fortunately for me, my better half (Rox) loves a good spreadsheet! One of the smartest things she did (apart from marrying me) was to create a simple cashflow forecast. So we knew precisely where we were throughout the whole process, and avoided any nasty surprises. Nevertheless, we still went over budget. No matter how diligent you are, in the last few weeks your costs will start to spiral. In our case, we were bang on budget with two weeks to go, and then we decided at the last minute to offer a free bar. We couldn’t afford it, but that’s what credit cards are for. I know that’s bad advice, but it was the best £2,000 we’ve ever spent and we’ll have paid it off in 6 months, so it’s not the end of the world.

Establish a Budget
If figures aren’t your strong point, then do this as a bare minimum:
• Itemise the ‘big ticket’ items (reception venue, dress, flowers, rings, food, booze, entertainment, honeymoon etc.)
• Figure out what they’ll cost and add 20% for contingency (this is conservative)
• Then work out how much you can put aside each month in order to determine how long it’ll take you to save up (ensure you are sitting down for these calculations!)
• If you’re happy with this time frame, establish a savings schedule and stick to it
• If you’re not happy, you’ll either have to scale down your plans or ramp up your savings

Tighten the Belt
If you intend to save up to pay for your whole wedding, it’s likely that you’ll have to make some difficult decisions in order to speed up the process. Your social life will inevitably be the first thing to suffer. Also, if you’re thinking of quitting smoking, now would be a good time. You might even have to go without a holiday until your honeymoon. And, brace yourselves, it might be time to suspend those eBay and asos accounts – nobody said this would be easy! In my case, we took drastic action. We figured out pretty quickly that by the time we’d saved up for the wedding of our dreams we’d be pensioners, so we moved back in with my folks for 12 months. This was far from ideal, but it’s really important to focus on the bigger picture. When it’s all over, you’ll be left with the most magical day that you’ll treasure forever, and all those tedious weekends you stayed in watching X Factor will become distant memories. In reality it could’ve been much worse; we could’ve moved in with Rox’s folks!