Move Budget-Setting From Make-Believe to Magic For Your Perfect Wedding and Marriage

People talk and talk about what they need their wedding to be. All too often it involves clothing and music and food. What you really need your wedding to be is a good transition from engaged to married and a wonderful foundation for your great marriage. You want to concentrate on the wedding ceremony. You need to focus on the wedding vows. The ceremony will set the tone for the following celebration and the wedding vows will establish your plans for creating the marriage of a lifetime.

One of the best ways to keep your wedding and your marriage grounded in the real world is through your budgets.

1. Wedding Budget: That budget needs to realistically reflect what money you have to spend and how you want to spend it. You might consider whether or not you want to spend all the money you have budgeted, or marry more modestly and find another way to use that money.
2. Honeymoon Budget. This is a separate savings account. Determine to find a way to start your marriage out without a debt for your honeymoon. You'll enjoy your time together so much more if you're not having to grimace every time you way, "oh well, we're never going to do this again." Actually, you're going to want to do it again, your marriage is going to need it, so get this one paid for so you can start saving for the next one!
3. Marriage Budget. How do you manage your monthly costs? How are you paying off your debt, if you have it, from your life before marriage? Do you have a contingency fund and a save-for-a-new-house fund?

If you're working hard at establishing realistic budgets in all these places, then the choices you make about the wedding are going to accurately reflect who you are. The make-believe is gone, but the magic of living thoughtfully and well together is just beginning. You want to be creating layers of careful planning to encourage the magic. You need to do the hard work. But not everyone needs to see it! (That's why they call it magic!)