Recession-Proofing The Big Day

The always-awesome DIYbride has a really insightful article on recession-proofing your wedding. She skips the obvious “don’t spend your down payment on a dress you’ll wear once, doofus!” and focuses instead of good spending habits for a couple starting their life together. Too many couples start their marriage with a dream wedding, and piles of debt! And DIY Bride agrees with me:

Don’t go into debt for any wedding expenses. I’ve written about the perils of this before (from personal experience) and want every engaged couple to know that getting into deep debt for what’s essentially a big party is just plain financial stupidity. Sounds harsh, I know, but this is coming from someone who had a solid financial plan and the best intentions for getting out of debt fast but got caught in a downturn in the economy (dot com crash). It took years to rebound from that. Years, people.

Don’t count on outside sources to fund your wedding. Things are getting tight all over. Getting a personal loan will be harder as banks are starting to tighten their belts. Credit card companies are offering fewer credit line increases at low/affordable rates and newer cards are coming with higher APRs. While mom & dad may have offered a generous sum several months ago, their financial situation may as perilous as anyone else’s right now. Stock prices are dropping, the housing market is a mess, job security is … you get the idea. What was once a surplus may totally disappear in the coming months.

She also suggests starting an emergency savings fund, which is something I’ve been meaning to do every since I left college, but what I really do is sock a couple hundred dollars away, and then blow it when I have a surprise expense like car repairs or something else I wasn’t expecting. But with the possibility of recession and the threat of layouts, brides and non-brides would well to take this advice:

Start a personal emergency fund if you don’t have one in place. The general rule for emergency funds is to have enough cash to cover your basic expenses (rent/mortgage, food, utilities) for 3 - 6 months. You need to take care of yourself! This is not for wedding expenses, movie tickets or anything else but basic survival.

All right, that’s enough of negativity. My next post will be more wedding cake pics, I promise!