Money Talks

When Pepe and I first started planning our wedding, we didn't exactly sit down and come up with a budget. We didn't have a clue where to begin or how to go about planning the wedding. So I immersed myself in research and came back with a figure that steadily grew to what the budget is today. Since we were paying for everything ourselves, we knew that it was not possible for us to have a big wedding. Luckily, our parents were okay with it. Pepe and I are also low key people so we prefer an intimate gathering of friends and family over a Big Fat Cambodian Wedding. It also didn't make sense for us to go into debt when we wanted to buy a house. Yes, I know most Cambodian couples make bank after the wedding because guests give monetary gifts but we didn't want to make our wedding about money - spending it or making it. We wanted our wedding to be about our love and we wanted to throw one big party to celebrate it.

So this meant we had to have some priorities for our big day. We knew that great food and music were essential ingredients for a memorable event but the venue would be the determining factor on how our wedding would look and feel. The splurge on the Rotunda was worth it. It created a destination feel for our wedding. Easton Beach also had a special place in our heart as we spent some sizzling hot summer days there. The distance from the ceremony to the venue was also within convenience too.

Photography was another important thing to us as our visual-memories were going to be the only thing we had left at the end of our wedding. Everything else didn't matter as much - well that is until I saw all the pretty weddings on the pages of every bridal magazine I open and on every wedding blog I frequented. At some point, I realize it didn't matter if my wedding wasn't blog worthy. So I scratched the uplights and the grand floral fantasy I had planned for the venue. It wasn't in our budget and we were not going into debt for it. I constantly had to tell myself this because one year after we started planning our wedding, we have a new house and a cute little doggie too. Most importantly, we are not in wedding debt (nothing on plastic). These things meant more to me than a few hours of uplighting and flowers that would die the next day. Starting our life together debt free is much more important. And somehow it all worked out because I actually found a compromise that would allow me to still have flowers for our wedding without going over our budget.

I am really proud of myself because before I started planning our wedding, I didn't have a drop of discipline. Really, I would spend money if I had it and if I wanted, it was mine. My fiance on the hand was the money manager in the relationship. He taught me how to live within my means and this wedding turned out to be our first lesson in marriage. We learned to sort out our finances and how we as a couple would spend our money. It has been the most valuable lesson I have learned so far. I have my honey to thank for it too. :-)