Financial money matters to think about as you plan for your wedding day.
Planning a wedding is a very special season in a couple’s relationship – but it can also be very expensive and overwhelming. Communication and careful premarital financial planning can go a long way in helping you prepare for marriage and your financial future as a couple.
The Bible teaches us to operate from a place of wisdom and to be good stewards of all the Lord provides for us – including our finances. Leading up to a wedding there may be many unasked financial questions that could influence your big day, and your life together.
Who will pay for what? Who has debt? How will you manage your monthly budget? How will you both save for the wedding? So many questions that need extra thought.
So, What’s the Play Call?
Make the most of premarital financial planning.
Here we share just three premarital financial planning considerations to help you along the way and hopefully ensure a happy marriage with a more secure financial future.
Hot topic #1: Who will pay for what?
When you’re independent and earning an income, it is easy to make financial decisions that do not affect anyone but yourself. However, in preparing for marriage, you may need to realize that your decisions can have a direct impact on your partner.
We may have our own ideas of how to handle finances according to how we were raised or how we have operated in the past. However, we should not assume that our future spouse thinks about money in the same way that we do. It is best to ask the important questions and learn to compromise as you come up with a financial solution that works for both of you.
How will you pay for the wedding? How will you share your monthly expenses going forward? These are some important issues that, if dealt with early, can help you avoid unwanted strain later.
Hot topic #2: The debt debate…
It’s not the most desirable topic to discuss before planning a wedding, but you will need to consider the financial way forward if you, or your future spouse, have debt that needs to be paid off.
Saving for a wedding can be a huge task. Add debt to the mix and this may become even more complicated. It is best to have the conversation early and to plan accordingly. You may even want to chat with a financial planner to help you come up with a reasonable solution to help you combat any debt.
How will you deal with debt before the wedding? What is your stance on creating debt for your wedding day, and after? These are a few of the questions you will need to talk through in order to tackle this important topic.
Hot topic #3: Big wedding… small fortune…
We would all love the wedding of our dreams, but it’s important to weigh the costs of an expensive wedding versus what you can afford as a couple. Big celebrations with all the trimmings may cost a lot of money that could leave you on a financial back foot for many months or even years after your big day.
Use wisdom to plan, budget, and pay for a wedding that you can both enjoy, without the headache of added financial pressure. If you take time to consider the costs upfront you may be able to avoid unnecessary expenses caused by indecision or poor planning.
Small sacrifices may also pay off in the long run. For instance, when planning my own wedding, we opted to sacrifice the international honeymoon for a local getaway to save on costs. Like many other young couples, we were also about to purchase a house and we needed to plan accordingly to cover everything we needed beyond the actual wedding day. We have since traveled abroad on numerous occasions, but we did so with enough time to save up for special trips.
“Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it,” (Ecclesiastes 7:12).
Don’t wait around for financial issues to arise. Take the necessary steps for premarital financial planning and ask the questions early enough to help you build a better financial future together.
