Saving money by avoiding a super expensive wedding day

As ever on this website, we are not looking at wholesale changes to your lifestyle. Instead, we are focusing on the little things (the small steps) which can make a huge difference over time. Today, let’s look at the how your wedding day could be costing you in the long-term and tips to avoid an expensive wedding.

Happiest day of your life

It is supposed to be the happiest day of your life. But, do we realize how much “that one day” could be costing us in the long-term?

The UK’s most popular wedding website hitched.co.uk, surveyed thousands of newlywed couples last year to reveal an industry worth a whopping £10 billion. Planning an engagement through to the honeymoon, a wedding celebration here in the UK collectively costs a little over £36,000 for everyone involved.

According to the dailymail.co.uk, the average cost of a UK wedding in 2012 for the bride & groom was £21,939, and the average age that the UK person gets married is 30 years old. You don’t want to go into mountains of debt just for that one day. That’s no way to start a marriage. But, even if you have the cash to pay for it now, should you be spending so much and have you considered how much this cost will have on your future? Remember that you will be just as married if you spend £1,000 than if you spend £100,000.

How much will my big day cost me?

Let’s imagine that the wedding is planned so that it costs only £5,000. This difference is £16,939 from the average wedding. Now, imagine we are the average 30 year old getting married and that saved this amount until retirement at 65 years old. At the average bank interest rate over the past 25 years, applied for 35 years, we would have a cash amount at retirement of £143,732. This could then earn us an annual income during retirement without ever impacting the capital. Is the average wedding when you are 30 worth almost £150k. I don’t think so.

Now, take a second to think about those people who don’t have the cash up front. If we take out a loan for half the cost of the average wedding, paid back at 8% interest over 5 years, we not only have lost the £143,732, but we will also have to pay an extra £2,376 in interest over those 5 years, which would have added over £17k to the retirement fund.

And just imagine if you are one of the 12% who get married twice or more, and each of those is an expensive wedding!

Alternatively, if you are reading this and are a multimillionaire, see if you can make it into the top 5…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynjf-BYvEuE

Now THAT is an expensive wedding!

Money Saving Tips

There are hundreds of tips to reduce your wedding costs. I have included a few ideas below :

• Lovely garden wedding on a budget
• Weddings on a budget
  
• Budget wedding ideas from a Budget Wedding Survivor
• Our $5000 wedding budget breakdown
  
• The wedding budget