Go2Wed.com Blog for Brides Planning a Wedding!

I just came back recently from a dear friends wedding.  I knew going in that it would be one of the most expensive weddings I will ever attend in my lifetime.  Her parents are extremely nice, grounded individuals as is my friend.  They just happen to earn a ton of money and this is their only daughter.

Witnessing the glory, the beauty, the amazing feat this wedding event was, it occured to me that how much you spend on your wedding MAY or may NOT directly relate to some level of wedding stress you feel.

The way spending more for your wedding can reduce stress:

If you are spending more, you should be getting more - more experienced vendors, higher quality items, better employees who are better trained to serve your big day.  These are intangibles that can not be underestimated.  Afterall, the big day itself is ALL ABOUT the experience, quality, and level of employee that is participating in making your big day great.  I estimated for a tiny wedding, the bare bones number of people involved is about 70.  This is saying just one florist, one photographer, a few catering staff, etc.  It’s shocking how many people it takes - people we don’t invite to the wedding, to make your day special. 

My husband and I hired a great photographer and had no worries.  My mom could be a professional event planner (but loves her weekends too much to do it for a living!) so my husband and I had an amazingly stressless wedding day because she was experienced and very competent.  Her role was huge and if you don’t have someone like her, consider the “cost” of a wedding planner for the day-off as the best money you could spend!  I was not the bride who was frazzled, out of sorts, worried, nervous on my wedding day.  The few gaffs, my mom took care of and I completely trusted the day would go off as planned.

OK, so that’s the positive side to spending more to get more and less stress.  The flip side is spending more CAN up the stress because your expectations are larger-than life, you have over spent and have major money stress, or you find out after the fact that you got completely swindled by an over priced, inexperienced wedding vendor.  If you’re spending $10/plate on food, you expect $10 worth of quality, right?  But if you’re spending $50/plate and the food is pretty blah, that can be very stressful long term… as you slowly pay off major wedding debt for something that you hated.

Spending more money can also raise the complexity of the wedding - bigger, more lavish, more moving parts and pieces (more flowers, centerpieces, decorations, more band members, etc.) 

And of course should something bad happen - a hurricane, a close family member passes away just before the big day, the more you spend can just add an extra layer of stress and burden.  It’s one thing to postpone a $5,000 wedding and quite another to lose $20,000.

Ultimately there is no right or wrong answer.  I believe we each have areas that will REDUCE our stress if we spend more.  Like I mentioned, for us a photographer was really important - someone who had proven experience getting good group photos and was reliable.  For others, food is really important, or perhaps location.  The challenge is to then spend less elsewhere so you don’t balloon your budget leading to a high joy, high stress wedding day.