What To Do When You DON’T Get Married on a Budget

Let’s face it. Even though this site is called Newlyweds on a Budget, not everyone actually gets married on a budget. Your values are likely different from the next person and not everyone wants to do uber frugal things to cut the cost of their big day.

If you have your dream wedding and end up going a little overboard financially, it’s not the end of the world. The best thing you can do is acknowledge your situation and take actionable steps to get right back on track.

If you had a dream wedding but it wasn’t cheap, here are 3 things you should start doing ASAP to make sure you get your money back in order and get off to a good start on the financial front with your new spouse.

1. Organize Any Debt You Might Have Accumulated

It sucks to have wedding debt to deal with after your big day, but it happens. It’s important to start out by being completely honest and acknowledging and debt you’ve accumulated over the past few months instead of brushing it off and trying to hide it.

Organize all your accounts whether it’s credit card balances, personal loans or family loans. Figure out which debts have the highest interest rate and rank them in the order you want to start paying them off.

2. Establish a Game Plan With Your Partner

After you’ve exposed any debt you might have, you’ll want to create a game plan with your partner to get your finances back on track. This may or may not involve paying back wedding debt.

Maybe you blew through your emergency savings to pay for extra wedding expenses and want to replenish your account. Maybe you put off some home repair costs that now need to be taken care of.

Even though my husband and I didn’t get into any more debt to get married, we still had some debt before we got engaged and started planning our wedding. My husband had some credit card debt he put on halt as we planned our wedding. After we got married, we devised a plan to pay more than the minimum payment on the debt and we were able to pay it off rather quickly together.

Part of our strategy involved living off one income in order to maximize debt payments which is a great route to take if you’re in a similar situation.

Sit down and have a talk with your partner to go through your options and create a solid game plan you both can stick to. This may involve getting side hustles, making extra debt payments, picking up over time, etc.

3. Consider How You Want to Organize Your Finances Moving Forward

Getting married can completely change the way you organize your finances since you now have another person’s accounts to consider.

You should decide if you and your partner want to have joint bank accounts or keep separate accounts and how you want to split household expenses. The earlier you discuss all this, the smoother the process will be.

Readers, did you have a wedding that went over budget? How did you handle your finances afterward?