Wedding Planning Blog

Your wedding day is undoubtedly one of the most important days of your life, but it can also be one of the most expensive. For the bride perhaps the most important item on the shopping list will be her wedding dress and with an increasing number of high quality but relatively cheap wedding dresses on the market today it is possible to have the dress of your dreams without breaking the bank.

For many people a wedding dress should be a traditional full length white gown, symbolizing the bride’s pure heart and innocence, complete with veil and train first popularized by Queen Victoria when she broke with the royal custom of marrying in silver and chose a white gown for her marriage to Prince Albert. This started a craze which has continued until today with a large number of brides choosing a white wedding dress or a dress in a variation of white such as cream, eggshell or ivory.

Today however we are seeing two major shifts taking place when it comes to weddings.

In the first place we are seeing a return to pre-Victorian days when brides married in simpler dresses of just about any color that took their fancy, except for black which was associated with mourning and red which was worn only by “ladies of the night”. This also means often dispensing with the veil, which is said to symbolize virginity, and the train which is very much a trapping of royal weddings and emulates the peacock, which was formerly seen an a royal bird.

In the second place we are also seeing a move away from the church wedding towards weddings held in a wide variety of venues, including the increasingly popular beach wedding.

As a result not only do brides now have a much wider choice of color for their wedding dress but, more importantly, dispensing with the veil and train and the need for a full length dress now means that brides can choose from a range of far more simple wedding dresses. For the cost conscious this is great as informal wedding dresses are also considerably cheaper than the full traditional white wedding outfit.

One other important point here is that the move away from the full white wedding gown also means that it is no longer necessary to purchase your dress from a specialist bridal outfitter who, not surprisingly, will charge a premium simply for the service that is provided or for the name or brand that you are buying. It’s a bit like a pair of running shoes – you can buy two virtually identical pairs of shoes and pay ten times more for one pair than for the other simply because it carries a brand name.

There has never been a better time to shop for your wedding dress and the choice available to you today in terms of color, style and supplier is vast. It’s no longer that difficult to find reasonably cheap wedding dresses and still end up looking like a million dollars in the dress of your dreams.

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For prospective parents, weighing the decision to have children has not become easier. According to a 2004 survey by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), parents who grossed at least $70,200 a year spend an overall $269,520 to raise a child to the age of 18.

In the U.K., the cost of raising a child to the age of 21 outside of costly London is estimated to be about £166,000 (about US$286,000), according to a survey by the Liverpool Victoria Society. The financial dilemma, thus, is similar to many developed countries. If household incomes were limitless, the decision to raise children might be a strictly personal option. In reality, however, the decision to have children is also a financial one. In this article, we’ll provide some food for thought from the financial side of the equation.

No Kids? Why Get Married?
Love and affection aside, marriage provides greater financial stability than going it alone. When both spouses work, all but the most foolhardy of married couples enjoy significantly greater financial benefits than other families. Smart couples leverage marriage to increase income and decrease expenses. Instead of making two rent or mortgage payments, these couples make one. Likewise, most utility bills have a nominal payment that would be higher if the couple was living apart than the incremental increase in living together. The most financially savvy couples live on one income and save the rest. They usually have two employers from which to choose health plans and won’t have to worry about bankruptcy if one income earner is temporarily unemployed.

Economically speaking, the absence of children results in lower fixed expenses. It also results in more money to spend. Regardless of your feelings about children, the bottom line is that you can do a lot of nice things for yourself, your spouse and your finances with the quarter of a million dollars that it takes to raise a child to age 18.

Conclusion - Kids or No Kids?
Economic reality forces tough choices. The decision to have children is a politically sensitive topic; those who have children abhor the cold economic reality that DINKS factor into their equation, while some DINKS maintain the view that unchecked population growth contributes to environmental strain. In the end, having children is still a deeply personal and challenging choice - just remember to add the financial implications of raising children into the equation. You need to review your personal situation and make the choices that are right for you and your family, whether it will consist of two people or 10.

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