Thinking Wedding budget: Can I afford it?

Financial super guru Suze Orman one of my favorite people. I was lucky enough to have a chance to hear her speak at Oprah’s Live Your Best Life Weekend in New York this past May – it was quite an eye opener. I love the Can I Afford it segment of her MNBC show. Every time I’m about to make a frivolous purchase I hear Suze’s voice yelling YOU - ARE -DENIED!!!

I have been financially irresponsible for most of my adult life. I didn’t understand money and how to manage credit; I’ve subsequently ended up with a considerable amount of consumer debt. I’ve paid for my financially stupidity dearly – the shame of failing credit checks, dodging creditors and watching bills pile up.

The irony of my situation is my fiancé is an accountant and is very disciplined when it comes to money (and everything else really). My foolish spending habits have jeopardized our relationship on numerous occasions. At one point he gave me an ultimatum: “get your financial life in order or else...”  To cut a long story short, I’m in recovery now, I’ve acknowledged that I have a problem with money and I’m taking all the steps necessary to be financially responsible and get myself out of debt.

You are probably wondering what this has to you with planning my wedding – everything. The old me would have maxed out credit cards to pay for my dream wedding, talk about champagne on a beer budget. As a first step in this journey I went to speak to my financial adviser, I had two questions for him:

(a) Can a person in my financial situation afford a  wedding?
(b) How much can I afford? Or rather how much should I spend?

Troy, my wonderful personal banker gave me the quick and dirty – yes, I can afford a wedding, but… it’s in my best interest to keep it simple (translation: cheap). So Boo Boo (the fiancé) and I will be crunching numbers, trying to figure out what the magic number will be.