How Has the Recession Affected Your Plans?

[BillysBride]

Just wondering as a bride who has had to do a complete overhaul (including the date) of her wedding plans due to how the current economic crisis has impacted our families.

 

Three CORE people in our wedding party (and by core I mean one parent, a brother and a sister) have lost their jobs in the past six months. FH himself was laid off for three months, but is luckily back to work. Things were pretty much paid for on our end...but people that are truly important to us were sacrificing things they shouldn't to try to be at the ceremony. For that reason, we pushed it back, and I have no regrets. We are likely going to go ahead with the legal ceremony, because we want to be married sooner rather than later. But the religious ceremony isn't going to happen til next year now.

 

We sat down, talked about what we could and couldn't live without (besides each other) and it was just way too obvious that not having his mom there was not an option. We couldn't afford to fly ANYone out...if we could, we so would. I'd have been happy with the parents alone, but it just wasn't working out. We're keeping our tickets and just going to go on a scouting trip to make sure everything at the resort is cool and get some down time. It made more sense than paying the penalties and missing out on the trip altogether.

 

The things that I myself couldn't live without were him being happy which meant having BOTH parents there, and my island ceremony because that's my dream.

 

Anyway, I'm just wondering how the current financial situation here in the states has impacted other couples or if it has at all. Be nice to know we aren't the only ones feeling the damn crunch.

[JUSTUSTWO]

Savannah, I'm so sorry that you are going thru this complete overhaul! But its great to hear that you are still going to have your legal ceremony as planned and its nice that you guys decided to keep your plane tickets & do a site visit. Whats even better is the fact that you & FI talked about your situation & worked it out.

 

As I'm already married, the economy hasn't affected any wedding plans but it has affected our plan to revisit Jamaica for our 1 year anniversary with all of our friends/family who attending our DW. Everyone had so much fun that they convinced DH & I to arrange a return trip for this year! And although initially I was not interested in planning a group trip for our anniversary, I eventually realized that if everyone had such a great time, why wouldn't I want them to return to a place that they enjoyed!

 

So we got the rates & started sending info to people late last year. When I look back at where we were last year in terms of people who had made their reservations, compared to this point in time, its really crazy. At this time last year, mostly all of our guests were booked for JA. Thats a total of 30.

Well needless to say, due to the economy, the majority of our guests had to "bail out" on the plan to return to JA this year! Out of 30, we only had 5 to 6 people say that they could afford to go. Everyone else just couldn't do it.

 

I know its not the same in terms of wedding planning, but I was really excited at the idea of this return trip with friends/family for sentimental reasons. So now, we've had to push this idea back to maybe later this year and DH & I will probably go somewhere else for our 1 yr anniv.

 

All of this is to say that you're definitely not alone in the impact of the economy pinch/crunch. I feel for all the upcoming brides who may be experiencing the same thing. I also know that if the economy was like this last year when I was planning our wedding, we wouldn't have had those 30 guests attend. I'm sure that the # would have been half of that.

I know its going to take some time & its not going to happen overnight, but I pray that the economy turns around sooner rather than later!

 

Oh, love your new siggy pic!