The price of true love!

You may remember that I have already offered my advice on budgeting issues before now. Well, what I am about to tell you is even more important than all of that. The reason that it's so important is because it's not written down anywhere else (that I know of...). This is, in fact, a breaking bridal piece of information.

You know how there are like, a gazillion wedding budget templates out there? All of them are very useful at giving you little headings of things you should cost up and take into consideration. They vary in the scope of these headings, ranging from 'venue' and 'catering' to 'gift for best man' and 'favour boxes'. And when you come to that final big bad figure at the end and gulp nervously, you would think that that would be that, right? That all the little details, the minutiae of the event have been counted, verified and cast a huge shadow over your bank account.

WRONG.

There is no spreadsheet in the world (that I have found) that tells you about the hidden costs you'll only realise about 2 months before your wedding when you've completely run out of money. And these aren't negotiable costs, these are things that are really pretty crucial. So, for those of you that are as scatty as me and haven't considered these logistics (I realise many of you will be much more on the ball), here's what I like to call the:

For Everything Else There's Mastercard List

•  Changing passport to married name because that's the name you booked your honeymoon in (£78 + £8 Check and Send service at the Post Office if you actually want it to get there).

• A hotel room the night before. For both of us. (£300ish)

• A hotel room for the night after near the airport. (£100ish)

• Petrol to get from here to there to the airport. (£70ish)

• Budgeted for the groom's suit, but not his shirt or tie. (£75ish)

• Suncream for honeymoon (dependent on Boots sale offers)

• New clothes for honeymoon (ok...maybe this is negotiable...but we'd both like to not have holiday snaps in the same clothes we've worn on holiday for the last 6 years).

• New snorkels for honeymoon (non-negotiable. Ours got fire-damaged. Yes you can hire them at the resort but last time I did that I found dead skin in the breathing tube. Vomit.)

• Haircut before the wedding so that it's in good condition and the right colour. (£80 for her, £12 for him).

• Leg wax/bikini wax/manicure/pedicure/eyebrow issues/fake tan [delete as necessary] (Up to £100)

So you see, were rapidly ascending towards that frightening place that is ONE THOUSAND POUNDS and that's only 10 items. Feel free to add to the list, I'm off to pimp out the cats for extra cash and start selling electrical items from around the home...

Comments

[claire]

1.

Oh god. I have a column called 'miscellanous'. I've currently put £300 in there. I'm going to have to shuffle some numbers around. Cripes.

[Laura]

2.

Scarily true.... That's why I've been adding to my honeymoon wardrobe since January this year... well that's what I tell myself anyway! ;)

[anna and the ring]

3.

Crumbs, miscellaneous! It is a scary column.

Although I am far too cheap to change my passport before it runs out and we may not be able to take a honeymoon anyway..sob!

[Funmi Omotade-Tan]

4.

That's so true. Love the image of you going off to pimp the cat haha; you should probably add a disclaimer along the lines of "No cats were harmed in the publishing of this post!"

Gross that you found dead skin... yuck!