Twelve Years Ago: How We Planned Our Wedding on a Budget

Anthony and I celebrated twelve years of marriage on September 7th. Thinking back to that season feels like a lifetime ago. We were just two 26-year-olds trying to figure it all out, with big dreams and a tiny budget.

Anthony proposed in May 2012 by sending me on a scavenger hunt all around town to memorable spots from when we were dating. Each stop led to the next until it finally brought me back to what Jadyn and I called “our treehouse”, where she and I were living at the time, a tiny one-room studio on top of a garage on this gorgeous property in Glendora, California. The yard was surrounded by so many trees, and there were always deer and wildlife wandering through. That place felt magical, and it was the perfect spot to start the next chapter of our life together.

We set the plan that September 2013 would be a good month and give us enough time to save. One thing about us is that when we set a goal together, we’re ALL in, and planning this wedding was no different.

We had recently taken Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace class together, and it completely changed how we thought about budgeting (which I didn’t do at all before this). We knew we didn’t want to go into debt for the wedding. I remember Dave saying, “You come back from the honeymoon, and the bills set in,” and we were determined not to start our marriage like that. We made a zero-sum budget and stuck to it, giving every dollar a purpose. Anytime we had money left over, we put it into a wedding savings account we opened at the bank…