What a Bad Time to be Planning a Wedding

I feel like every week someone else I know is getting laid off.

My mom just returned from a brief visit to the Philippines, and she told me that my cousin (who is a wedding planner) told her that a really nice wedding in the Philippines for 300 people would cost somewhere in the vicinity of $7K.

I nearly vomited.

This coming from the cousin who used to draw wedding dresses when we were children, so I trust him when he says "really nice."

Sometimes I wonder if I should have just done that and had my cousin plan everything in the Philippines. But then I realize that we made our decision to have it in Manhattan because we wanted attendance to be as easy as possible for as many guests as possible. We literally took a look at our guest list, figured out where everyone lived, and picked the location where most of them were. Did that make things extremely difficult? Yes. Do we have a lot more costs to consider because of the location? Certainly. But the most important part to us, other than getting married of course, was that everyone was there. Not the food, not the photography, not the dress, but the people.

And if we did have it in the Philippines, it would most certainly be a Catholic wedding, which would not be okay with us, and would be all of my side and virtually none of Dude's side. Also, out of the 300 people who would be there, I would probably only know 80, and I don't want to meet people for the first time at our wedding.

So, I'm not really feeling too sad for this. We absolutely made the right decision. But still... saving that extra money would be really helpful right now.