#59: Tough Love With Allegra: Getting Married With Less Than $1k
Episode Summary
The intersection between finances and wedding planning is a touchy topic for countless women. In this episode, Allegra talks about why people might feel obligated to spend more than they're comfortable with on a wedding, and why she decided to tie the knot with her husband in a less-than-traditional way. She breaks down what it cost (down to the dollar, people!) for her to tie the knot, and offers up a simple thought practice people can employ to figure out what type of wedding is right for them.
Episode Notes
For anyone who wants to peruse Allegra's wedding photos.
Allegra's wedding photographer was Kirsten Holliday! You can reach her here.
Apply to the Fall 2020 Wealth Circle: factorawealth.com/wealth-circle
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Transcript
This is a leg up in the wet Brantley and you're listening to the coffee and coin podcast where women talk. Well, I'm the founder of factoria, a company on a mission to lead 1 million women to 1 million in net worth. On this podcast, I sit down with factorial alum to share their financial stories, real numbers, and how they've transformed their financial lives to prove that it's possible for anyone listening. Welcome back to another episode of Coffee and coin. I have me, myself and I on the podcast today for a little tough love with Allegra episode. And this is on the love because I'm talking about a bit of a touchy subject. But hell, when do I shy away from those? So one of our company values is called question the quo. And what do we mean by that? We mean, questioning the status quo. Just because something is always done or considered to be a societal norm, doesn't mean you should just do it, accept it, abide by it without further consideration. And this is really core to factoria. Obviously, this is easily applied to societal gender norms. And clearly those should be questioned, and challenge when necessary. So for example, you may have grown up in a quote unquote, traditional family where the man was in control of the family finances and financial decisions. But do you want that for yourself in the future? Or do you want something different? Aha, here is an easy example of questioning status quo. Because why should a man be in charge of the family finances? Why couldn't a woman do it just as well, if not better, oftentimes, things pass from generation to generation without us noticing, or questioning the reasoning behind why something is being done in that way. And that leads us to today's topic, which is weddings. And the first thing I want to be clear about is that weddings and marriage are very different. Although sometimes I listen to people express them interchangeably. So for the purpose of today's show, we are going to touch on marriage. But we are here to talk about weddings. Specifically, I'm going to share a little bit about mine, why I did it the way I chose to do it, and how much it costs because this is coffee and going. So we always get into sharing the real numbers. So marriage has obviously been around for a very long time. And although the purpose of it has morphed from its original intention of unifying families for protection and concentration of power, it has always been focused on being a foundational element for the heirs to that marriage, or the children that might come from that marriage. What I think is great about marriage, especially in America nowadays, is that while the purpose is still about providing a foundation for a family, the goal is now about love and putting two people on the same life path so that they can indeed support one another and creating that family. So what about weddings, weddings are a way to celebrate the birth of a marriage, something that is supposed to be lifelong, and therefore has an expectation to last for years and years and years. So obviously, it's a big deal, right? But let's be honest, the forever intention piece does not always work out. The stats are the stats, and 50% of people in America who get married, also get divorced. And I'm not saying this to be negative. I'm saying this because it's a fact. I am 35 years old, and I already have friends who have been married and divorced. And I want to be clear, I don't think anyone should stay married. That simply doesn't want to be so I'm very fine with divorce. But we're talking about weddings, which we use in modern society to kick off the beginning of a marriage that's supposed to last forever. A lot of times people spend an outrageous amount of money on these weddings. So the question that I'd like to ask is, why do we have a wedding? Why are weddings at the beginning of a marriage instead of maybe down the line when the couple has done and dealt with hard things? And why do weddings I guess I should say how do weddings support a marriage Can you have a solid man
without even having a wedding to begin with, I just want to ask you to think about these things, because maybe you never have before. I know for me, I started thinking about them a lot. When I got engaged at the beginning of COVID, in March of 2020, to the love of my life that I have been absolutely positive, I wanted to marry since pretty much four months after we met, I had already thought a lot about our marriage, and why it was important to me to have a union and it be something that I do with my partner. But now it was time to start thinking about the wedding piece in a pandemic. And if I even wanted that, and here's where I netted out, yes, I think marriage is a huge deal. And one of the biggest and best things that you can do in life, again, that's my personal belief does not need to be yours. But there's an emphasis, of course, on choosing the right partner, someone loving, supportive, trustworthy, all in putting two lives on the same path with the intention of forevermore, is such a big deal and should absolutely be celebrated. But it soon became very clear to me that the quote, unquote, typical American wedding that I've been attending for the last 10 years, is not actually something that worked for me, at least not right now. As I just mentioned, I'm 35 years old. And if you're listening to this podcast, you know, I am very focused on building this company, hell, this movement to help women build wealth and attain financial freedom, so they have way more choices in life, which is obviously incredibly important to me to to attain financial freedom. Did you know that the average cost of an American wedding today is $34,000. That's actually a statistic from 2019. So I would not be surprised if it's gone up. And of course, you do not have to spend that much on a wedding. Or you could spend way more than that. But when I started to do the math of bringing all of my family and friends together to have a big celebration in a beautiful atmosphere with good food and drinks, and music, and all the like, I realized it was going to cost me a minimum of $25,000. And just to clarify, yes, this would be a wedding that my partner and I would be paying for. So we really had to weigh whether we wanted to spend that kind of money, especially right now. And the truth is, as much as we wanted to see all our family and friends together and celebrate this union that we take so seriously, we had competing priorities that ultimately won out. And that was starting a family. So in the spirit of transparency, here I am sharing publicly on a podcast that we are family planning. And while that's a little scary to do, because I really don't need people asking me how it's going, I wanted to share it because having kids is obviously a huge financial consideration. And for us, it just made sense to keep that money for starting a family and not spending it on a day. And I should also be clear that because I'm very financially minded, which might not sound very romantic to some listeners, we did consider what it would look like to stop investing basically turn off our investments to quickly prepare $25,000 for a wedding. And if we had done that, it would have made a serious dent on our net worth, and definitely our mental health to before starting a family because it feels so secure, to know that you have enough when you are about to go into the unknown of parenthood and all that that for sure comes with and and might come with if you know your child might need something in particular that you can't foresee. So it actually felt really good to come together as a partnership and decide exactly what we wanted the beginning of our marriage to look like. And this is why I sound like a broken record when I continue to say that personal finance is really that. It is extremely personal. And this was the personal decision that we made for our future. And so we decided to elope one of our family values is that when we decide something, we do it we do not wait. We do not waver we make haste. So when we made our decision that we were going to elope we eloped Two weeks later, in some divine timing. My best friend was actually planning a big move from Oklahoma where she was only a six hours drive from Austin
to Charleston, South Carolina, where driving wouldn't really be an option. So we asked her to officiate for us right before her move. And she immediately got online and did some sort of ministry Express for a three day turnaround to be able to officiate our wedding. So here are the numbers, because I know that's what you want to hear. Our wedding costs, were a total of them 10,000 $1,061. Here's the breakdown. The outfits, I got two dresses from a redsea, one for $80 and one for $138. So that was a total of 220. I wore the cream dress for the wedding part and I wore a very, very light blue one for pictures and lunch afterwards, Jake wore clothes that he already had. I styled him in a cream linen shirt and some khaki shorts. And let me tell you, he looks like a goddamn movie star. It was just crazy how incredible he looked. Our flowers were from Whole Foods. They were actually a gift from my officiating. bestie the venue was free 99 we actually got married on a hilltop behind our house about a 10 minute hike up a steep forest trail with the backdrop of Austin City Limits. Although it was pretty foggy that day. So you couldn't really see the downtown skyline like you can typically but man the lighting was beautiful and made for some incredible photos. Which leads me to our photographer, who we found on Instagram a few days before we eloped, she cost $600 for being with us during the wedding ceremony a little bit before and after and was absolutely incredible. Her name is Kirsten holiday and she showed up and it was like we known her for years. So she fit in like a gem at our 4.5 person wedding lol the point five would be referencing our dog Quintin, but he's definitely the size of a mini horse. So he could probably make it more of like a five person wedding. kearson actually specializes in intimate weddings and boudoir shoots. So 100% hit her up if you're in Austin, because again, she was just awesome. And we'd never met and she just showed up and took over. But also just blend it in. I can't do it as much justice as I'd like to. But truly, she was incredible and captured everything she even got in the beginning, when we were at our house, we just got ready together like myself, Jake and my bestie we just all kind of you know, put on necklaces and chew and we just did it together. So it was really beautiful experiment, experience, not experiment. And then obviously, we went and eloped on this hilltop with our dog running around off leash and captured just beautiful moments, a lot of crying shots of me, Jake held it together better for sure. Before we headed to take some photos around East Austin at some of our favorite spots, and then went for lunch at launderette for a tremendous amount of bubbly. And that cost $160. They actually forgot to charge us for a bottle of champagne, but it felt like a gift. So we didn't let them know. And we tipped very well. Oh, and our marriage license fee was $81 which we had to pay in cash, interestingly. So there you have it, our $1,000 wedding elopement budget breakdown. And I want to be clear, if you want to spend $50,000 on your wedding, go for it. If you want to spend $250,000 on your wedding, and that's what makes sense for you do the damn thing. But if you don't want to spend on a big wedding, please don't feel pressured into it. Because a lot of times weddings happen for people outside of ourselves. But if a wedding is meant to celebrate the marriage of two people, it really should be done to the liking of those two people, because you're setting the tone for said marriage. And again, I personally align with marriage, but I don't necessarily align with the wedding industry. I think it's really lost the plot. I love that saying it's English, but just love it. Weddings have lost the plot. With all the crazy up charges on flowers to venues that mysteriously only cost more when they know it's for a wedding. And I do think there's a lot of consumerism involved, which obviously running factoria with women coming into the wealth circle, we see a lot of people having to kind of recalibrate their values and start spending based on those so that they don't have so much money going out of the door.
to things that they don't actually care about in the end, aka consumerism, and repurpose that for investments and things that they do really care about, like security, financial confidence, and obviously, the ultimate goal of freedom. So you don't have to worry about having enough because you know, that you do, because you're planning for it, especially from the gifting side. I think there's a lot of consumerism involved in the wedding industry, we did not do any sort of registry even though, you know, very sweetly, people asked us to do that, so that they could contribute something. But I guess my two cents there are if adults want to buy nicer things, they should try and afford them for themselves. I mean, there's nothing wrong if your family and friends want to gift you stuff. But I know that personally, when I was back in my 20s, and living in New York City, getting invited to a wedding was exciting. Sure, but it also came with a lot of residual financial stress, especially if I was in the wedding because it meant I had to pay whatever the Bridesmaid Dress cost. I could expect to buy a plane ticket, not just for the wedding, but for the bachelorette party, maybe a bridal shower beforehand as well, hotels, multiple dresses, multiple guests for the bride. And I really started to question this. My thinking was like, why do I as a single woman in New York, who's trying to find my life partner purpose, stay above water need to afford you, someone who's chosen to get married to someone else, and likely has two incomes to work with? Why should I be upgrading your coffeemaker or specialty knife set, or whatever it was when I probably didn't have that myself? Bingo, I was actually starting to question the quo before I even had a term for it. But anyways, I digress. The last thing I wanted to share about our personal elopement is whether we had any regrets. And I would actually say yes to this, I think if I were to do it all over again, I would have preferred to at least tell our family beforehand, so that they didn't feel left out. Because obviously, that was not our intention. But we did hurt some feelings by going about our wedding and the way that we did. So. We did, however, put together a beautiful website that shows exactly how the day went down from start to finish, the grosek calm, I'll go ahead and even link it in the show notes if you care to see what our $1,000 wedding looks like. And for us a future wedding after we've had some children is definitely not out of the cards. The way I've come to think about it is that in the future, when we are financially more secure, and we don't have competing priorities that are as obvious, we might absolutely want to throw ourselves a wedding because I think we'll feel like hell, we've done some shit. We've gone through some stuff. Anyways, that's how I feel about it. I think that weddings don't necessarily have to proceed a marriage. But you know how people get remarried? 10 years later, why not get married for the first use me have the wedding for the first time a few years into the marriage. The point is, it should be up to you. So why should you get married? Why should you have a wedding? Why should you insert any fucking thing that seems normal without further consideration? Well, if it's helpful, I recommend you start questioning the quo. And remember, your answer does not need to work for someone else. It only needs to work for and be right for you. That is what it means to be a mature individual. That's what it means to take self responsibility for your life and choices. That's what it means to question the quo. So thanks for stopping by my tough love pod. I hope that this message was received with love, as was my intention and that it offered some insights into my life choices and potentially some reflection into yours. Cheers.