Royal Wedding Budget (408 Days to Go)

So with the Royal wedding less than 24 hours away and trying to work out my own wedding budget, it made me wonder what exactly went into the royal budget and how much different it was from the average American wedding cost.  Someone else put together a very, very basic breakdown of cost by comparing the royal wedding, to Chelsea Clinton's wedding, to the average American wedding. 

So for the overview budget, Kate Middleton and Prince William will have spent a whopping $32 million.  To put this into some more perspective, the Clintons dropped only a tenth of that amount on their own "princess" and in America, the typical "Daddy's girl princess" spends approximately $27,000--less than one hundredth of the British royal wedding's cost.  Already, I'm starting to feel like I'm not prepared to spend enough on my own wedding.

Going a little more in depth, next we'll look at the cost of the cake.  Around Pittsburgh, prices tend to run from $1.50 to $3.00 a slice for some really impressive looking and tasting cakes.  So, going with the highest price, and my relatively large guest list (250 people), I'd be looking at paying around $750.  Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor.  This is actually considered over the average price for a wedding cake in the U.S.  So I'll definitely keep looking to find a cake a little cheaper.  The Royals will be dropping somewhere around $80,000.  Divide that amongst the 300 guests and you're looking at $266 slices of cake.  Yikes!  That better be the most incredibly moist and delicious cake ever.

Kate Middleton's dress will cost somewhere in the ballpark of $434,000.  The average American "princess" will spend just a little over $1000.  I personally spent just under $700 on mine (after taxes) and I'm darn proud of that because I managed to get a designer gown.  I can only imagine what the average price will be of the royal wedding knock-off dresses that we can expect to start seeing in troves next month.

An astounding $800,000 will be spent on just the flowers for the big day.  This is just shy of half of what was spent for Chelsea Clinton's wedding.  But the average American bride will spend a little less than $2000 for her flowers.  It makes me wonder what the exact price of Kate's bouquet (which will be left on the tomb of the unknown soldier) will be.  I'm planning to try and spend not a penny more than $100 for my own bouquet if at all possible.

The engagement ring actually falls significantly less than an American celebrity's ring.  Chelsea Clinton's engagement ring cost a whopping $1 million dollars whereas Diana's ring which was passed on to Kate is valued at $136,000.  Still, this is a lot more than the average American's engagement ring which clocks in somewhere around $5000.  Out of respect for Jeff, I won't reveal how much mine is worth.  But for most of us girls, we care more about the thought our men put into the ring than how much it cost.  It means so much to me that Jeff had mine specially designed and kept in mind that I wanted a flat ring.

Next up are the wedding favors.  There's no exact price that's been listed, but the customized scarves that will be given out to the guests are made by a company, Centrex of Ludhiana, India, that at the high end makes scarves valued at 300 pounds (~$500).  Since these are custom scarves which will be offered in three different color schemes, I feel like this is probably a safe bet on the pricing.  Considering that most American brides aim to spend as little as possible on their favors, I'd say that this is at least a hundred times more than the average favor price.  In fact, I'm having my mom crochet small seashells as favors for minimal cost (before the manual labor of course) and having a photobooth with the money saved on favors.

But all of these costs broken down don't even come close to the cost on the British economy.  The royal wedding will more or less shut down the country for a day.  Estimates have been made that the national holiday could cost the economy $10 billion (which is the low estimate; the high estimate being $50 billion). Impressive considering that the average American wedding does nothing but boost local economies by putting vendors and their employees to work.  That and our guests are so wide spread throughout the region and businesses that even if they need to take a day or two off to attend the wedding (or merely recover from their hangover) it would do no great harm to the economy.  Granted, they have also calculated how much the wedding will help the economy with a surplus of around $1.5 billion from the sales of memorabilia.

So the next time that you and your family or fiance get into a fight over the wedding budget, try and keep in mind that it could be worse--or better depending on how you want to think about it. 

Easter Showers (411 Days to Go)

So yesterday was Easter.  And there were random showers throughout the day.  Luckily nothing quite like what they'd called for on the weather reports that I'd read.  Especially since my eldest niece was given the task of seeking out camouflaged eggs out of doors.  The rest of the children had it easy finding brightly colored eggs inside out of the rain.  The girls were all very excited and very pleased with everything they got for Easter.  Apparently the bunny had been very kind indeed to them.  Granted, the bunny had indicated to Jeff and I that a kite would be a good gift for Breanne and a "laptop" for Mackenzie would tickle the little girl.  Mackenzie is always trying to play with her pappy's laptop so we figured she'd want one of her own.  It's aimed at girls older than her and has educational aspects, but for now she's happy to just hit buttons and make stuff happen on the screen, whether or not she understands it.

If only those showers coming down from the sky would have been the only damper on the day for Jeff and I.  Unfortunately, we were also struck by the misfortune that the shower in our apartment now has a cracked floor which is causing an incredibly large amount of leaking into the shop below us.  In short, this means that we are without a shower and will be until we can buy an entirely new shower surround.  We went this weekend and looked at Home Depot and are considering buying a corner unit because it would make our teeny tiny bathroom feel a little more open and we would be able to install some shelving in order to create ourselves a place for our linens.  I'm extremely in favor of anything that will make our bathroom feel larger considering that since I've moved in, all of my makeup, hair accessories, and anything else cosmetic has been in a large Rubbermaid bin that has gone completely untouched because there's nowhere to put it.

We've also been coming to the conclusion lately that there is no way we'll ever be able to afford to move out of our apartment--for at least three years.  This has caused me incredible amounts of stress.  In the months that I've lived here, it's never really felt like home.  I've been living out of boxes to some degree and have never been able to establish an area to be a workspace for sewing, scrapbooking, or whatever.  And with the wedding coming up, this essentially translates into me having no place whatsoever for me to work on things such as putting together save-the-dates or invitations or favors.  So now we've decided that it's time to turn the attic upstairs into a liveable space.  Essentially right now it has holes in the floor and looks exactly as it did two days after it was burned out many years ago.  When Jeff and his parents fixed up the apartment, they'd never bothered really with the attic.  So now we have to tackle that as a project as well.  So we're basically going to end up investing a decent amount of money into remodeling our bathroom and attic just to make our place liveable for the sort-of short term instead of being able to save the money towards a down payment on a house.  Essentially we're in a Catch 22 situation.  A little amusing considering that Catch 22 is Jeff's favorite book.

It's been another one of those incredibly stressful weekends.  I keep hoping that something will give (aside from me) but it seems as though luck is not all that much in my favor.  Jeff keeps telling me to not feel so responsible for us, but it's hard not to when I know that I should be much better off career wise and I just can't seem to get there.  Everyone keeps telling me that it will all come in time, but I feel as though I'm not asking for too much to be able to afford to buy a house especially when I have a masters degree.  Instead, I have the debts belonging to that degree and the salary belonging to a lucky high school dropout.  I did get a job offer from that interview I had last week, but the offer is incredibly low.  I now have to wait until I can review the offer packet and see if I can somehow negotiate a better offer.  What makes it more stressful and frustrating though is that I can't really turn down the job either.  There aren't other jobs available and I can't stay where I'm at either.  Yet another one of those incredibly frustrating Catch 22s.

Joint Banking is the Solution? (422 Days to Go)

So, Tuesday night as usual was our date night.  We went out for Mexican food, discussed the venues in Westmoreland County that we liked and then did our grocery shopping for the month.  Giant Eagle was offering bonus fuel perks on all of their gift cards so we decided to stock up for future dinners out and some summer repair projects we've been planning or might need unexpectedly.  We decided that I would pay for the gift cards since I wasn't the one who'd just broken my wrist and was now broke.  Well, when I went to pay with my debit card, it was declined.  We thought it was a mistake since there is a relatively large balance in my account thanks to my tax return and asked the cashier to try again.  Declined again.

By now I was flustered, mouth agape, and turning bright pink.  I sheepishly dug out my credit card while the cashier gave me an annoyed expression and I did everything in my power to ignore the customers in line behind me.  My credit line isn't very big on that card, my only credit card, and I was cringing at the thought that it was being depleted so badly.  Never mind the fact that I no longer earned any points for the purchase I was trying to make.  Yes, I have the only credit card in America that doesn't have some kind of points.  But I don't like having credit cards because I have enough debt thanks to college.

Immediately after exiting the store, I started dialing the customer service line while using Jeff's phone to check my bank account's activity and balance to make sure nothing funny was up.  I was on hold for 30 minutes before my phone acted up and I accidentally disconnected on my end.  I tried again and was on hold for another 30 minutes without ever getting hold of a person before we were sitting down in the movie theater and had to disconnect.  Oh, and my card was also denied for the measly $10.50 it cost for our movie tickets.  By now I was furious.

Well, yesterday morning the bank finally decided to call me and ask if I had attempted to spend money at the Market District in Robinson.  I emphasized that attempt was the right verbage to use and demanded to know why my card had been shut off without receiving this phone call immediately following the act as was stated in their bank policy.  I was not given an answer.  I demanded a supervisor and got one.  She wouldn't give me an answer either.  I got transferred, spoke to that person barely long enough to confirm my account and was disconnected.  Take me from furious to enraged x 10.  Luckily, I had grabbed some cash from the house to pay for lunch out for a coworker's birthday and immediately following lunch, I walked into a local branch and demanded to speak to the manager.  He took me back to his office, had my card turned back on and tried to find out why the card had been turned off without calling me for 13 hours.  No one would even give him an answer.  I politely thanked the bank manager and silently vowed to yank every dime out of the bank.

So now, I'm planning on going with Jeff tomorrow and opening a joint checking account, having my paycheck rerouted and to get another bank to buyout my car loan, even if it does mean a higher interest rate--I don't really care right now.  I have never been so embarrassed and frustrated by such terrible customer service in my life.  And what infuriates me more is they won't tell me if this will happen again the next time I make a large purchase on my card such as, oh I don't know, a down payment for my venue or caterer.  Wouldn't that be a great way to start a relationship with a vendor?  That would actually be a million times more embarrassing than the grocery store if the caterer told me my card had been declined.  I'm tired of my bank making me feel like it's a crime to occasionally splurge on something big with my own hard earned and saved money.

Has your bank ever left you high and dry without access to your money when you needed it most?