I was reading the other day that experts expect gas prices to start falling along with this leaves this autumn. It has something to do with the mix of oil and gas that they use in the fall vs. what they use in the summer, along with a bunch of political factors. This might not seem super relevant to wedding planning but it totally is. Gas prices affect transportation fees and final costs of all sorts of items across the planning spectrum. It can even determine how far off the beaten path you decide to travel to gather up your various decor items for the wedding. For me, it fits into another part of the wedding planning process though: the savings.

You see, last fall gas prices fell too. They were crazy low and experts were saying they'd only get lower (and they did) and they'd never go back to where they had been ever again (not so sure about this one). When they started to drop, it gave me an idea: Every time Matt and I filled up our tank, I Googled the gas prices on that date for the year prior. The difference in how much we would've paid between the two years went into my savings account. I thought about it as found money because it was money that we would've had to spend otherwise.

Saving money doesn't always come easily to me and unfortunately, on the other end of the spectrum, over-spending sometimes does. Since we're in a higher-end wedding market, with somewhat lower end funds coming in, the first step Matt and I had to take when we were both finally gainfully employed was take a serious look at where our money was going and how we could better allocate it to maximize the amount that went straight towards the wedding. One tool that helped us out a lot was Mint.com. It helped us visualize exactly where all of our funds were going and also gave us some insight on our credit scores and the full picture of what we actually had for assets. It made us aware that we needed to come up with a strategy to help us get into better financial shape for the wedding. We realized that we were spending a lot of money doing things like going out to dinner, so we cut way back and made it something we only do on special occasions. We also kind of became hermits.

Another thing I realized was how often I dipped into my savings accounts. It's not really savings if you're always spending it! To combat that, we set up a special account that wasn't connected to any of our other accounts so we couldn't take money out of it too easily.

The next step was to put to use something I learned when I got my first job. Way back then, my mother had a requirement for my paychecks. A third of it went to her, a third went to me for spending money and a third went straight into my bank account. The numbers aren't exactly the same but Matt and I calculated what we could afford to do without and how much we'd need to put away monthly in order to pay for the wedding and we divided up our paychecks by that amount to go directly into our special account.

After we got that baseline amount into our account, we did what we could to add every little bit extra we could. We're super careful before we buy anything. Every single purchase we make, we research to make sure we're getting the best deal (even if it means buying groceries from three different stores to be sure of it). Any time we "save" money using coupons or something like that we put the money we would've spent in our savings because it's not really savings otherwise!

There is one thing we had to give up that was really difficult for me in particular: our morning trip to the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru. As a true Bostonian, there is nothing I love more than my daily medium Iced Hazelnut Regular* but for the purposes of saving money, we've forgone that and made coffee at home instead. Each day that we don't get a coffee, we put the money we would've spent in the bank. We allow ourselves a coffee as a treat on the weekends sometimes, but otherwise we have our reusable cups that go everywhere with us. Two cups of coffee a day can add up to at least $5 a day. That's $25 a week (if we're looking at the weekdays only), $100 a month and $1300 in a year (when you multiply out by the number of weeks as opposed to the number of months).

The tumbler that has basically become my ride or die.

In the end, the thing that keeps us most on track with everything is thinking of our guests. Once we knew how much the cost per person would wind up being, we could look at things in terms of guest price. Since we had a guest list that was really tough to cut, every out of the way purchase we could possibly make we looked at in terms of guests we'd have to take off the list if we didn't have that money available to use. A cute new bag? Is it really worth two guests? A new dress at Target was on sale for half a guest! It made it much harder to justify purchases when I started thinking about it like that. It was between spending money on things that would maybe last me a few years, and memories with people I love that will (hopefully) last me a lifetime.

Anyway, I guess a lot of what we needed to do to help get this show on the road was gain a new perspective about it all. I didn't NEED Dunkin Donuts ... I wanted it. There are better ways to spend money than accumulating stuff. Sometimes, you need to really look deeply at where your money is going (and if you can allocate it differently) to really know what you can and can't actually afford. Thinking specifically about our wants for the wedding in comparison to our wants for everything else out there makes it easier to not spend money on frivolous things. Paying attention to what is going on in the world in terms of pricing and the economy can make you much more aware of ways to save and things to avoid. All of this isn't true for everyone. Some people are already much more in tune with their money than Matt and I were, and some people are way out of tune with their money because it's basically non-existent (which is the end of the spectrum that we fell into for much of our relationship's life). For us, taking a deep look at what we could do differently made a world of difference for us.

*for anyone not from the Boston area, "Regular" means a coffee with cream and sugar. Specifically for a medium coffee from dunkin donuts it's cream and 3 sugars.

How did you and your partner come up with a savings plan? What tools, tips or tricks have worked for you?