4th February 2009-the Big R Word!

Okay, so i've avoided mentioning it thus far, but today i think i need to talk about the dreaded (whisper) R-word, and how it is affecting not only my wedding (and presumably many others) but all of our lives in general.
The Recession-there, i've said it!- is a BIG issue for most of us right now and just can't be ignored any longer. Don't worry, i'm not going to keep harping on about it, but this is supposed to be a wedding diary and the current economic situation (to coin a phrase i hear used on at least a daily basis) is something which plays on my mind throughout this whole stage of planning and preparing. Every decision we make right now-and in particular the one we made to actually go ahead and get married at all- is affected by this terribly unsteady economy we're all living in, and i can't deny that changes have been made because of it.
When we decided to get married in 2009 last year we felt we were not only finally ready (after 7 years together) to make the huge commitment of marriage, but also finacially able to manage it, and do it as we wanted to. We're a bit saver and a bit splurger but not massive earners and like to try and enjoy life as much as possible, so made the concious decision to get our heads down and save more this year, feeling that we already had a little bit of a start towards it and things wouldn't be too tough.

So we had a nice holiday last year and then booked the dream wedding in Italy for this year. It was always the plan to get married abroad. I'm not big into weddings and neither of us feels the need to declare our love to a crowd of people who don't really know, or care about us-just the ones that do. And taking into account my 'Italy disease' and our love of sunshine! It all seemed perfect.
Then the Credit crunch began to hit.
We started to worry that this would affect our guests and that they may not be able to afford the flights etc, or would not want to waste their valuable holidays coming to Italy for our benefit. It still wasn't affecting us really, although because i work in an estate agengy there has always been a worry that i might, at some stage, be out of a job.
Being a person who likes to try and grab life rather than wait for it to thump me, we decided to just take a chance and book it, which we did.
Then came the 'it seems we don't actually have the money we thought we did', situation. This happened just a few weeks before christmas when we discovered that some of our savings-which we had thought would cover most of the cost of the wedding-were no longer available due to the declining market (i won't bore you with details but basically we had money-then we didn't, through no fault of our own). This was the major blow which forced us to consider cancelling.
It was a horrible time just before christmas when the gloss and shine of planning our dream wedding was tarnished, and we really thought long and hard about how sensible it was to go ahead with the wedding, but in the end we told ourselves that things could be a lot worse and that we were fortunate to still have jobs and health and should go ahead and get married while we were able.
So we put our heads down a began to save, making some changes to our life-style.
And that's where we are at right now! No more shopping in Marks and Spencer, no more lunches out or trips to the cinema for us. We now do things like paint the house or cook nice dinners at home and watch Dvd's and it's going to be that way for at least the next six months. But we don't mind because, it's fun to have a goal and find new ways to occupy ourselves without spending dollars! And things could-as i have said before-be much worse, and are, i know for so many people.
We worry abour our jobs, (HWSRN has recently found out he has to take a pay-cut to cover the cost of the governments mistakes, and i am still hanging on to my job) and whether our friends will be able to make it what with redundancies abounding among them, but we hope that it will be worth it all in the end, and we say constant thanks that we are in the fortunate position that we are.
I heard today that things are looking very bad for poor reality TV star Jade Goody and i thought to myself how sad her situation is. I was, at the time, very angry about said other half's paycut, but hearing her story i reminded myself that at the end of the day that it's only money we're worrying about. Poor Jade may never get the chance to marry her partner Jack, so in the end money makes little difference to our lives and our true happiness, and i'm thankful that i am able to save the money- tough as it may seem- and even get married all.
Everything that we are faced with poses us with a new opportunity, and i am looking at my current situation that way. I have always loved writing and now have both the extra time, and the inclination to explore what i can do with it. Starting with this diary and being able to plan my wedding well. I am more determined to make a success of myself, and am hearing stories all the time of people who have recently been made redundant setting up their own businesses, and i think this is great!
We have to try and put a positive spin on every negative situation, and get our priorities in order.
So, without wishing to preach for a moment longer, i want to say good luck to all you credit crunch brides out there! I hope you're not finding it too tough. But try and remember that buying ready-made invitations instead of designing your own, or not arriving at the church in a horse-drawn carriage isn't the end of the world. Just feel lucky that you have found someone you love enough to marry, and that's the most important thing of all!