Budget Woes.

With less than 10 months to go, things seem more real. With that reality check comes a harder look at our wedding budget.

While we're not planning on having a potluck, barefeet, backyard affair (although that would be awesome!), we are having this wedding on a rather strict budget. Considering that most weddings in America these days are enormously expensive (the average wedding cost is around $26,000!), we are pulling this off WAY below average. Even though we knew from the start that our wedding would be budget friendly, the best part is that when we hashed out what we wanted our wedding to be like, where we wanted it to be and what we wanted to do, we realized that it didn't need to cost us much anyways. It's not like we had our hearts set on a nice, all inclusive wedding venue and had to settle for less. Our original plan was for the state park, and that's where we're having it, and the best part is, it's free! (well, we have to pay the small entrance fee for guests, but it's minimal in comparison).

Everything so far seems good. Prices are fair, we have some awesome friends and family helping us out and we've found some great vendors that we're happy about. Whether or not we'll be able to pull off a lot of the small stuff depends on how much we can actually save outside of our 2nd year bonus. The bonus is what is essentially paying for the big stuff (tent rental, food, etc). But as you all know, there is much more to a wedding then chairs and a buffet.

Unlike most weddings, there is one aspect of our budget that is going to end up causing a lot of unnecessary anguish: the plane tickets home. Yes, for the bride and the groom, we're having a destination wedding. There's no wedding if we can't afford to fly home! I've been keeping an eye on the tickets since they became available 2 months ago. Things are not looking good. What frustrates me the most is this:

1. price for one, round-trip ticket from Korea-Maine-Korea:

The cheapest ticket to date has been $2000.00.

2. Now, observe the one, round-trip ticket from Maine-Korea-Maine:

 $1762.00! Now, that might not seem like a lot of difference, but this isn't the lowest price I've found. It has gone up and done from 1400-1800 for the past two months. If we just planned on going home for vacation and nothing else, then we could swallow an extra 600.00. But, we simply can't send aside more than 4000.00 just to get us home! It makes me so angry that tickets going in the other direction are ALWAYS cheaper than ones coming here. I know I need to just get over it, but it's unnerving nonetheless.

The tickets from Maine to Korea have been fluctuating a lot, while the ones from Korea have never gone below a certain amount. I know it's a LONG ways away, but I am a ticket-searching addict. We plan on buying our tickets early on since we need the rest of the money for the wedding, so we're looking at buy them around March. Here's to hoping #1 prices drop, or else we're not giving out favors, let alone flowers! hehe.