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Browsing posts in: Kids & Money

The $100 Wedding

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For today’s blog post, I thought it would be fun to write a little blast-from-the-past about my wedding back in the height of pandemic shutdown, May 2020.

Expectations

We got engaged in early January 2020, back when “Covid-19” was still by far and wide not affecting our lives. My husband and I had both been married before so we knew we wanted a small, simple wedding. We were originally planning for late summer/early Fall 2020. When family got involved with wedding planning, things just kept growing bigger, and bigger, and bigger. We were originally planning a rose-garden wedding with a catered reception. But then my MIL wanted to host a brunch reception the morning after the wedding. My Mom wanted to host a “girls spa day” with pedicures for all the females involved the day before the wedding. Before we knew it, our small/simple wedding was going to be an entire weekend extravaganza! It’s not what we’d wanted, but we wanted family to feel included and involved so we kept going with it.

Then the World Shut-Down

Mid-March 2020 when we started our “2 week shutdown” our minds started spinning. I had two second-graders who I suddenly had to teach full-time on top of my full-time job and all the other unpredictability with which the country (and world!) was suddenly faced. When the two weeks stretched into 4, and then into 6, and there was still no end in sight, we thought about how we may need to switch gears for our wedding. No one knew how long it would last and we have some immuno-compromised family members who certainly couldn’t travel. I cancelled our venue (it was a refundable deposit), and we started talking about the possibility of having a wedding without any extended family present.

Wedding Plans

When we first got engaged, I thought of wedding at a popular hiking spot we both loved, but it was quickly ruled out because it was not wheelchair accessible, so it would not be possible for some of our family. But what if no family was present? Maybe we could have the small, intimate affair we’d originally wanted.

A couple conversations later, one of our friends (an ordained minister through his role as an Army Chaplain) volunteered to wed us. Another friend volunteered to take some photos (she’s not a professional photographer, but does photography as a hobby and has a nice camera). A third friend and his wife were our official “witnesses.” And that’s how we came to be wed with literally only 4 people present: the officiant, the friend taking photos, and two friends to sign as witnesses who held up a phone camera open to Zoom so the rest of our family could watch from afar.

Wedding Costs

The ceremony was perfect – lovely location, short and sweet, and so full of love! We didn’t have a big fancy reception. We bought a cake for $34 and my dress was $32 from Amazon. These came out of my normal food and clothing budgets (not a new line item). My mom bought the girls’ dresses as a wedding gift. I offered to pay the officiant and photographer, but they both refused. I did buy them each a $50 gift card, but that came from my normal gift-giving budget. The only thing not already part of the normal budget was for the marriage license filing fee, $83.

Our witnesses were part of our “quarantine bubble” so they came back to our house after the ceremony and we ate together (a stew I’d thrown in a crockpot ahead of time) and hung out. It was perfect. All for under $300 in total, but less than $100 in budgeted wedding costs since the other costs all came from regular budget categories.

It goes to show you the value of good friends, and that if you look for the silver lining of a rain storm, it can always be found. We had the most perfect wedding I could imagine and it would not have happened this way, had it not been for the pandemic.

Saying goodbye to my mom

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My mom is dying. It’s imminent. She has Parkinson’s along with a plethora of other health diagnosis. And my dad made the tough decision to enlist hospice just over a month ago after months of encouragement to do so by my siblings and I. He and my little sister are her primary caretakers.

She has become unmanageable for any one person alone. While the equipment has been purchased to make everything as easy as possible, a single person just cannot do it alone anymore. We have a hospital bed, a lift, shower chairs, diapers, waterproof mats, stretchy clothes, body alarms and straps, lift chairs and much more.

We have been made aware that the end is coming. It may be a year or it may be a couple of months per the hospice nurse. But our bodies know “how to die”. After we received this news, I booked a flight to come out at the end of October, knowing it would be the last time I would see my mom. It didn’t cost me anything as I was able to use the flight credit from flights my dad had pre-booked in anticipation of our annual family trip out for Thanksgiving, but we are not coming this year. (I think I already wrote about that, but let me know if I haven’t. My brain is definitely a bit foggy these days.)

Time to hop on a plane

But this past week the calls started coming and the text messages came…

From my brother, “Hope, I didn’t know she would go down this fast. If you want to see her while she can still respond at all, you need to come.”

From my sister, “She won’t eat. We have to spoon feed everything and even then, she won’t open her mouth a lot of the time.”

From the hospice evaluation, “She is just going to get weaker. You may have another week or two where she will respond. But the body knows how to die.”

From my dad, “Come.”

There were a plethora of others, but as I was lazing around my house Saturday, I felt the sense of urgency significantly increase. So I changed my ticket and hopped a plane to Texas the next day.

 

Landing in Texas

The increased cost…$270. I used the remaining flight credit and then paid the remaining $200 out of pocket.

The cost for this ticket in total $600, the most I think I’ve ever paid for a an airline ticket. The true cost PRICELESS!

I will have several other un-budgeted costs for this trip…

  • Parking at the airport = $40
  • Extra tank of gas = $36
  • Food = $20ish

Here’s the point

Here’s the point to this post. Even just 3-4 years ago, this crisis would have sent me into a tailspin. I would have had NO WAY to get out here to say goodbye to my mom on such short notice. I certainly wouldn’t have had the $300+ needed to expedite the trip so quickly. And if by some miracle, I had that money on hand at just the right time, it would have most certainly messed up some other “payment” I needed to make.

I just can’t imagine the outcome had this happened sooner. I am not a big Dave Ramsey proponent. But if you are just starting out or thinking of starting out on a debt free journey…that first step of getting a solid emergency fund that is quickly accessible is CRUCIAL! And this is just one example.

Side note

My mom is at peace with what is happening to her. I know this. We watched this happen to my great-grandmother. My mom accepted her fate and I KNOW I will see her again in heaven. We had many long talks about this over the years. The end will be a relief for her. I know my sadness is for my loss, my kids loss.

But if you still have your mom…send her those flowers, write her a note, go visit her. Do all the things before you can’t anymore.