I’m glad you’ve had professional help to improve your relationships. I hope it’s also helped you control your ongoing spending.
I understand that there’s a lot of social and familial pressure around weddings, but this situation still doesn’t make sense to me. Your mother gave you a stone, so now you need to spend $4000 (half the $8K you quoted) to… appease her? Pay her back? Thank her?
You don’t need to have an expensive wedding. You really don’t. Return the stone if she wants it back. All your SDMB friends are giving you this same advice, or versions of it. Please take it.
Don’t you see that you’re doing the same thing? Adding more debt so your woman gets what she wants? I’d question why she’s insisting on putting you $9,000 more in debt rather than either putting it off, or scaling it way, way back to very few special people.
I don’t believe the wedding as it is is expensive. I am not spending 4K on a wedding. I was here to vent how I feel overwhelmed with by debt and my parents health. My fiancee is sticking by my side after learning about my debt.
My fiancee is going to pay for the photographer and videographer I’m going to pay for the DJ because it’s all I can pay for. If we need to get all kosher food then we are going to have an issue. I would be satisfied with a Conservative Rabbi performing the ceremony and would not that that requirement by my bride-to-be doesn’t feel at this point that it’s an acceptable option. In the end she is going to pay what is needed for the wedding we want.
And going back to my debt situation it’s a law firm that is handling the negotiation of my debt. They don’t get any money if they can’t make a deal and the better the deal they make the more they make. If I do get sued for a debt they will defend me with no additional fees.
Hi Manny. I have no financial advice to offer, but I do want to say that I’m very sorry to hear about what’s happened and will be sending prayers and good wishes your way. Hang in there, it will get better.
I’ve got a question about this , too. Are your mother’s fifty guests her family, and therefore also your family? If so, the only thing that strikes me as odd is calling them her guests (that sort of division involving family is not typical in my experience). If the fifty guests are her friends, that’s another story and it does seem a little odd that half of the guests you are paying for will be your mother’s friends.
WomEn. Mom and fiancée. Doubling the size of a wedding because you got a rock is just…bizarre. Though everything that I know about Jewish weddings tells me that the more guests, the more gift cash, so maybe if they don’t register anywhere and just ask for cash, they’ll break even on the wedding.
Who is paying for the hall/food/rabbi/decorations/flowers/dresses/tuxes/makeup and hair for the bride and attendants/other incidentals? We’re getting hung up on the cost of the wedding because that money has to come from somewhere. If it’s the bride’s parents, then you don’t need to be as worried about upping the food costs- but it seems like this is a sticking point, so there’s something there we don’t know.
My former husband and I did the bankruptcy route. At first we wanted to work with our creditors and pay off a bit at a time. That worked for about 2 years, but after bringing home $400/month because everything else was going to the court and having to make very tough decisions about how to spend that money (utilities? gas for the car to get to work? medication? food?), we went with a full discharge bankruptcy. Best decision we ever made, and it only cost $350 for filing and lawyer fees. Please seriously think about this- imagine the peace of mind you’ll have when you can start your life with your fiancée with a clean slate, and just focus on making the future brighter financially AND having the time to help your parents because you don’t have to work 3-4 jobs at once.
The wedding is still going on as planned. We found a Rabbi that is willing to work with us regarding the menu options. We have not spoken in person yet (that is later this week) but have communicated over the phone and an Email. He feels comfortable that I am Jewish although I’m lacking much direct proof that my mother is Jewish.
My father is doing much better in rehab therapy and will be released in two to three weeks. As I just posted in this thread my mother had surgery today for Ovarian Cancer. Last week she agreed to pay for anyone she adds to the list above the 60 people she was allowed to invite.
I am working (if you call it that) part time for Uber, mostly on weekends. After gas I’m earning about 18 an hour. Some of this money is going towards my share of the wedding costs and some is going to my debt.
My fiancee has still not returned to her full hours at work and the house needs about 3K in “upgrades” that should have been done a while ago (replace dangerous circuit breakers and upgrade service, add additional outlets in basement and one for central Air and a dehumidifier for the basement)
I’m still overwhelmed with everything but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an oncoming train.
Thanks for the update. I am glad things are at least moving in the right direction for you. But so sorry to hear about your mom Hope she comes through things all right.
Talk to your fiancee about the wedding costs, I know for some people this is such an emotional issue they break into hysterics at the merest thought of not blowing brazillions on a wedding but if she is worth it she will be able to discuss this openly and rationally with you.
Oh and man you have my sympathy with all your parents are going through, I know it can’t be easy right now and in my experience parents facing mortality get totally non-rational and needy. You fiancee may not understand if she hasn’t dealt with it personally, but right now you have things coming at you from all directions and I’m sure it has you at the end of your rope.
I’m sorry to hear about the health problems in your family.
I can’t help with that, but i can offer advice over your financial situation.
You say:
Presumably you’re paying interest on that debt? If so, unless you start to deal with it, it will get worse (quickly and relentlessly.)
If you’re $60,000 in debt you do not have $900 ‘put aside’. You can’t afford to spend that money. You’re not ‘responsible’ for a DJ. You should use it to start paying off your debt.
If you don’t get the habit of dealing with debt, rather than just spending all the time, you will never get out of debt.
Now you’re getting married, you should start ‘caring about tomorrow’. And that means tackling your debt.
How do you plan to “prove” you are Jewish? You probably cannot. In fact, you probably aren’t according to the rabbinical definition–and neither is the rabbi. Here’s why. The rabbinical definition is that you are Jewish if your mother was. And she is Jewish if her mother was. Turtles all the way down. The trouble is that the evidence from mitochondrial DNA is that in most Ashkenazi Jews, which includes me and, at a guess, both you and your rabbi, have European ancestors. Now mtDNA is inherited strictly along the female line, it means that nearly Ashkenazi Jews trace their female line back to European, not middle eastern, women. Incidentally, the Y chromosome, inherited strictly along the male lines, of Ashkenazi Jews is generally middle eastern.
I think the advice above is generally good. I would explore the idea of a civil ceremony, followed later by a religious wedding. My parents married secretly in a civil ceremony because my maternal grandmother thought she was dying and wanted to see them married first. Then they were married publicly by a rabbi later. My grandmother did die–27 years later.
The only time I ever went to an orthodox wedding, I was disgusted. The men and women were totally isolated from each other. The men danced with men and the women with women. (What about gays?). Also the food was dreadful, but that’s not what disgusted me. Oh, and the women were all in black, like at a funeral. Never again.
Hope she comes through things all right.