Saving and paying for the wedding of our dreams has been a beautiful journey… at least for me and my now husband, Mahal. It really pushed our boundaries to the limits. There were times we thought we wouldn’t be able to deal with all the anxiety that came with it but every time we remind ourselves why we’re doing it, we start feeling calm again and we go back to enjoying the process which actually started when I turned 44 Feb. of 2022, then got engaged April of that year, then got married civilly November of that same year, and finally had the beach wedding of our dreams last May 5, 2023. 

For me, personally, having achieved our dream beach wedding was not just a one-day thing like what most people say where many splurge money and some end up regretting it or worse, incurring huge debts. This is why my younger self wouldn’t have agreed to pay for what we paid for, just to get married. My younger self valued marriage more than the wedding day itself. Well, my now 45-year old self values my desires, my dreams, my life partner, his dreams, our relationship, our son, our family, our marriage… that’s why we did what we did… which felt like the longest wedding celebration in history, lol! It is not even finished yet because we haven’t had our beach wedding honeymoon series yet… just our engagement honeymoon and civil wedding honeymoon series. 😉 And whenever we hear our 7-year old son say that our wedding (he always refers to our wedding as the wedding of us three, so cute!) is the best experience and event he had experienced in his entire life every chance he gets, THAT, to us, is priceless in itself and makes it all the more worth it. I’ll share with you his wedding speech below.

Even if time turned back, we won’t have it any other way. After all, money is just money. We can always earn it back. Heck, we’ve already earned it back. We spent for a dream we were sure we can afford and we wouldn’t have done it otherwise. I feel like we’re financially wise like that… to only spend for what we can afford to pay for in cash the moment it needs to get paid, not sooner, not later. This is why for me, having planned for our dream beach wedding has been a long process of knowing myself, of getting better, of getting in touch with what is okay with me and what is not; and how strong and resourceful I can be to make this little long-time dream of mine happen with the help of my husband. No one else helped us pay for it. It was just me and my Mahal and I’m so proud of us!