Getting Married - Both in Grad School

[Rey0208]

My potential fiance and I are debating whether it is feasible to get married while we are both doing our graduate studies.

I will be entering graduate school at the University of Toronto in September 2011... and she's thinking of applying to an MBA program for September 2012, but hasn't started the application process or anything yet.

Right now, we're both working full-time as research assistants.

Does anyone here know of grad school couples that got married during their studies? If so, do you know how they managed to afford it? (e.g., loans, parents, big scholarships, etc.)

[Rachele]

I am an RA at my university and two of the Grads students married during their 4th year. For them it was easier to make it work because they were going to the same institution and they had full funding.

[fuzzylogician]

There are two married couples in my department right now where both the husband and the wife are students in the department. They get along just fine, we get a stipend that allows a single student to live reasonably well, so two students on two stipends is no problem.

[adaptations]

There are two married couples in my department right now where both the husband and the wife are students in the department. They get along just fine, we get a stipend that allows a single student to live reasonably well, so two students on two stipends is no problem.

If you are asking whether you can afford grad school as a couple, I really don't think it is too much different than if you are single. Although, there was just an article that said it is cheaper to me married (http://money.bundle.com/article/cost-being-single-why-shacking-leads-saving-money?gt1=33023). I post it here as kind of a joke, but it's an amusing read.

If you are asking how to pay for the wedding, I feel your pain. My partner and I got engaged in September and are planning on getting married before we start grad school, which will be Fall 2011. We are planning for a May 2011 wedding. Thankfully we are getting some parental help, but there is no question a wedding can be super expensive. That said, I also had two friends who had a "wedding-Q". It was essentially a BBQ that doubled as their wedding. They were able to get married and celebrate with friends and family, but had a very informal low cost event. My suggestion is, if you're not getting parental help (and even if you are), you may find it easier to ditch the dream of the classic white-wedding and be creative with cheaper options.

[Eigen]

My wife and I got married while still undergrads, but we're in grad school now.

We were able to put together our entire wedding for around $1800, for over 300 people. It all depends what your priorities are.

That said, getting married makes your taxes lower! So it's a financial benefit

Edited November 6, 2010 by Eigen

[mudlark]

I got married during my MA, but my husband isn't in law school. I have a number of friends who got hitched in school as well. My parents paid for the wedding, but we only wanted a small one anyway. We had 30 people in my mom and dad's back yard. We spent a fair chunk, though--it was around $5,000. That includes $1000 for clothes (whole outfit for me, whole suit for husband, and some extra splurges), $1500 for catering (we had out of towners and wanted everyone well fed all day), $500 for a very fancy honeymoon hotel, $500 for our plane tickets home, and then random stuff like the officiant ($200?), the license, and chair rentals. Booze was a gift, as were flowers, as were decorations. Compare that to my sister's wedding, which cost $20,000 for 200 people. It was at a fancy venue, reception at a ski lodge, bigger clothing budget, bigger flower budget. My folks split the cost of it with her in-laws. My mom (bless her heart!) then gave me the difference in cash between what they spent on my sister's wedding, and what they spent on mine. I ended up being unemployed for a summer, and ended up living off that money for four months!!! When we look back, my sister and I both absolutely love our weddings. Not saying that small is better than big. Just saying that if you're happy with something more casual, the money that you don't spend on a wedding can be incredibly useful down the road. After all, it's about the marriage, not the wedding day.

[starmaker]

$1500 for catering (we had out of towners and wanted everyone well fed all day)

How in the world did you pull that off?

I got married in August and we spent 6x what you did on catering (and that doesn't count the booze). We didn't WANT to spend that much on catering...we looked for ages and could not find cheaper.

Of course it really didn't help that we had to get all the food gluten-free (my husband and one of his sisters are severely Celiac), because that meant that we were restricted to high-end companies.

Compare that to my sister's wedding, which cost $20,000 for 200 people. It was at a fancy venue, reception at a ski lodge, bigger clothing budget, bigger flower budget.

And how in the world did she do that? Ours cost that much, for half the number of people, and we weren't at a fancy venue, had the reception in the same place as the ceremony, spent less than you did on clothes (maybe $700 total), and the only flowers that we had were picked from a relative's garden. A friend with an iPod did the music, and all of our decorations were hand-made by my husband. Our wedding was very low-frills (though fantastic). It was also in the bottom quartile for cost of weddings in our zip code. I have no idea how you could have a really fancy wedding on $20K (maybe this is a local-cost-of-living issue?).

We paid for three quarters of it ourselves (the rest was an unsolicited gift from my mother). Fortunately I work full-time in addition to going to grad school, and my husband isn't in grad school.

[Eigen]

I have no idea how our wedding could have cost 20k, unless we decided to like pay for everyone's hotel rooms that came in for it.

Like I said, we did a nice reception and the wedding for around $2000 for 300ish people.

I'm definitely going with local cost of living.

Edited November 23, 2010 by Eigen

[Clawsworth]

My husband and I got married during undergrad for $100 and then some family and friends treated us to dinner afterwards. We had a really great time and I wouldn't change anything. As some people have pointed out, it really depends on your priorities. A huge wedding was not a priority for us, but it may be for you or your fiance. I don't think getting married in grad school is really any different than getting married any other time. You pay for what you want/ can afford in either case.

With that being said, we are both in grad school now (in the same department) and getting married has saved us a lot of money over the years, both in taxes and in gaining us eligibility for certain scholarships.

[Eigen]

Wait, there are scholarships for young married couples?? I need to get in on those!

[starmaker]

I have no idea how our wedding could have cost 20k, unless we decided to like pay for everyone's hotel rooms that came in for it.

Like I said, we did a nice reception and the wedding for around $2000 for 300ish people.

I'm definitely going with local cost of living.

Yeah, cost of living, plus I think our food restrictions really did hurt us. "Oh, you want all of your food to be gluten-free? And it has to be actually gluten-free, including during preparation, not just free of foods with wheat in them, otherwise the groom will get violently ill? And you want such food to be provided and served by a reasonably-priced company? Haha, suckers." We spent 10K on catering alone (including serving staff and rental of tables, chairs, plates, and flatware) for about 100 guests. We looked for ages for a cheaper place that could do what we wanted, thereby annoying the fancy-pants (but really good) caterer that we eventually ended up signing on with, and never found one. Let this be a warning to anyone planning a wedding who requires certain kinds of disability accommodations.

Other things that cost us:

- Alcohol (open bar) was around $1500, not including the temporary liquor license. This was by far the best deal that we could find and had been recommended to us by everyone. And we got to keep the opened-but-not-finished bottles, which have provided for a number of subsequent bar nights at our apartment.

- Venue was $2800 (for eight hours - we had both the ceremony and the reception there). We were restricted to places that let you pick your own catering company, which eliminated a lot of possibilities. We saved $1200 by having the wedding not-on-a-Saturday (they gave us a discount).

- The wedding rings cost a couple grand or so.

- Tent rental (for the reception - there was no room in the venue that was big enough to fit tables and chairs for 100 people) in case of inclement weather cost somewhere in the one to two grand range.

- The various licenses and permits required (event, alcohol, etc) added up to close to a grand, IIRC.

- The gluten-free chocolate-and-fresh-raspberries wedding cake cost about $500 (and was worth every. single. penny.). This was a splurge - it wasn't like we actually required a cake to have a wedding - but it was so worth it.

We really did try to save where we could. Less than $1K total on clothes, all handmade decorations, free donated flowers, did our own invitations, borrowed audio equipment from friends, music via iPod, had a backyard bbq for the rehearsal. There just wasn't much else we could do, though, without sacrificing the comfort of the guests (we weren't going to invite a bunch of people, many of them out-of-towners, to a wedding and not feed them or give them alcohol). The primary way we could have saved would have been to invite fewer people.

[eklavya]

man, these $$ symbols are going to haunt me couple of years later!!

[alexis]

Some other wedding tips: try for the off season (Oct- March), keep the guest list small, and get married on a Friday or Sunday for even more discounts. I saved a ton of money doing this. Many were shocked at the low price I paid for my wedding based on the venue, etc. Also, if you do use vendors, shop around! I also saved a lot of money by doing research; the one vendor I booked last minute ended up being WAY more than I should have paid. But there are so many ways to cut down on a budget. It's not worth going into debt for a wedding.

Another option is to have a civil ceremony now and then a bigger wedding when you can afford it. I know a lot of couples who have done this.

Now when it comes to the rest of the marriage part, I don't see a problem in getting married in grad school. Some people act like getting married changes everything. It doesn't. If you are already a committed couple (especially if you're living together) your life stays pretty much the same (assuming no kids). You don't have less time to do your work or anything, you can still have a social life- it's the same as when you were a couple. Financially, things usually can improve somewhat because you're combining your finances.