Balance and Priorities

(If this is your first time visiting A Mocha for Your Tuesday, then click here to read the story behind our series!)

Joel and I have this very specific grocery shopping routine.

On Wednesday nights after prayer meeting at our church, we start hitting up our favorite grocery stores. Shopping is just way more fun when we’re together. :)

First comes Aldi. We put our quarter in the cart and divide and conquer our list in the 10 minutes we have in the store before it closes. We have very specific stuff we get there – like milk, eggs, and sugar. (Can you tell I like to bake??)

After that is Sprouts. We absolutely love Sprouts. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s like a health food grocery store that has really great prices and killer sales on fruits and vegetables, meats, and cheese. Seriously, I think we started eating more fruits and vegetables just because I was obsessed with filling my cart with 48 cent lettuce and $1.50 pints of blueberries.

Then there’s Publix. I am a faithful reader of their weekly flyer. I get excited over the BOGOs every week. I’m like a little kid in the candy store.

So what does my grocery shopping story have to do with weddings, photography, or even life?

First of all, I think it’s kind of funny that we love running around to all our different grocery stores. :)

Second, I thought about how we all have things that we splurge on and things that we budget on. For us, we don’t have cable TV because 1) we don’t have time to watch it, and 2) it feels like a bunch of money to spend every month. We run around to three different grocery stores to get the best prices. We pack our own lunches instead of eating out.

And yet, we have no problem paying ridiculous prices for an amazing, quality cup of coffee. We travel whenever we get a chance. We’ve been to Europe, Disney World, a Caribbean cruise, and more road trips around the country than we can count. We’re headed out west later this year! We have a fancy espresso machine with pricey freshly roasted beans to go with it.

It’s all in your own personal priorities. What is worth it to you isn’t worth it to someone else. And vice versa.

Planning your wedding budget is kind of like that. You have to decide what’s really important to you and what you’re willing to cut corners on. Sometimes getting what you really want in one area means you have to skip on another. And that’s okay. It’s part of budgeting. Most of us don’t have the finances to create an all-out high end wedding. It’s normal!

If you’ve been following our blog at all, you know that we’re passionate about the photography part. Obviously, right? ;) But this post isn’t written to tell you that you simply must splurge on a high-end photographer.

It’s to encourage you to really think about what matters the most to you, both in wedding planning and in life. Especially life. Don’t be afraid to splurge a little bit on the things that you’ll cherish. It might mean that you cut back a little bit somewhere else (PB&J, anyone?), but it will help you create the opportunities to invest in things that are important to you. Things like wedding albums, family, traveling, foodie adventures, or being generous to others.

Life is a balance in so many ways. Take the time to think about what your own balance looks like.

*hugs*

Amber