Getting Married With A ZERO Dollar ($0) Budget:

My fiancé and I are getting married January 31, 2009 (or so we hope). Unfortunately, all we can afford to do at this point is to pick our preferred wedding date and the colors we like (black and white with fuchsia accents). We are dead broke, receiving county assistance and living on a grand total of $934.00 in cash and $638.00 in food stamps a month for a family of five. Yes, we do have to pay rent and utilities too.

The last five years have been extremely difficult for the two of us. We both lost our mothers in a very quick an unexpected manner. We welcomed two more sons into our lives (we now have three boys, 9 years, 20 months and 8 months). We have lost jobs and even our home. We were literally homeless from September 23, 2008 until November 20, 2008.

We set our wedding date about six months ago and never thought that we would endure such drastic financial hardships over the course of a three month span--but given today’s economy, it’s not too hard to believe. Even through the hard times of not knowing where we were going to sleep at night with our children or not having money for food, we had faith that we would make it through.

We were finally blessed with a place to live on November 20, 2008. Even though life is still a constant struggle and we both are still unemployed, I have been able to return to college and continue working on my business degree and my fiancé is working on completing his nursing degree. We want our example of hardship, faith and endurance to motivate our sons to accomplish more out of life and to know that our love and commitment to our family is permanent by sealing it with our union as husband and wife.

I am 33 years old with three kids and well beyond the idea of a princess in a fantasy wedding. Our goal is to have a very simple and elegant (yet fun and comfortable) gathering of close family and friends to share our commitment with. We want our wedding to be a happy and memorable day for us to look back on.

So, my question is, how do you do that with little to no money?