5 for 5: Top Five Budget Tips for the Wedding Officiant

In today's 5 for 5, I'm offering suggestions on how to save money on the wedding officiant (On the 5th day of every month, I share a downloadable infographic with my Top Five Budget Tips for a specific facet of wedding planning).

Hope this helps y'all find your perfect, budget-friendly wedding officiant! (click the image below for a free PDF!):

Top Five Budget Tips for the Wedding Officiant

1. Find an officiant that will accept donations to their church (instead of a straight fee). Often you write those fees off of your taxes as a charitable donation.
2. Ask your pre-marital counselor to be your officiant. Then offer to donate their fee to a favorite charity (and then write it off your taxes!
3. If you book your officiant through your church ask them have pre-marital counseling fees waived. Many will do this to encourage couples to take the counseling sessions.
4. Have a friend or family member conduct the wedding ceremony (no officiating fee!).
5. If you invite one of your guests to officiate your wedding then you will have one (or more if they have a partner) less guest to feed at the reception.

Be sure to check out all our 5 for 5 suggestions.

Comments

[Nora Rose]

As an accountant, I challenge the tax deduction. You can definitely still get one and the chances of being audited are slim, but you can't simply deduct it. If you make a donation and receive value, i.e. a charity gala event ticket or raffle, you cannot deduct the fair market value of the service or item you receive. If you donate $500 to the gala and the value of the meal and entertainment is $100, you can only deduct $400. Winning a large raffle prize usually cancels out the donation ticket and you may even owe taxes on the prize.

On the same premise, if you make a $500 donation to your church, and officiants in your area are normally $250, you can only deduct $250.
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Eight-Tips-for-Deducting-Charitable-Contributions

However, don't want to knock you because I love the budget tips, just wanted to prevent any (extremely rare but annoying) audit errors! ;) You'd have to really misstate your taxes to be hit with an IRS penalty but it's good to note!