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
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- Have a friend or family member conduct the wedding ceremony (no officiating fee!).
- 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.
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!
Posted by: Nora Rose | 05 December 2012 at 09:55 AM