Getting married is one of the most happy and joyous events you could ever experience. Planning a wedding, on the other hand, can be stressful, overwhelming, and a lot to organize…especially if you’re on a tight budget. All of these reasons led Heather Fier to start The Wedding Hacker: a wedding planning service that helps couples plan for and live out their best day ever. We recently caught up with Heather to learn all about how she got her start and how she applies what she learns from her clients to her day-to-day life.
AdvisHer: Tell us about you – who is The Wedding Hacker?
Heather: When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I told my mom, “a helper”. I have always felt most alive and fulfilled when working on something that helps others improve their lives or grow in some way.
As I grew older and passed through difficult seasons of my life, I found pouring myself into something to help others is a fantastic way to break through the “pity party” fog.
In my adult life, the self-pity hit hard when my husband and I found ourselves struggling to start a family. We were young and completely shocked to find ourselves among the 1-in-8 couples diagnosed with infertility. I was heartbroken for years. We sought medical treatment, but had no luck; after several years, we decided it was best to take a break from the medical approach. We turned our empty nursery and desire to be parents into something that would help others.
Over two years, my husband and I hosted six foster children in our home. The journey was deeply fulfilling, anxiety-inducing, and, at moments, completely heartbreaking. The emotional and love-filled experience of being a foster parent sparked a fire in me that pushes me to be “a helper” in much bigger ways in both my career and personal life.
AdvisHer: What was your inspiration for starting The Wedding Hacker?
H: I started writing my book, The Wedding Hacker: A Budget-Minded Planning Playbook, in 2014. *For a free copy of this playbook, click here!
At the time, I had been an event planner for over a decade and I was frustrated by the rather predatory nature of the “wedding industrial complex”. My partially-complete manuscript sat on my computer for over three years untouched. One day, while in the depths of difficult emotions from fostering and infertility, I found working on my book to be a refuge from the intense emotions.
At that moment, I was looking back on an expensive and unexpected infertility journey and I just wanted to shake engaged couples who were opting to go into debt to plan a wedding. It is so unnecessary because gorgeous weddings can happen on so much less than the wedding industry touts. Plus, life might just throw you unexpected curves that make you very thankful that you saved a bit extra in an emergency fund.
The wedding industry often takes advantage of unknowing couples who are supercharged on emotions and under immense societal pressure. Fortunately, there are ways to get around the wedding tax and many tools that can help couples maximize whatever wedding budget is reasonable for them. I aim to empower couples to plan the wedding day of their dreams on the budget of their reality. While I was not able to fix the broken foster care system (maybe in the coming decades) or help couples avoid fertility challenges, I could provide real, honest guidance to couples in the trenches of planning a wedding.
AdvisHer: Take us through a day in the life!
H: There is an immense amount of flexibility and variance in my daily schedule. In general, you are much more likely to find me working late into the night than to find me up early in the morning. No matter the order of events, I aim to move my body each day for 30 minutes and get outside… and I almost always start the day with a shot of espresso.
Recently, my days have centered on recording interviews for the Wedding Hacker Expo. My schedule has been packed full of calls and interviews with incredible experts on weddings, relationships, and personal finance. I spend time each day checking in with the Wedding Hacker Community – providing guidance and feedback to couples on their wedding planning journey.
I’m always on the lookout for new budget-minded wedding resources to share with the community.
AdvisHer: What is your favorite type of project to work on/client to work with?
H: I love to help couples come up with solutions to make their wedding incredible on an “impossible” budget. I also find a lot of joy in helping inspire couples who have lost all excitement about their wedding. Sometimes a planning call begins under a cloud of negative energy, but by the time we wrap up, the couple is fired up and ready to continue working towards their vision.
Lastly, I love connecting with other companies who share my passion to support couples to stay on budget with their wedding planning so they can start their marriage strong. Your wedding is a momentous occasion and should be celebrated, but not at the cost of your financial health.
AdvisHer: How do you stay inspired?
H: My nature would be to keep my head down hustling nonstop, particularly when I’m inspired by a project. Thankfully, when I’m deep in a flow state, Joe reminds me to rest, move, drink water, and generally care for myself. I’m so fortunate to have an amazing partner who is aligned with an entrepreneurial nature and pushes me to find balance.
Surrounding yourself with like-minded people is critical to staying inspired. My husband and I have been so motivated by watching other entrepreneurs going after their dreams. When I can’t connect with a community in person, I enjoy listening to podcasts and reading stories of others who have made big things happen. Currently, I’m loving the Rise Podcast and Rise Together Podcast from the Hollis Co.
AdvisHer: If you could give your younger self some advice, what would it be?
H: Don’t take things so dang seriously.
I was exceptionally productive from middle school through college, but I did not know how to have fun. I did all the things – sports, volunteer work, student government, part-time job, and AP classes. I prided myself on being able to push through ridiculous workloads and manage a seriously overpacked schedule. I bought into the idea that I had to work hard to be of service, value, or significance. I wasn’t giving myself any room to be a person or enjoy life.
Thank goodness I met my husband, Joe, after college. Somehow, I didn’t scare him away when I told him, “I was allergic to fun”. He saw the situation as a challenge and slowly got me to relax and enjoy life a lot more.
Now, I live in a much more balanced way. I work in sprints on projects and then give myself space to relax, take care of my health, and have fun to balance it all out. Had I continued on my full-throttle pace, I would have likely burned out by now… and I’d certainly be enjoying life a lot less.
AdvisHer: What has been your favorite thing you’ve worked on?
H: I’m fortunate to work for myself, so I only pursue projects that I believe can be truly impactful and inspire me. That said, some projects are a little more fun than others.
I enjoyed putting together the Wedding Hacker Expo because it allowed me to connect with so many amazing people and businesses that are helping couples plan weddings in a more financially-savvy way. Being an entrepreneur can be very isolating, so connecting with others and developing a strong network of like-minded people is so important.
AdvisHer: How do you prioritize your financial health?
H: My husband and I are both entrepreneurs and we have a pretty high tolerance for risk, so we haven’t followed all the traditional financial rules.
As entrepreneurs there are peaks and valleys in income, so to keep our finances healthy we avoid expanding our lifestyle when our businesses are booming. It is so easy to splurge when we have a good month or year, but it is much wiser to put those funds aside for when times are leaner.
We always aim to pay ourselves first to keep building our savings and investments. Neither my husband nor I am naturally “savers”, so automation has been critical to keeping us on track with savings goals.
Additionally, we’ve been open various means to supplementing our income. Over the years, we’ve been hosts with Turo, Dogvacay, and Peerspace. These are all great, fun side hustles for our lifestyle and they bring in a little extra money to allow us to enjoy a nice vacation or upgrade to our lifestyle.
AdvisHer: What are your financial goals for 2019?
H: Beyond the normal goals, like saving consistently and paying down our mortgage, our biggest financial goals is to pay down our fertility medical bills. As much as I’d love to say we saved up and then paid in cash for fertility treatments, that wasn’t an option in our situation. With the pressure of a ticking biological clock, we were stuck in a no-win situation. Wait longer and the treatments got more expensive and more complicated or make it work now.
Fertility issues are extremely difficult to budget for since medical costs are often unclear with prices varying by insurance provider, clinic, etc. For example, I was told by my doctor that one of the initial fertility tests would be about $800. After completing the tests, I received bills totaling almost $3,000. This was our experience throughout the process. Everything cost more than quoted and, for us, insurance denied every single claim. It was very frustrating.
After eight years of trying to conceive, we are finally expecting our first biological child this November thanks to IVF. The medical procedures and medications were exceptionally expensive, but we don’t regret spending a single dollar.
AdvisHer: Congratulations!! So happy for you! One final question: what is your top tip for a newly engaged couple trying to stay on budget?
H: Figure out a budget that actually works for you and sort out what your wedding priorities are before you start booking anything.
The wedding industry has been selling their version of what a “perfect” wedding looks like to you for your whole life. Take a step back and think about what an amazing wedding really look like to you.
If you don’t like cake, skip it. If you want something intimate with only 10 guests, that is absolutely fine. Do you hate flowers? That’s a little harsh, but you do you.
Once you have an idea of what you can afford and what is important to you in a wedding, then you can craft an amazing event to suit your vision. We have a free budget creation tool on our blog that allows couples to create a wedding budget template tailored to their wedding goals. Each wedding is different and your budget should reflect your wedding goals.
We would like to thank Heather for sharing her story and for her time in helping create this post! For more on Heather and her wedding planning services, check out The Wedding Hacker or follow along on Instagram at @weddinghackerclub!
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