I like talking about money. I like reading about money. I like learning about money.

I’ve been called a capitalist (fairly accurately, I would say), but mostly my interest in money stems from what you can do with it, all the interesting ways you can earn/create it, and all the interesting ways you can save/spend less of it.

Case in point: I just learned (thanks to another sailing blog) that West Marine will price match other online retailers. For those of you that aren’t sailors, this is kind of like learning that Macy’s will price match Walmart. It’s HUGE. We just bought refrigeration for the boat (yay!!) and on that purchase alone price matching saved us over $200. Sikaflex 295 that sells for $32.99 at West Marine? Price matched to $21.49. Interdeck Paint that sells for $42.99/quart? Price matched to $26.99.

I gotta tell you, I get a serious kick out of this.

But then there’s the flip side. As we try to balance planning our wedding (less than 4 weeks away!), buying all the stuff we need/want for the boat, and doing our numbers to make sure we can actually afford all of this living, every now and then there’s a good little reminder to not get too caught up in how much the bakery charges to deliver or what exactly the price of lobster will be on the day we need to buy 100 of the suckers…

A friend of mine sent me a link to this site, and I quite enjoyed this quote:

“We could be doing awesome shit.
Instead we’re price-comparing toilet paper.”

And in the realm of wedding planning, what I’m discovering is that the magical parts are the sort of unexpected ones… the trialling of finger rolls with Aunties and mother-in-laws on sunny Maine days… the pouring through Pinterest with new friends to find just the exactly right flowers… meeting the former sailor who now rents chairs from a giant abandoned warehouse… trying on dresses and veils and frilly girly things… having a ‘wedding moment’ when we find the exactly right song we’ve been looking for… late-night text messages with family who are so far away but still so much a part of every detail… and on and on and on…

And I think, that in a round-about, rambling, Leah-sort-of-way, that what I’m realising is that wedding planning is a lot like cruising; that the best moments are the quiet unexpected ones, the ones that cost nothing but give the most… and that as much as price matching gets my heart pumping, treasuring these little moments as they happen is what is truly priceless.

(cue MasterCard commercial ;))