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"Wedding planning is tough. Wedding planning while shopping for a house or an apartment is harder. Here&amp;amp;#8217;s what to think about as you&amp;amp;#8217;re multitasking. Consider having a longer engagement. Though there are lots of great reasons to have a short engagement, this is one instance where a longer one might work in your favor: Venue- and vendor-hunting take up a lot of your nights and weekends. House-hunting will take up as many if not more. Since you don&amp;amp;#8217;t want to spend every waking moment wedding planning or hitting open houses, give yourself more time to do both. That way, you&amp;amp;#8217;ll be able to, uh, go out to dinner or see a movie once in a while. Remember that the downpayment you can afford may change after the wedding. In our families, wedding guests give the couple cash as wedding gifts. If you suspect that many of your wedding guests may do the same, it may be wise to push back buying a home until after you&amp;amp;#8217;re hitched. Paul and I actually doubled the amount we could put down thanks to our fabulously generous wedding guests. And that also saved us from paying mortgage insurance, which many banks tack on to monthly payments for homebuyers who are putting less than 20 percent down. True story. Coordinate your registering and home-buying efforts. Once you have an idea of how much space you&amp;amp;#8217;ll be able to afford, register accordingly. If you know any home you buy will have few closets and a tiny kitchen, skip the large and not-so-necessary appliances (I&amp;amp;#8217;m talking to you, panini maker). If, on the other hand, you&amp;amp;#8217;ll be buying a large house, you may want to register for decorative items to spruce up all that wall space. Let your lawyer and realtor know when you won&amp;amp;#8217;t be reachable because of your honeymoon. Paul and I opted for one of the more affordable honeymoons and we were only gone for seven days. Yet in those seven days, we lost the place we had put a bid on. Our lawyer tried contacting us many times while we were away. Perhaps he or our realtor could have convinced the owner that we were still interested if they knew we were out of the country and not just ignoring their phone calls. Change your address on your registries. If you wind up moving while your registries are still active, update your address--even if the wedding has already come and gone. There are always late-to-the-game guests (one of Paul&amp;amp;#8217;s groomsmen gave us a wedding gift well after our first anniversary!) who will want to send you something, and you don&amp;amp;#8217;t want them mailing it to the wrong place. (This is why lots of couples have gifts sent to the bride&amp;amp;#8217;s parents&amp;amp;#8217; more permanent address.) Anyone here buying a place before they get married? Or are you waiting until after you&amp;amp;#8217;re hitched to tackle house-hunting? What else should couples consider if they&amp;amp;#8217;re wedding planning and shopping for a home at the same time? More About Wedding Planning The 5 Best Moments of Wedding Planning Wedding Warning: Be Sure to Tell Your Guests to Do THIS! How to Get Your Groom Involved in Wedding Planning More Ways to Get Glamour Visit Shopglamour.com for cute stuff starting at just $10! Enter the latest Glamour sweepstakes! Follow us on Twitter Add us to your iGoogle homepage Photo: Stockbyte"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/weddings/blogs/save-the-date/2010/10/buying-a-place-while-wedding-p>