Second marriage or first: put a prenup on your wedding checklist

Andrew Bowker 0:00 Because I'm not sure that a prenup is really about planning for divorce. I I don't think it's about planning for failure. I think it's more about being clear on how you're going to deal with money during the relationship. Kate Daly 0:16 Welcome to The Divorce Podcast, where we explore all aspects of ending relationships, separation, and parenting apart. If your marriage or partnership has ended, or you have friends and family who are separating, this podcast is for you. I'm Kate Daly, a relationship counsellor, divorce specialist and co-founder of amicable, the online legal service for separating couples. In each episode, we look at relationships and separation from different angles, including the emotional, legal and social. I'm joined by experts and special guests who share their own unique stories, experience and tips with the goal of helping people end relationships in a kinder and better way. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Andrew Bowker. Andrew is one of the founders of Wedysimo, a UK wedding booking platform that makes it easy for couples to find, compare and book wedding suppliers online. Since launching, Wedisimo has helped thousands of couples book everything from photographers to celebrants, giving Andrew a unique perspective on how modern couples plan their weddings and prepare for marriage. Welcome Andrew. Andrew Bowker 1:30 Hi there, great to be here. Kate Daly 1:32 It's lovely to have you. Now, the context for today and the starting point is all about prenups and how people prepare for marriage. So I don't want anyone to think they've taken the wrong turn down the corridor and that this is the divorce podcast. But I guess marriage often comes after a divorce. There's a lot of people who marry a second time. But also I think it gives us a really unique insight talking to people like yourself into what kind of plans and preparation people make for marriage and how they talk about money because it's something that at the end of a relationship becomes a huge issue. So I'm really grateful to you for being here so we can have a real deep dive into what makes a good conversation, how to have one, and what you see as people marry and go through this whole process. So I'm really delighted to start and to have you here today. So thank you. But let's kick off then. Tell us a little bit about Wadissimo. Where did the idea come from? How did you think of this as a sort of a way forward to help people? Andrew Bowker 2:36 Yeah, so we we're a wedding supplier booking platform where you can book wedding photographers, DJs, hair and makeup, all the kind of services that you need for a wedding. And what we're really trying to do is to make it simple and transparent for couples. We want people to be able to focus on their marriage rather than on their wedding. And one of the big distractions for couples when they're getting married is this idea of the wedding tax. You've probably heard everyone talk about it, you know, the idea that things that you that have wedding attached to them become more expensive. And that's not a myth. You know, it is actually true. Um, and sometimes there's good reasons for that, you know, like some sometimes the product or service is different. Like a wedding cake is not the same as a cake from Sainsbury's. And so there's a good reason that it would be a different price. But I think what really gets people is when you get the exact same product or service with the word wedding attached, and the price has gone up. And that does happen, and it happened to me. So when when I got married, we wanted little bouquets for the bridesmaids. And all the wedding bouquets were really expensive. So we found, you know, another florist that that offered non-wedding bouquets, ordered those online, put the delivery address in as the venue, and the the florist cancelled the order. They actually wrote to us and sort of said that we hadn't disclosed that it was for a wedding, and that they wouldn't sell us these for for a wedding. And in fact, we would need to buy the wedding version, which was uh remarkably similar in all things but price. Oh for goodness. And so so uh that like there's a very clear example of of someone paying the wedding tax. We didn't actually pay it in the end, we made our own. But well, why does that happen? That's not what you would expect in a normal competitive market, right? Suppliers should be competing for customers, and customers are comparing prices, and that should mean that prices for similar services are the same, but that's that's not what's happened in weddings. There is this markup. So when I looked into this, I think the the reason for it is that couples tend to discover wedding suppliers through classified ads directories. So the model of a classified ads directory is a wedding supplier buys an advert on a website, and that advert is static, you know, it will have a you know, prices from or a guide price, but it won't say the actual price that you can book. And to actually discover the price, you've got to have calls with suppliers and then there's an adjustment for travel, there's an adjustment for the date, you know, bank holiday weekends are more expensive, and you know, and this extra. And so every price is individually negotiated. And at the end of that very arduous process of negotiation, you find out the actual price, by which time you're so exhausted that you don't want to go back to the start of the process and start again. So that is where the wedding tax comes from, is that prices are not clear up front. And so what we've built is a booking platform with sync with the suppliers' calendar so you can see what dates are actually available, and they publish a price for each date. Uh so you can search by date and location, see which suppliers are actually available, and then you can book that actual price. And we think that will make the market more transparent and fairer for couples. Kate Daly 6:11 So it sounds like from what you're saying that couples are obviously being forced into having these quite detailed conversations about money and budget very early on in the relationship and having to navigate all of that, and you've built this platform to make it simpler and easier to have those conversations and to see what you're spending. I guess that leads me to this question about money, couples, and marriage. Then I see money, couples, and marriage when things are really bad. Andrew Bowker 6:39 We see it when they're getting on fine. Kate Daly 6:41 Exactly. And you see the other end. Now, it seems to me that there must be some signals about how people are going to navigate money and a working relationship together. What do you see in that space about how couples actually start to talk about money and how they come to something like planning a wedding, which is a big event, which has sometimes a huge price tag? You were telling me earlier, the average cost. Go and say that because it nearly made me cry. Andrew Bowker 7:10 Yeah, the the FT published a survey on this £26,000. Kate Daly 7:14 £26,000. So the start to married life costs the average couple £26,000. Wow, that is incredible. So it's a big sum of money. How do you see people navigating that kind of sum of money? Andrew Bowker 7:28 So we see that um about half of our customers are men, half of them are women. So it doesn't seem to be like there's a it's a particularly uh gendered thing. We also can see that they make these decisions uh quite often together. So when people book suppliers on our platform, normally they'll have a video call with that supplier before they go ahead and book. And usually it's both sides of the couple on that call. So I think at that stage it's quite collaborative as to which services people are going to buy and what price they're willing to pay. Kate Daly 8:05 Do you think people come with a budget in mind, or do you think they start off booking individual things and they might have an individual sort of price guide in mind and then all of a sudden things snowball and you get to this £26,000 price tag? Andrew Bowker 8:20 I think people come with a budget in mind. So if we look at how people use our website, you know, we can you can filter by price and and um you can filter by lots of things, but the main thing people filter by is price. So I think that tells us people have decided for a service what they would like to pay, and then they want to be able to simply find options within that budget. Kate Daly 8:41 Right. So people having these conversations about money early on, they're navigating this whole thing about we've got a budget, we need to stick to it. So it sounds like there's some quite informed conversations about budgeting, money, price, and all of that kind of thing going on. Where do you see things going wrong, if at all? Andrew Bowker 8:59 We see things going wrong on the wedding side of things with a family illness is the big one. So weddings get cancelled or moved because someone in the family who's, you know, an important part of that day isn't going to be able to make it. So that is kind of the number one thing that we see. But we do also see examples of where couples book things and then the the relationship is broken down in advance of the marriage. We don't tend to follow up with those couples and ask what happens. Well, I know, yeah, I can understand that. But we do we do see some of that. Kate Daly 9:34 And one of the things that we're looking at in the moment as part of the amicable service is prenups. So we've started to look at whether or not there's a better, kind of, fairer way of helping couples set out their expectations about money and what would happen if the relationship doesn't work out. I guess that's quite a hard sell from a wedding platform perspective because you've got people right at the beginning where they're clouded with the romance of it all. But our thinking is that actually it's quite a sensible thing to do because having those conversations about money seems to be really important and fundamental to married life. Do you ever get to talk to people as they're going through the platform about what their attitudes to money and how they resolve differences about money and finances? Andrew Bowker 10:23 Well, I mean, I think it's a great idea, and I don't think it's a difficult self for a wedding platform because I'm not sure that a prenup is really about planning for divorce. I don't think it's about planning for failure. I think it's more about being clear on how you're going to deal with money during the relationship. So I I, you know, I would have thought a prenup kind of would answer two questions. One is, what am I protecting you know, in the worst case and and and what are we building together? And I think that probably sets a tone for the rest of the relationship that that that couples can build on in the relationship. So I I I don't think I don't think it's about planning for failure. I think it's about being clear about what you're what you're building together, what is separate and what is together. And I think that probably has influences on relationships far earlier than you know, divorce. I don't think a prenup is something where people they write it, they put it in a drawer, and then they only bring it out if the worst happens. I think it influences all sorts of conversations and alignment of incentives during a relationship. Like, for example, let's say you have one that gets offered a job abroad and that's gonna be a great financial boon for the household, but it means that one person's gonna have to sacrifice some of their career. You know, if you've agreed that everything is separate and you have no part of and you have no ownership stake in this, then you know, will that person be willing to give up their career for you? Or will or will they say we're building financial security together and what is best for us is is best for us. So and and so I I think I think those agreements can influence the decisions that people make in relationships and the way people approach conversations in relationships by aligning incentives and they have an impact much earlier than you know, yeah, when they get to later. Kate Daly 12:24 Yeah, absolutely. I think you're right because you know, I I am always surprised at how people haven't had those conversations. And I think a lot of people don't appreciate that marriage is a legal contract at the end of the day, and with a marriage come certain rights and responsibilities. And sometimes the point at which the relationship breaks down is the first time that people understand those rights and responsibilities, and yet they've lived their lives and made decisions without really realizing how those decisions will play out in the future if certain events take place. Andrew Bowker 12:59 Well, and it's not clear, is it? Yeah. I mean, so the the the I'm you know, I'm not a family lawyer and I wouldn't uh like to say anything legal. But my understanding is family law is very principles-based, and some of those principles are conflicting, and that leaves a lot of room for judicial discretion. So you're signing up to a financial obligation on a marriage, whether you like it or not, whether you've discussed it or not, you're agreeing to something, but it is unclear until a judge makes a decision what it is you've actually agreed to. Kate Daly 13:29 Yeah, exactly. So, you know, you you might think you've signed up to one thing and it turns out it's something completely different. Yeah. Andrew Bowker 13:36 And I think there's all sorts of misconceptions around that. You know, people have broad ideas. Well, it's a marriage so it's 50-50. Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Kate Daly 13:42 Yeah, lots of times it isn't. So yeah, their starting point is a 50-50, but there are lots of reasons to depart from that and need being the biggest one, which affects 97, 98% of the population who divorce. Andrew Bowker 13:56 But not 98 or 97% of the case law. Kate Daly 13:58 So we don't really know exactly, and that's exactly the point. So what we hear is that one or two percent from the super rich, we think that's what applies to us, and it doesn't. And that's where a lot of the confusion and myths come along. So I think you're right. I think a prenup gives people the opportunity to explore what their expectations are, to say what's right for them, and to make an explicit contract, which, as you say, cannot just be shoved in a drawer and forgotten about, but has to be looked at every couple of years. And certainly, if there is a big life event, so the birth of a child is the most common one, or as you pointed out, a job abroad or something where it requires somebody to make a different kind of sacrifice. So that to me is super important to get that out on the table because I think that's got to be a better way forward than almost the Russian roulette of family law, which is kind of what we play at the moment. Andrew Bowker 14:52 Oh, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Kate Daly 14:54 And how do you the prenups I think have got a bad reputation? I kind of feel like part of my job now is to change some of that. To say, look, this is not about you know, as is commonly considered one person with money withholding it from somebody else. This is about facilitating a conversation about money and how you're going to handle money in your life. So it's a positive good thing. How do we get that message across, do you think? Andrew Bowker 15:20 I think some of that bad reputation comes from some of the stuff that we see in the media. What we see about prenups is crazy things that super wealthy celebrities have signed in America, which is a completely different system. And I don't think I don't think that's that's that's what they need to be about. And I don't think that's relevant to the everyday experience of of agreeing and being transparent about money. I think that's you know, people with aggressive lawyers trying to catch people out with terms. Kate Daly 15:48 And it makes great telly. Andrew Bowker 15:51 The boring normal cleanup doesn't really make great telly, so you never heard about it. And so I think there's there's one thing about that. What we see on TV is not representative of agreements that people have. And I think secondly, there's a thing about process, you know. So I so I know of a case where a couple was about to get married, they'd organised everything, and before the wedding, the the groom to be presented the bride with a really one-sided prenup that he'd had drafted without talking to her about it, and it was like a fate accomplish, sign this or not, you know, and she felt she had to go through with it, and that uh because the wedding was already organized, right? Uh and this uh, you know, was a major factor in the breakdown of of that marriage. So I think there's a second thing about process. So, how do you do this in a kind way, in a way that's getting people a life that they would actually want, a life that they aspire to, you know, a marriage that they aspire to, not like how do I diddle someone by forcing a contract on them at the last minute when it's too late to change their mind. Kate Daly 17:11 Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that is incredibly important is that the governments at the moment are consulting. I mean, they might have consulted by the time this comes out, but they're consulting at the moment on what would make a prenup in this country able to be legally binding and enforceable by the courts because at the moment they're not automatically enforceable. You know, the the judge can look at them. And one of the things that, you know, one of the points you just made was the proximity to the wedding. So 28 days are required in this consultation before the marriage. You you can't sign anything in the 28 days and then run up to the marriage, that's deemed to be too much pressure. So that's one kind of really positive thing. I think the other one, as you were saying, is it's got to be reasonable, it's got to take account of people's needs. So it can't be something that's so punitive that it leaves one person in a desperate kind of situation. But I guess a lot of what we see at the moment in terms of people that are interested in this is because of this big wealth transfer. So people who are kind of a bit older than me, but baby boomer generation who are sitting with a whole bunch of wealth at the moment, they're often giving money for weddings or for house deposits and that kind of stuff. And a prenup is a way of having a very open conversation about what should happen to that gift should things not pan out as expected. And I think that's a really kind of key part to all of this. Are you seeing something similar? Like who's paying this £26,000 for the weddings? Is it people's parents? Are there conversations in that scenario about who's paying what back and what happens? Andrew Bowker 18:54 Yeah, I mean, we are seeing this huge wealth transfer, which I think has been driven in in large part by property prices going up, and anyone who owned property in the 80s and has held on to it has has done really well. And so we're starting to see some of that money transfer into gifts to children. And we're starting to see that in the price of weddings. So the price of weddings that now is is £26,000 and it is rising, has has risen uh, you know, dramatically up to this point. And I I think uh that is largely driven by this wealth transfer. And it and it's a very interesting point you mentioned there, you know, how would couples expect to deal with that? Because in my mind, prenups are kind of what are we building together and and what are we keeping separate? And and does that wealth transfer that's you know, in a way not built by anyone in that in that relationship, where does that sit? But and I wouldn't really like to apply how people should apportion that, but they should they should apportion it, you know, they should know, they should know what's going to happen to it. Kate Daly 20:04 Yeah, particularly if it's been gifted, and if it's gifted to fund the deposit on a property, then if in the event of divorce and the property is sold, does that money go back to someone's parents, or is that deemed to now be the technical term for it, matrimonialized and therefore not? And it it gives you the opportunity to have that conversation and to say what's fair. Whereas I think what happens now is there might be an expectation from someone's parents that that money's coming back to them in the event of a divorce, but the law doesn't necessarily support that, particularly if it's a needs case and that money is required to meet the housing needs of either of the couple, irrespective of whether it's your son or daughter or the other person. So I think some clarity around that. And it's all about having those conversations, those honest conversations about money, isn't it? And I mean, we feel a bit as a nation, a bit kind of squeamish about talking about money. Is that a generational thing? Do you see younger people coming through who are getting at the point of getting married? Do you see them having more open dialogues about money? Andrew Bowker 21:12 Some good data on that. Okay, it's from uh there was a poll, maybe uh youGov asked people the question is it vulgar to talk about money? Oh, interesting, yes. Kate Daly 21:22 Yeah, yeah. Andrew Bowker 21:22 And amongst the baby boomer generation, 50% of people say it is, 10% don't know, 40% say it's not vulgar. So the majority of people either don't know or think it's vulgar amongst baby boomers. Amongst Gen Z, it's only 17% of people who think uh that it's vulgar to talk about money. Demographics is destiny, right? So as those people grow up, maybe they'll become slightly more conservative. But I suspect what we're seeing here is change. Kate Daly 21:51 So a real shift in people's willingness to talk about it. Andrew Bowker 21:55 Yeah, and I think, you know, if I were to hazard a guess, we're a progressively less Class-based society than we were, and talking about money feeds into that, I think. Kate Daly 22:06 Well, I guess in some ways the wedding industry is a good barometer for it because you're talking about, you know, what I would consider unvarsum of money at that early stage of your relationship, you're forced to talk about money very early on, and therefore you're sort of setting the tone, aren't you, for being able to have a more open conversation about money and what happens to it and who does what and everything else. Andrew Bowker 22:28 Yeah, and it's and it's a very long process, the wedding planning process. So people are having to have those conversations over a long period of time. You know, people are booking wedding venues up to, you know, two years in advance, sometimes more, but at least 12 months in advance. And so they're having to make that that discussion. Um, but the wedding venue isn't the only thing. There's 10 or 15 different suppliers that you need to book. Each of those needs a conversation about budget and money. You know, you and and the the sums that you can spend are are vastly different. You know, you can spend 5,000 pounds on a wedding photographer. I know someone who spent £50,000 on a wedding photographer. You can also spend £250 on a wedding photographer, and you should, and you will have to have that conversation before you before you book one. Kate Daly 23:10 I guess as well, irrespective of how much is in your budget, people's attitude to money is different. And this is one of the things we talk about quite a bit when it comes to divorce and separation. You know, you can have people, everyone's got an individual relationship with money. It's usually set very early on in their childhood, and attitudes to money and how much money is appropriate, irrespective of your wealth, can be really quite distant conversations in the sense that you could have very different views on that as a couple. Do you get a sense of how people, are people getting any better at navigating or even being able to spot the differences earlier on in the relationship journey? Andrew Bowker 23:52 I mean, I have some of my own personal experience with this. I mean, I I'm from Scotland and we have a particular view of money. But you know, I remember, you know, being taken to the bank with my Christmas present money, you know, deposit five pounds, and you come back the next year, and interest rates at the time were massive. So, you know, it'd be like six pounds. No one, no one explained to me that inflation was also massive. Uh so you know. And and I think I think that kind of thing shapes people. I mean, I wonder for Gen Z who've grown up in a zero interest rate environment where their cash savings uh would have been eroded and not grown, whether they have a a different view on savings. Kate Daly 24:31 Yeah, quite possibly. But I think it's just interesting that the wedding gives you the opportunity to have a conversation about money, even if that's the first time you've spoken about money. I don't personally don't think it should be. I think talking about money is a second date question for me every day of the week because I want to filter them out early. If it's somebody who just doesn't share my values and doesn't understand, you know, the attitude to money, then I'm, you know, I find I think that's one of the real things that settle a relationship or not. And it's something from experience of working in the divorce industry that we see as one of the biggest things to drive people apart is that different attitudes to money, particularly where you've got somebody who's a real saver in the relationship and has invested a lot of stuff versus someone who spends, spends, spends. When it comes to divorce, the person who spent, spent, spent actually benefits in some way because the savers, yeah, the saver is forced to share all the resources, the spenders not sharing anything. So it's really tricky. And I think if people understood what happens when it comes to splitting matrimonial assets and property and all of that kind of stuff, they would have these conversations much earlier on. And as you say, that shouldn't be seen as planning for failure. It should be seen as a healthy way of navigating one of the things that can trip you up in a relationship, which is this subject of money. So I'm all for trying to have better conversations about money and just talking to you. It strikes me that even if you've not had one till this point, the wedding provides you with a perfect opportunity to say, well, what do we think is reasonable? And it sounds like people must be having those conversations if they've arrived at a budget. Andrew Bowker 26:20 Uh yeah, I think so. But and and I I, in my view, I think the conversation about money would be one of the first things that you would do. I I would say it would, it's not part of wedding planning. It's part of the decision process of is this a life that I want? You know, and there's some big questions out there, isn't there? You know, do you want kids? What country do you want to live in? How should we uh view money in this relationship? And these are the kinds of questions that you need answers to before you know whether you actually want to get married to that person. And once you've got that, you know, then you can do all the wedding planning stuff. So, but I think there's probably a thing that's happening now where people are having conversations about money for weddings. And but it's it's a secondary conversation, isn't it? The wedding is very important, and that it's my business, and it, you know, it's very important. But it's not as important as marriage. And I would say to couples to be having those conversations before you've even decided whether you want a wedding. Kate Daly 27:18 Yeah. No, it's a really interesting point and a really good point you make because ultimately, if you don't know what you're getting into, why get into it? Andrew Bowker 27:26 Yeah, why yes? Why pay for a wedding? Kate Daly 27:29 Well, it's expensive, isn't it? If you're going to get it wrong. Absolutely. Absolutely. I guess the other side of this coin. So we talked about people who are starting off their journey together, young people, millennials, Gen Zs, people who are having these conversations early on, who hopefully are having conversations about money, as you say, before they even start to do the wedding planning. There's another group of people, and maybe, you know, more of our audience, because it's people who've perhaps been divorced once and are maybe marrying for a second time around. I've been married twice, divorced twice. I'm very optimistic, Andrew. I might get married again, but I would never get married without a prenup. And that's because I've been there, seen it, done it, and I would want to know that I'd had a conversation and that everybody was clear on how we were going to work with money and what was going to be, you know, kept, what's going to be shared and everything else. So that to me strikes me as quite an easy audience to get to because we're all here through bitter experience. Do you think there's a difference in terms of the willingness of, say, people who've been through the experience of divorce to take on a preenup? Andrew Bowker 28:40 Well, I think there's two competing factors there. One is the older you are, the less likely likely you are to want to talk about money, as we've seen from that Ugov study. But when I've spoken to customers of ours about remarriage, they're much more concerned about the practicalities of things. So I think people getting married for the first time, they're very concerned about the wedding and Instagram and a bunch of stuff that is important, but it's it's not necessarily the practical things. And that's probably because they haven't they haven't seen how things go right and how things go wrong. But when I speak to older customers getting married for the second time, they've put a lot more thought into the relationship side of things and the practicalities. And they don't care as much about the wedding day. Kate Daly 29:30 I guess that's the beauty of a prenup, though, isn't it? Almost because you can put anything you like in there. So you can put some of the practical stuff. It's not just about, you know, the nitty-gritty finances of who's taking what if it doesn't work. There are so many practical elements that can go into a prenup. And it's a creative document at the end of the day, and it's designed for the two of you and what's going to make your relationship work rather than there being a standard template or anything like that. So I guess that's kind of it works for those people, doesn't it? Because as second time around as or third time around as or however many time around as we are, we've got that creative control over a document that sets out and hopefully gives us a bit more confidence going into another relationship. Andrew Bowker 30:19 Absolutely. And um and I think um when you've been in a relationship before, you probably know more a bit more about yourself. You know, what actually makes you happy, what does what doesn't make you happy, and what about my partner will make me happy or not happy? And how do we reflect that in this document in a way that is voiced, in a way that is written, in a way that is clear rather than implicit negotiations. I think people going around second time will have a much better chance of being able to say themselves what will make them happier. Kate Daly 30:55 And I think you're right. I think part of the kind of things that we see when we're on when we're helping people divorce and separate, and particularly after a long marriage, where as you were saying before, people may have sacrificed careers and they may not be in the same strong earning position. They may not have the pension that their partner has if they've given up work. I think for those people, understanding earlier on what the financial consequences are of decisions that you're making in the good of the family, which has the assumption that you will always be a couple, is really important. I just feel like that's such an important point. And if you can understand that and have those conversations earlier on, facilitated by the idea of having a prenup, then you are giving yourself the absolute best protection, whichever side of the kind of marriage coin you're on, whether you're the higher owner or the lower earner, it kind of doesn't matter. You're taking that collective view and saying, as a family, we need to all be looked after. And we believe this document will do that rather than relying on the marriage laws and the interpretation of those laws by a judge who doesn't know you, doesn't know your circumstances, hasn't been involved in some of those side conversations that very often aren't documented, or as you say, are just implicit assumptions rather than outwardly spoken conversations. And I think that's really difficult for people. Andrew Bowker 32:26 Absolutely. And I and I think you can make better decisions if you've got certainty over the over what those decisions mean. You know, maybe there's a bunch of people, I don't know, but maybe there are a bunch of people who would have thought the best decision for their family was was to make career sacrifices, but then haven't had the confidence to do that because they're not clear on whether they've got financial security in the worst case scenario. Kate Daly 32:50 Yeah, exactly. And I think having the prenup and having the discussion allows you to surface all of those anxieties rather than suppress them, and then they build as resentment just at the point where a relationship is breaking down and you end up in a very bitter divorce battle. So I think if we want to as a nation get better at being able to move between relationships as we live longer, as we're more likely to have more than one long-term relationship, then to me the prenup has to be part and parcel of that shift. Andrew Bowker 33:22 Yeah, I agree. And I think that there is a changing thing about gender as well. You know, in the past, if you went back 50 years, this only worked one way, right? It would be women making sacrifices for men. But that is, you know, that's not what I see in my kind of friendship group anymore. But there are lots of women making high-earning decisions and and lots of men making career sacrifices. And I think some of those men would have would have made bigger career sacrifices, perhaps if they had more certainty over what would happen, yeah. Kate Daly 34:00 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That that can only be a good thing. And as as other laws around paternity leave and around shared care arrangements and all that sort of thing take off, and more men choose to be the homemaker or share the care and the mental load, that obviously has to become more prescient in everyone's mind that these conversations are natural and needed to be had in order to make sure that everybody can see the pathways and the options that are open. Andrew Bowker 34:28 So yeah, as an as an enabling factor, you you know, you're not able to make those sacrifices unless you know you have security coming from somewhere else. Kate Daly 34:39 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So uh we started with this idea that prenups and wedding planning didn't necessarily go together. We've talked ourselves into a position now where they absolutely are synonymous. So when are you going to start offering prenups on your wedding planning service then? Andrew Bowker 34:56 I think it's a great thing to do. We'd love to chat to you about it. Kate Daly 34:58 So if you were giving somebody who's visiting your platform some tips and advice on the conversations around money, what would you say to them? Andrew Bowker 35:07 Well, I would say conversations around money, have them early because you need to know whether you're compatible on this very important dimension. And then when you're you're planning out your wedding day, you don't need to pay the wedding tax. There's no good reason that things are more expensive just because it's for the wedding. So you can go to wedisimo.com, you can see what the prices are for all the different service providers for your date, and you can, having had that conversation with your partner and what your budgets are, you can find suppliers to fit that budget. Kate Daly 35:44 Brilliant. Well, look, thank you ever so much for joining me today. It's been fascinating. I love the idea that we've clashed weddings and divorce together and come up with this uh this whole podcast. I hope other people will find it useful too, whether you're a second time around or a third time around or whatever, or whether you're just starting out. It feels like these conversations about money are absolutely crucial. And being able to have a document that says what the two of you want rather than what the traditional norm is feels super important too. So thank you, uh Andrew, for joining me. Just give yourself a shout out one more time. Where can people find the platform? Andrew Bowker 36:18 We are Widissimo. You can go to Widissimo.com and see all the suppliers for your wedding. Search by date, location, and price. You can message suppliers, you can book video calls with them, and you can check out securely online. Brilliant. Thank you. Kate Daly 36:34 That's all we've got time for today. Thank you for sharing your tips and advice with us. And of course, you can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram. You can hear about new podcast episodes by subscribing for updates and visiting thedivorsepodcast.com, or you can find us on your favourite listening platform. We'd love to know how we can help more. So please share questions on divorce, separation, and co-parenting with us at hello at amicable.co.uk, and they might form the next topic for one of our future episodes. Don't forget as well, you can also join our subscription platform, Amicable Space, where you'll find our community forum, a safe place to ask anything at all as you go through separation or co-parenting. Members also get access to our monthly QA webinars with amicable's very own divorce specialists, and you can ask your questions in real time. The link to sign up there is in the episode description. Thank you very much indeed, Andrew. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today, and thank you everyone for listening.