This story got me nodding my head in agreement.
One couple ditched their plans for a conventional wedding and instead jetted off on a month-long honeymoon. Hannah Bird and Charlie Camper, both 26, had originally budgeted £30,000 for their big day. However, the pair from Burnham-on-Sea soon realized the huge sum would be blown on just one day and could instead be used to make more memories exploring the world.
So they did just that: offering their guests supermarket cup cakes instead of buying an expensive wedding cake, got the bride a free (i.e. secondhand) wedding dress and offered their guests a buffet (“grazing table”) instead of the traditional sit-down meal. As for the venue: they booked a woodland retreat for a whole weekend’s festivities — which ordinarily would strike some as excessive — but reduced the cost by charging their guests sixty quid, in lieu of wedding presents. Which makes a great deal of sense, by the way: it may sound tacky, but from a guest’s point of view, where are you going to get a weekend getaway for only sixty bucks? A bargain for everybody, and guests wouldn’t have to mess with buying presents into the bargain.
I never bought in to the wedding-industrial complex; it always seemed to me a cynical exercise in gyno-centric excess — the idea that a girl somehow “deserves” to have a Special Day wherein she’s the absolute center of attention. What bollocks. And this is especially true when one looks at the statistics and realizes that the chances of said nuptials actually producing a long and happy relationship are vanishingly small.
I have no problem with the bride’s parents paying lots of money for the occasion, by the way — it’s their money to do with what they wish, and as long as they don’t bankrupt themselves (a distressingly-common occurrence), why not? But as with the couple in the above story, it makes so much more sense to take the money that would have been blown on fripperies such as massive flower bouquets and a one-day-use dress, and spend it instead on something worthwhile to the couple, rather than just feeding the bride’s giant ego or need for self-aggrandizement.
I actually did that with my first marriage. As time passed, I noted with alarm that the whole thing was growing faster than a Democrat politician’s spending plan, and I did two things: first, I secretly bought our honeymoon air tickets (to the U.S., incidentally, where neither of us had been before); then I presented that fact to the bride’s family as a fait accompli, and said that this wedding day was going to be made on a strict budget because we needed to save money to afford a month-long’s stay in the U.S. Unbelievably, over time pressure was brought upon me by her family to cancel the U.S. trip for a shorter honeymoon at some resort somewhere in South Africa — said pressure only disappearing when I threatened to walk away from the whole wedding (and marriage) and go to the States on my own instead. And I meant every word.
Anyway, that honeymoon Over Here was truly beneficial for me, in that I fell in love with this wonderful, fantastic country, big time… and the rest you know.
And all because like the couple above, I refused to spend a boatload of money on some one-day extravagance. In their case, they got a lifetime’s worth of memories; in my case, I changed my life’s entire path.
A bargain, for both of us.
I wonder if ‘The Big Wedding’ came about to replace the dowry, which spread the cost across a lot of people vs the bride’s parents.
when my wife and I got married, we went to a couple of venues to see what they were like and what they charged. At one venue we all knew it wasn’t the right place for us because they nickel and dimed the customer to death. Chair coverings, longer table cloths and such were extra, set up a small awning/tent was extra, cutting the wedding cake was extra, etc etc. We went with some place moderately priced. The only downside is that I didn’t ask the photographer to take lots of pictures of my wife’s extended family members.
Misdirection. It’s NOT about the wedding, but the marriage. I’ve noticed they that spend the most up front, spend the least in the length of the marriage. I’ve never understood the point.
My wife and her mother made her dress, I bought a new standard outfit off the shelf (not a suit). Our wedding was in the house we had been renting for the previous year. The best man was my brother, the bridesmaid was her mother. I bought the ring at Service Merchandise for about $100 and she had nothing to say about it. Our honeymoon was 3 days in a moderate motel on Fort Myers Beach, Florida.
Total cost (paid by me) was less than $500.
Next Feb it will have been 42 years of mostly wedded bliss.
Been married over 30 years. I spent around $500 on the wedding itself (me, her, parents, siblings, on a Saturday in an empty church, tipped the pastor another $100 for roughly 10 minutes of talking, then banquet at Holiday Inn). I spent another $1000 on honeymoon to a Sandals Resort in Jamaica. Neither of our parents offered to cough up a dime and I wasn’t about to ask. I had a job and I covered it myself.
15 years later her parents dropped $30k on her little sister finally getting married. Fuck me. At least I got the pretty sister.
I’ve had two people in my life who had big, expensive weddings.
One was my wife’s sister’s girl. The parents (my in-laws) took out a second mortgage to pay for it. The marriage lasted just over a year.
The other was my son. His wife’s father flew the whole extended family (down to second cousins) to California, from places ranging from Philadelphia to Lebanon, and they had a three-day wedding event. They’re still married, with four kids, and quite happy. I think the difference was that her father is a surgeon, and (to him) it really wasn’t a big expense.
Me? My wife and I each took a week off work, and we rented a cabin in the Smoky Mountains and got married in a wedding chapel. No friends, no family, no gifts, just a week for the two of us. I highly recommend it unless you’re just rolling in excess money.
Thankfully, I married a woman who wanted to keep the excess, rather than indulge in excess. Married in her church, with the reception there. She was in food service, so we got a deal on the cake from a master pastry chef she knew (who was happy to do it, we both married older and everyone was happy to see the old maid married off.) We made tea sandwiches for the reception. Then we had a much smaller family-and-closest-friends dinner at her father’s house where another chef friend roasted an entire pig lechon style. The pig itself was the biggest single expense, and the chef gave his labor as his wedding gift.
We’ve been married almost 15 with no trouble on the horizon. The marriage makes a statement by the woman. (The men should be involved as little as possible in the planning, primarily standing in the right place at the appointed time in traditional clothing.) The difference in the statement is the difference in the woman.
“The difference in the statement is the difference in the woman.”
I am SO going to steal that expression.