Wedding Costs

[SacredFaerie]

We all know you should save up for a wedding and not finance it or wind up in debt up to your eyeballs.


But even when you save up the money, how much is simply too much for a wedding?

[disneysteve]

I think the answer is a personal one. It depends on you, your income, the size of your guest list, where you live, etc. In some parts of the country, a few thousand is standard and accepted. In other parts of the country, you'd have a tough time finding anybody who spent less than 40K-50K.

If you earn 30K and live in a rural area, your answer is going to be different than if you earn 250K and live in Manhattan.

[mom-from-missouri]

I agree-its personal to each bride.
Also, are you just wanting to get married?? Or are you putting on a show?
I have been to some that were down right expensive and gaudy--and I might add, most of those couples aren't even married anymore-2 of them for "financial reasons".
Then, some of us (like DH and I) got married in a simple, but nice wedding. We spent around $500 including the cake & punch reception and we are still together!

[sakigt]

Too much is more than what you have!

My family wanted to invite a lot of their friends and family so they contributed what they thought "fair" and we budgeted from there.

People think we spent A LOT more than we really did. We were extremely bang for the buck conscious and no one went in debt because of it.

[woodie96]

My 22 year old DD is engaged, still no firm date set. Originally she was looking at this big "fairy tale" type wedding until she saw the astronomical costs with it. She still has some "pricy" stuff on her list. But has stepped back a notch or two since her original plans. Be creative, you can find great deals out there.
But to put a price tag on one. Definitely up to the bride to be.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by mom-from-missouri

I agree-its personal to each bride.

Originally Posted by woodie96

Definitely up to the bride to be.

Excuse me, but why is it up to the bride? Why isn't it up to the bride and groom together? Last time I checked, marriage involved two people. Shouldn't there be two people involved in the planning and decision making? I know there were two of us involved in planning our wedding.

Also, what happened to the tradition of the bride's family paying for the wedding? Doesn't that happen anymore? My wife and I didn't pay for our wedding. Her parents did. My parents helped out some. That's always been the norm where I'm from.

[SacredFaerie]

Hm.....lots of good things to think on everyone.

[SacredFaerie]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

Excuse me, but why is it up to the bride? Why isn't it up to the bride and groom together? Last time I checked, marriage involved two people. Shouldn't there be two people involved in the planning and decision making? I know there were two of us involved in planning our wedding.

Also, what happened to the tradition of the bride's family paying for the wedding? Doesn't that happen anymore? My wife and I didn't pay for our wedding. Her parents did. My parents helped out some. That's always been the norm where I'm from.

Weddings are really for the bride. Most men don't care to be honest. There are a select few. I have one. And his dream wedding is completely against everything I want. But we'll work it out.

And it's 2009. Most women will state the bride's family paying for the wedding is archaic.

[cptacek]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

Excuse me, but why is it up to the bride? Why isn't it up to the bride and groom together? Last time I checked, marriage involved two people. Shouldn't there be two people involved in the planning and decision making? I know there were two of us involved in planning our wedding.

Also, what happened to the tradition of the bride's family paying for the wedding? Doesn't that happen anymore? My wife and I didn't pay for our wedding. Her parents did. My parents helped out some. That's always been the norm where I'm from.

In our case, it was up to me because I was doing all the planning for it. I would ask him questions, and either he wouldn't care or he would hate it. If he didn't hate it, I could make whatever decision I wanted to. If he hated it, we didn't do that. That's why we didn't go on a cruise (my idea that he hated) and instead went to a cabin in Tennessee (my idea that he liked )

It was also up to me because until we were married we had my money and his money...we didn't mingle that until the day we got married. So, since I had money and he didn't, I paid for it. His parents did pay for the rehearsal dinner, though.

Also, I know more about how to come up with deals on ebay, etc., to make it cost less.

We were having a Catholic wedding and he isn't Catholic, so all of those decisions were up to me, simply because he didn't know much about the ceremony.

I remember when I was in the second grade. At that point, we had 5 girls and 1 boy in our family. Dad told us college and our weddings are up to us, because he couldn't pay for it. We now have 7 girls and 2 boys in our family...and 5 of us have paid for our own weddings, and 7 of us have paid for our own college (the other two are still in high school). In my case, I was older when I got married and have a good job, so it was a little easier for me, but the other 4 were younger with not such a good job, so they just had a little less of a party.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by SacredFaerie

Weddings are really for the bride.

Most women will state the bride's family paying for the wedding is archaic.

I enjoyed planning and celebrating our wedding. If other guys don't, that's really a shame.

As for the payment, it has been some time since I was in the wedding cycle. Our friends are all past that point. We've been married 16 years. I guess things have changed. No wonder young couples have so much debt. They want the weddings that my generation had but they don't have any money to pay for them and aren't getting them paid for by their families like we did. Had we been footing the bill, we certainly wouldn't have had the affair that we did.

[PrincessPerky]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

Excuse me, but why is it up to the bride? Why isn't it up to the bride and groom together? Last time I checked, marriage involved two people. Shouldn't there be two people involved in the planning and decision making? I know there were two of us involved in planning our wedding.

Also, what happened to the tradition of the bride's family paying for the wedding? Doesn't that happen anymore? My wife and I didn't pay for our wedding. Her parents did. My parents helped out some. That's always been the norm where I'm from.

Isn't that a bit if a double standard? You want a say in the wedding, but you want HER family to pay for it?

Personally, I think it is a joint decision, and I would love the tradition of us helping all our kids (no gender discrimination here).

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by PrincessPerky

Isn't that a bit if a double standard? You want a say in the wedding, but you want HER family to pay for it?

I think the bride and groom should both have a say in planning the wedding no matter who is paying for it. It is, after all, their wedding.

That said, neither of us had final say on how things were done because we weren't the ones paying. We got overruled on a number of decisions by her parents.

I didn't say I wanted her parents to pay for it. I just said that traditionally, that's how it has always been done. When we were fighting a few battles in the planning process, my wife and I considered cancelling the whole thing and doing it on our own, but things worked out eventually.

[Gruntina]

My husband and I planned our wedding together in an equally balanced way.
My husband wrote me a letter which contains the proposal to read while he washed my feet. I decided to frame it. I found the frame and used our invitation cover as the matt behind the letter. My husband actually went shopping himself to purchase a pretty ribbon to frame around the the letter to look nicely with the background. We used this as one of our decorations at the wedding.
Together:
1. Went location and vendor shopping and found something that we both like along with the meals, appetizers and desserts. (we got married and had our reception at the same site)
2. Picked our wedding colors and theme
3. I designed the wedding invitations style and look while my husband wrote out all the mailing address and stamped them. (He created the invitations wordings and the poems and we had a friend print them.
4. Marriage license - together
5. We saved up money together! He earned more so was able to chip in more but we only used up 3/4th of our wedding budget.
6. Hair appointments and etc was done on our own using funds from the combined wedding funds.
7. After wedding, hubby and I sat together and split up thank you cards.

My Husband:
Arrange a pastor (one he grew up with) to marry us.
Wrote our wedding vows (even practiced to do them in sign language)
Picked our bride/groom dance song.
Picked out rose trees for our alter decorations
Select style and ordered his tux along with his groomsmen
Search and hired a violinist to do our wedding march and play while guests are seating.

Me:
Chose some songs for our ceremony
Chose my dress/accessories (bridesmaid and matron of honor picked out their choice of dresses)
Did the flowers and the floral decorations for the wedding party and reception room
Planned events and hospitalities for those who traveled far.
Made the guest notes for collections/sign in (alternative for guest book)
Search and hired two interpreters for the wedding.
Made chocolate chunky cookies for favors
Found a photographer (used a friend who skilled in this dept)


Family surprised us with:
Limo to and from the wedding
Honeymoon to Mexico including flight and resorts
Bridal showers


This is all I can remember for now.

[SacredFaerie]

Honestly, I'd rather have my parents pay for my schooling. And if we're paying for our wedding together, it places the power in OUR hands. Which works for me.

My dad's mom was a maid while she was working and my mom's parents were farmers. My parents paid for their own wedding and we'll do the same.

[cptacek]

One thing did bother my mom, though. I didn't put our parents' names on the invitation. Just me and DH's names. I figured we were 32 (him) and 30 (me) and living on our own and paying for it ourselves, so I just put our names on it. She did mention it, and I just said "you're not paying for it" and she never mentioned it again. Don't think I would do it differently, but maybe I would tell her before she saw the invitations so it wouldn't be a shock.

[SacredFaerie]

See now I'll be putting my parents' names on the invites. They'll be giving me away.

[MiikeB]

Steve, having a daughter of your own, do you plan to pay for her wedding? Have you begun setting money aside for it or is it a take it as it comes for you? Would your decision be based on how much you liked the guy?

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by cptacek

One thing did bother my mom, though. I didn't put our parents' names on the invitation. Just me and DH's names. I figured we were 32 (him) and 30 (me) and living on our own and paying for it ourselves, so I just put our names on it.

I think the problem here is that there are long-standing, generations-old traditions of how things were done, and they just aren't done that way anymore and it takes some adjustment to get used to the new ways, especially for the older generations.

For our wedding, had we just sent out invitations with our names, numerous people on the guest list would have had no idea who we were because they know our parents but didn't really know us. Of course, had we been planning and paying for the affair ourselves, those people likely wouldn't have been on the guest list.

My wife and I did receive a wedding invitation a few years ago that only listed the bride's and groom's names and we didn't know who they were. I had to call my mom to find out. It turned out that the bride was the daughter of my cousin's second wife, but the girl has a different last name than her mother (her birth father's last name, I suppose), so I had no clue.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by MiikeB

Steve, having a daughter of your own, do you plan to pay for her wedding?

Absolutely, if they both want us to.

[Snave]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

Absolutely, if they both want us to.

How old is your daughter? I have a little boy! :