Is a wedding day worth it?

We had 80 at out wedding and spent a lot. I loved it. It was worth it. I never have parties. If i was doing it again. Id try to be savvier and spent less on similar things. Id have spent less on the photographer fuck me what was i thinking and more on a ring

We had a lovely day, but it wasn't very 'us' because our parents got involved and so looking back it was not worth the money and hassle. We didn't get into debt, saved hard, but still it's £££ gone forever. We were on a trip the autumn before the wedding and saw a couple getting ready for their quiet, elopement style wedding - at that point we both wished we eloped, but felt we were too far gone with everything, bookings deposits invites etc, and now both wish we'd listened to our instincts, cancelled and done it just us. Our photos have people in we really don't care about and only invited out if politeness and really we have no idea why they even accepted. It actually enrages me that one of our guests couldn't even be arsed with being polite enough for the group shot and is walking away in the background on her phone! (Also annoyed that our photographer didn't spot it and edit it!)

I loved our wedding! 11K and totally worth it.

We spent on a decent sized wedding. I would do it all again, we could afford it without going in to debt or prioritising it over anything else.

It doesn’t really matter what anyone else does, it is about whether you think you’d rather spend money elsewhere.

My first wedding was ridiculously expensive, only agreed to it as I'm an only daughter and it was all a blur. Second wedding we went to New York, got married at City hall and had a bloody fantastic day followed by a Maldivian blessing (Maldives obviously), best three weeks ever. We did spend a lot on both but it was well worth it and don't regret a penny of it. Wouldn't have dreamt of spending the same on a wedding here.

It's a massive waste of money.

We did it on a budget. We had a happy, informal day with all our extended family and friends. Church ceremony followed by a buffet in our house and garden. It cost around £2k 19 years ago, it would probably be about double now. We could have spent five times what we did and it wouldn’t have been any better.

I very much enjoyed the piss up, but was young and daft enough to prioritise things like that then. Its difficult when you're older, have DC etc because you understand the value of money so much better with age! I wouldn't change it, but might well do it differently if we were marrying now, iyswim. Although I think we'd always have wanted a big get together for the families.

We went away to Italy, just the two of us, so didn't cost much more than a holiday. However, I never dreamed about a big wedding and would see it as a waste of money. I have several friends who paid a lot for their wedding and they definitely do not regret it. They said it was an amazing day and they have memories for life of their big day. They often ask me if I regret what I did (I don't) such is their view that it was an important day. if you have dreamed about having a big wedding them I think their view might be more important for you.

My wedding day was amazing - and I hadn't expected it to be. I hadn't even really wanted to get married, to be honest, it has never held much significance for me. We spent very little money - did the catering ourselves, and used a friend's pub. Our church was beautiful though - medieval and in a lovely setting. My dress was (I assume) a Chinese copy of a high-end wedding dress that I bought on eBay for about £100 - it was lovely though. But, the best bit was walking into the church and seeing the faces of all my friends and family - people that I really loved and admired, who were all there because they were genuinely happy for me and my husband. It was one of the best moments of my life. Everything else was a blur, but that was an incredible moment.

We had a big family wedding. I'm glad we had everyone there. Looking back that was bit that mattered most to us.I would possibly do something less traditional now but would still want everyone there.

Yes, it was worth it!

Having all your different groups of friends and all your family who you don't see together often because they live in random places, all together in the same place to celebrate is something special. All the things that made us good hosts were worth paying for, the good food, the drinks, the music, the lovely venue with nice accommodation. Things like chair covers, flowers everywhere etc, totally not worth it. No one will remember it, even you!

Ours was about £8k, which was the amount we could save without having to get into debt or hugely alter our lifestyle in the time frame.

Ours actually started off quite small but fancy, however a close family member became terminally ill after we had gotten engaged which made us reevaluate who we were inviting.

In the end, we had a medium sized but slightly less fancy day do and an old school great big piss up on the night time which enabled us to invite a lot more people - particularly those who had been really fantastic with our family member or had close friendships with her, but weren't close enough to us for the wedding itself.

I don't regret it for a minute. It would always have been a special day because I was marrying Dh, but it was lovely to be able to celebrate the larger support network of not just us, but our families too xx

Ours had to be a little unconventional to reconcile our large guest list and limited budget. It was worth every penny and one of the best days of my life so far.

We did ours for about £3k, our local village church, walking distance to the pub for BBQ type food. About 30 guests and then a few more friends/ people from the village came in the evening to have a drink with us. It was exactly how I would've wanted it regardless of budget, very casual and easy going, weather was brilliant so we were outside the whole time.
Brother and SIL got married year before us, took out a loan of £15k to pay for it all. Yes the wedding was nice, a big flash country house and 8 bridesmaids, three course dinner etc but they had to pay for it over 4 years! No way I would take out a loan for a wedding but each to their own I guess

AndNoneForGretchenWieners

We had a big wedding with about 150 guests, so although it did cost a fair bit to feed them all we were thrifty with a number of things - my dress was from a previous season so was beautiful but cheap, my godparents got us our wedding car as a gift, aunt and uncle paid for the entertainment, we got a plain cake from M&S and whacked some fresh flowers on it, booked our reception at a wedding fayre so got lots of freebies thrown in etc.
It was the best day of my life, it was amazing having everyone I loved in the same room and everyone had a ball so I don't regret the cost at all. 15 years down the line too many loved ones are not here anymore, so I'm very, very glad of the memories and photos from the day.

We had a ours in our local church then in the viallge hall, all decorated by ourselves using second hand and eBay purchases, all in our wedding came to just under £3,000 and it was the best day

Hope you have a fabulous day tomorrow, Shay!

DD got married this year. It was an expensive day but a really lovely one, and I think we'll all remember it fondly for years to come.

Coming from a place like you OP where I always imagined my wedding day like a fairytale experience, I'm now a newlywed and do have some thoughts on this subject!

First of all - I had a great day, it was fun. It's astounding to be in a room full of the people you love the most. I felt so good on the day. It was a once in a lifetime event and I will be forever grateful to the kindness and love my family and friends demonstrated on the day.

However, knowing when I embarked on the wedding planning journey what I know, I would have done things differently. It was stressful, for reasons I never could have planned for and it tore me apart in ways I could just about cope with. When you have a wedding, a big one, you are allowing those around you in on your happiness. To do that you need to have some idea whether everyone else being involved will make you happy and assess the risks that may come with it. In my case, it's where the stress came from. Everyone has a different support network, so no 2 experiences are the same. Booking a venue/dj etc is simple!
A wedding can lose sight of the purpose you are there for, which is to get married. It's a party, or as I called it too often, a circus.

We had a fairly expensive wedding. We had people travel a long way to attend, so made it worth their while and put them all up overnight. A formal dinner so the geographically dispersed families could all catch up, a party with plenty of entertainment in the evening. It was great! It was pretty stress free aswell tbh.

Spending a bit more also helped with both DH and I having divorced parents, they can't even make eye contact, let alone interact. So if we'd had something a bit less formal without seating plans and lots of entertainment to keep them busy, it could have been awful!

Ours was tiny in the scheme of things, under £1000 all in but I'd never been the type to dream about weddings as a young girl so I didn't have a template in my head, and we were pretty skint at the time so didn't have it to spend anyway! Dress was off the peg from a department store, cake was a wedding gift from a talented friend who did it as a hobby, discounted venue as DH had worked there in the past, register office ceremony, fewer than a dozen guests and no evening do. For us it was a perfect, relaxed day and I have no regrets.

I personally don't think it's worth it but that's easy for me to say as a) a big white wedding has never been important to me and b) I've always scraped by at best financially so can't imagine having even £10k to blow on one day, never mind more. I do think though that you can have a perfectly lovely wedding day without spending a fortune, with a bit of creativity and by deciding what are the absolute essentials to you. I think too many brides get hung up on details, stuff like matching the chair back swags exactly to the bridesmaids' hand-dyed shoes, but on the day the bride doesn't have time to care and the 99.9% of the guests won't even notice.

Personally I think some people spend stupid amounts on a wedding.

It's simply one day in your life and perfectly possible to have an amazing day without spending a ridiculous amount of money.

DH and I spent more on our honeymoon than the wedding and had a magical 2 week luxury holiday somewhere really special.

But each to their own.....though I have to say that most friends who did splash out now regret it.

Some sadly because the marriage failed, but others who look back and think that whilst the day was lovely, in hindsight the money could have been put to better use, especially having been to "low cost" weddings like mine and DH's and realising those days were "perfect" too.

I say this looking on only as a bystander, as I’m not married, but it can depend on what you’re placing the emphasis on really from what I’ve seen- as in whether you enjoy the planning/prep as much (well maybe not as much, but you do take enjoyment in it) as the day itself. Because the day passes so quickly and it can be a hell of a lot of money to spend if you feel stressed out by it more than you enjoy it.

My sister spent maybe £6-7k I believe, it was relatively low key (in that it wasn’t masses and masses of people), at a very lovely venue with lovely food. Her now husband and her spent a lot of time together, that they enjoyed, making things for the wedding instead of buying them etc. I made her wedding cake which was good fun as we (usually at my mums, including my siblings in this) had many tasting sessions, and ‘play’ sessions with icing, whilst we got the design right.
The whole affair, including planning and prep, was just fun and relaxed. They both said, they actually enjoyed the build up (the planning etc) almost as much as they did the wedding, because the spent a lot of time together having fun getting everything sorted.

My brothers wedding so far, seems to have caused them nothing but stress. I don’t know how much they are spending, I’m lead to believe it’s over the £40k mark, and every time his fiancé talks about sorting different things there’s two focuses to the conversation; the stress it’s caused, and/or the cost/appearance of what’s been planned (#instawedding!). And I worry that they’ll walk away after and not think it was worth it.

I must admit I never really ‘dreamt’ of a certain type of day.
I dreamt about getting married loads as a girl but what the day looked like always changed (country, venue, style...etc).

DH and I ended up in a very traditional stately home affair (After trying to elope abroad 😂) and spent about 15k of our own money (some help from parents too).

Probably came to about 25k including a very nice honeymoon- but we didn’t get into any debt at all!

My honest advice would be IF the day is what’s most important to you it WONT be worth it!

I would have married DH in a cave 😂 I really would! Had it not been for sudden Ill health of a parent we’d have gone abroad! But in reality this mindset meant we were chilled out about planning/creating the day and really enjoyed the whole experience.

There were no nerves, no ‘everything has to be right’ and no pressure - in the end we had the MOST amazing day! We enjoyed our wedding day as though we were guests at it! 😂 and ofc it was beautiful as we’d spent money on great providers who did an amazing job!

I’ve had friends who spent 25-30k and got SOO intense/stressed that by the time it came they hated their own wedding! You only enjoy it if you have the right mindset!

And trust me the next day when you’re watching it all get ripped down (flowers/decor/chairs piled high) if you haven’t thoroughly enjoyed it then you will wonder what you wasted your money on!

For us it was probably the last ‘family event’ grandparents/several elderly relatives will make it to! We just loved every minute of it and wouldn’t change a £ we spent!