Do you regret how much you spent or your wedding?

[Spacepocket]

Prompted by a wedding thread, whilst I absolutely LOVED my wedding and it was all saved and paid for without debt, I do occasionally think that I could have had a new kitchen by now instead

Nope, we spent it on what matters to us. Good food, good wine and a stay in a luxury hotel.

Nope. Loved it. It was £20k well spent. We could have done many other things with that money, but frankly, I don't see that a slightly posher kitchen that does the job just as well as my homebase one, or a nicer car than my little run around (that's not moved since the start of March!), or a few holidays in slightly nicer hotels would be worth not having the wedding we wanted.

I can always go on another holiday if the cheaper one is a bit crap. I can replace sofas and buy new kitchen cupboards. I can't ever redo my wedding day to DH. It was a one off event. We could afford it at the time so went for it.

Wow
@nuggles
I would love to see pics

No regrets, because we did it small, with only close friends and (almost) no family. Perfect.

I also regret saving the money and not getting a videographer

Videographer was booked last min for me and it cost a lot (high quality vid) BUT it was the best money I spent on the day as I had forgotten so much of it, it goes soo fast. I enjoy watching the snippets vid and a short 5min summary of the day (have hardly ever watched longer version). Brings me a lot of happiness. Money well spent

Yes. Felt obliged to invite the entire extended family which included around 80 people all together. Haven't seen most of them since.

Yes. However I wish I'd have spent more. We allowed our families to sort of pressure into a wedding that was very minimal and downsized to what we wanted. In hindsight, I should have just stood up and told them all to back off and let us do it how we wanted. However mil & fil paid for certain things as a surprise, so I felt like I couldn't say no at that point.
I didn't get the wedding I've dreamed of, and I kind of want to plan a do over, but I don't think people would want to attend again 😂

I regret not having a video. I asked friends and family to send me whatever video clips they had so I could try and edit them all together but very few did.

My brother in law filmed my ceremony. I have never watched it. I am not interested. Getting married for me was a legal thing. However even the most basic Registrar Office service still has to have some (in my opinion) cheesey and naff words you have to say. I found the whole thing a mix of hilarious and cringy and being self conscious.
Civil Partnerships have been opened up now to non same sex couples and I wonder if that would of been more my thing but I still don't quite understand fully the difference except you aren't 'married' in the eyes of the law and I want to be married.

We had a small wedding with a small budget. I wish we had just gone abroad with our dds and got married on a beach somewhere.

Out of the small number of guests we had, half were there because pil thought they had to be invited. 10yrs on we haven't seen most of them since. What would have been a nice intimate day was ruined by these random dh doesn't even like.

I would definitely spend less now on: -

Table decorations.
The Cake

And maybe the dress and flowers. I could have definitely had just as good a wedding with a smaller budget.

However, it is a snapshot of the people we were at the time. We have grown together as a couple, and our views on things have changed, and I think ifwe were planning our wedding now our reduced spending in some areas would reflect those changed views. We were quite sensible with our spending anyway. I don't regret the decisions we made at the time.

@zafferana

I don't regret the cost, because we could afford what we spent, but I'd do it very differently if I did it again now. We had about 100 people and 15 years later we're not even in touch with many of them. DH felt he should invite a load of his colleagues, which was a mistake and meant there were all these virtual strangers at our personal day. If I did it again I'd have half the people and only invite people I was pretty sure would still be in our lives in 10 years time (at least!)

Exactly this. I invited lots of people I thought I should. That was a mistake.

Nope. We spent alot: adults only black tie London wedding. My parents made a contribution but my husband paid for most of it. It was the first and only wedding in my family, I was 40, and we went all out. Don't regret the cost- we had a fabulous wedding. However it was a one time thing - I'm a widow and if I ever got married again it will be small and intimate.

No, not at all. We spent about the UK average and it was all from savings with some help from my parents so no debt. We had exactly what we wanted, and what we felt our guests would expect, without being frivolous or excessive.

We had the best day ever and whilst it is a hell of a lot of money when I think what else we could do with it, over the course of a lifetime it was worth every penny for the memories we have.

5K in 1988. No debt and paid for everything ourselves. Had the day exactly how we wanted it to be, with the people we wanted to be there.

Looking back it does seem ridiculous to spend lots of money mainly on other people

Yes and no.

I loved my day but I don't speak to half of the guests anymore.

Wouldn't change a thing about my wedding which was very recent (just before lockdown). Church wedding then local pub, all food and drink paid for, band and disco, very relaxed.

I don't really get it when people say that they would change things as people that went to their wedding they don't see anymore - surely you do what is right at the time and at that particular time those people meant something to you and were important? I say that as this is my second marriage, wouldn't have changed my first wedding either as at the time it was right 🤷‍♀️

No regrets on the budget, we were students so all on a budget but had a great time. Only things I'd wished we'd done was film the speeches and make a wedding list.

We didn't make a list as we were already living together and so didn't 'need' anything and told guests no gifts required. But people still want to buy things of course so we got some duplicates and random things. Small modest list would have been better.

No, I had a small wedding and the total cost was about £800. I've been married 15 years so far, so £50 a year seems reasonable value for money and it can only get cheaper as the years go on .

We were around £7000 for ours but all paid from savings. We refused to get into debt for it so while we could have had a bigger day we had the perfect day for us, with our closest family and friends around us.