To not understand why people spend so much on weddings?

[malificent7]

Just been reading the hen do thread... that is before the actusl do.
Fair enough you can spend your cash how you want but i dont get why people want to spend thousands at the start of married life. Must be a status thing.
I rekon that a small intimate do would be lovely with a home made buffet and cake. A pretty dress dosnt have to cost a fortune.
But then im not married so what do i know?

[expatinscotland]

'On these threads you get people going 'reg office for £50' but at ours the cheapest is £214 for a basic ceremony and all the certificates.'

It can vary if you chose a nicer venue. Edinburgh, for example, has a few options for registry wedding, but some are dearer than others. Getting married on a Saturday, for example, also costs more. Some people want rings, too, although they are not a legal requirement, and these can up the cost.

[JaneEyre70]

I get the spending the money on the day, and if you can afford it, why not but I don't get this stag and hen weekend thing where you fly off to Europe or Vegas and spend hundreds......!! I miss the nights of going for a meal, pub crawl, then clubbing and staggering home. Oh the good old days..........

[Figment1234]

I would also say.. I have lovely friends and family who are travelling a long way to celebrate with me on my wedding day. I don't think I would feel comfortable serving them up a homemade buffet in the living room given that they have made all the effort to travel to me. I want to thank them for coming, and my way of doing that is to ply them with nice food and drink!

[Izzabellasasperella]

Plus all weddings I've been too which involve the above just look cheap and chaotic.
Why do people post mean comments like this?

[susanboozan]

It often costs the guests more to attend/stay over/pay for clobber/drinks/overnight, petrol/a wedding gift..... the list goes on - than it does to host the flipping wedding!

I am obviously a big wedding sceptic. So be it. I usually decline, but send a generous gift. I save a fortune that way and ditch the stress too.

Let them at it and I'm sure they enjoy it. But I rarely enjoy formulaic weddings. They are all the flipping same.

[Nancy91]

I am spending a fortune on mine as I want it to be the best day of my life and my partner's life, so everything has to be perfect. It isn't a status thing. We considered the register office, but it just didn't seem like it would be as special to us. I couldn't get as excited about the day if we did that. We want everyone to have an amazing time and remember it well

[susanboozan]

@JaneEyre,

Re the Hens, you are right. It can be a lot of expense and time off work to go for a few days (to somewhere you possibly detest!) just so Bridie can post a few pics on faceache for all her fans, sorry pretend friends. LOL.

My sister is a good few years older than me. When she got married we had the hens in the city, booked a few tables in a restaurant that had a bit of fun and music. Brilliant. Those who wanted to grabbed a cab home after the restaurant, those who had the energy and the loot went off to a nightclub. Was perfect.

[YouWouldntLetItLie]

I've organised a wedding and it's horrendous to see how quickly the budget is eaten up by expenses you don't even think about beforehand, like church organists or taxis, let alone nonsense you can easily eliminate, like favours or place cards.

I think it comes down to what you can afford. Yes, it is insane for young couples on low incomes to blow a year's salary on one day, and start married life in debt because a magazine said you have to have two bands, a DJ and a firework display. On the other hand, if you can spare the money, and you want a £1k wedding cake in the shape of HMS Belfast, why not have one? It's not like you'll be buying another.

We sat down and decided we wanted to invite all the people we liked best and our families to witness us getting married, and then take them out for a nice dinner - then budgeted around that.

[expatinscotland]

I'm with you, susan. I just pop a cheque in a card, job done.

[MrsJamesMathews]

so everything has to be perfect

What's your idea of perfect Nancy?

[susanboozan]

@expatinscotland.

Soul sisters!

Glad to have a fellow wedding resister on board!

[mawbroon]

I have played at hundreds of weddings over the last 25+ years.

Continue having your big weddings please. They me in work

[mawbroon]

They keep me in work

[Nancy91]

mrsjamesmathews, my idea of perfect is a day with everything we like from start to finish, professional hair and make up, a suit he feels great in, dresses my bridesmaids feel beautiful in, a photographer who can take photos I'm proud to frame and look at for the rest of my life, a cake that tastes perfect to us, our favourite foods, a dj that gets the party going, lots of nice wine and entertainment so we can all have a laugh together. The most important part of the day is obviously marrying my lovely partner, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to celebrating!

[Osirus]

I'm getting married this year. Three guests. It's still costing nearly £1,500!

[WhatToDoAboutThis2017]

A status thing? What a ridiculous thing to say

We wanted a big wedding in a church because we wanted a traditional do with all our family and friends. We wanted to share our moment of commitment and love with all those we loved.

Our wedding cost around £10,000, which was paid for by parents of both sides and us. My dress cost just over £1,000 and it really was the perfect dress.

Neither of us would have been happy with a small wedding. It would have ruined the dream we had of our big day.

[susanboozan]

Sorry to be a bah humbug, but the dream of a big day can often be a fkn nightmare for the guests on so many levels.

Think about them, they are a big factor in your dream weddings.

Stay away from the castles, the 200quid a night rooms cos they have to stay if it's in the sticks etc.

Dream day for you. But not so for many others is my view.

Yawn and check the credit card when we get home. Nice one.

[styledilemma]

£1 000 on a dress you got to wear once

[sadsquid]

I don't think it's consciously a status thing for most people. They just want an amazing wedding. What I do think is that the culture's shifting so that 'amazing' starts to mean more and more.

I had the home-made buffet (made by my mum who is an amazing cook and also did us the most stupendous cake), the cheap dress, and about 30 guests. In the evening we went out for chips. That was exactly what I wanted. Probably it would have looked cheap and chaotic to some, maybe including some of our guests. But we're not expensive and polished in any other area of life, and I couldn't be arsed putting on a show - I just wanted a good day that was comfortable, happy and rooted in our real lives, because that's what we were celebrating.

I do also think that the people who take away amazing memories from weddings are a) the happy couple and b) their immediate families. Everyone else is pleased to be there, sure, and would like to enjoy the day. But everyone's been to weddings before, and while they remember aspects they especially liked, most people don't sit around ages afterwards thinking how amazing your dress looked and how perfect the lighting was. DH's cousin had a lovely wedding in a beautiful venue and I hope she treasures the memories, but what I remember a few years on is that I liked my own dress, the bride needed help to go for a pee because her train was so massive, and there were about five hours of milling around a garden in heels with nowhere to sit down. So people should go for the big spend if they can and it's what they want, but I think trying to wow guests with an incredible day may be more effort than the outcome justifies!

[susanboozan]

Just have the wedding of your dreams and spend what you like.

But if you invite me expect a generous cheque and a decline. Especially if it is 200 miles away and I cannot afford to stay over, not to mind all the other associated expenses that attach to the dream wedding.

Sorry folks. Enjoy your wedding whatever way you want and can afford or not as the case may be, but sometimes your guests may not be in a position to live the dream with you.

But many feel they have to and get themselves into hock for YOUR special day. That is madness.

But I await the nuclear fallout now.

[WhatToDoAboutThis2017]

styledilemma It was a beautiful Maggie Sotterro dress. I wanted a lacy dress with straps (most dresses at the time were strapless, and I don't like strapless dresses). I tried three on, and the second one was my perfect dress.

My mum paid for my dress, as well as my tiara, earrings, necklace and shoes.

I think with wedding dresses, you really do get what you pay for.

[corythatwas]

Our wedding was paid for by my parents and organised by my mother. DH and I let her go ahead because we knew she was very upset about my emigrating and needed to distract herself and a big party meant a lot to her.

Having said that, it was fun! No financial pressure on wedding guests, modest gift list (only shown to guests who actively asked), no hen night, stag night consisted of dh's colleagues taking him down the pub. But the actual wedding was fun. Surrounded by people we liked: relatives, friends, small children. Good food. Dancing. Nobody falling out or grumbling. A happy occasion. And dh and I still happily married nearly 25 years later.

I'm not going to sit here pretending that it was a miserable occasion just because it might not have been what dh and I would have planned.

[anon1987]

I have to agree op.
I'm only 29 but I know several people I went to school with who had very expensive weddings, all but 2 of them are now divorced, 1 is engaged and 2 are remarried again (expensive weddings)

It's definitely a Facebook trend at the moment, they seem to want to do the whole big hen/stag do, often abroad for days at a time, big honeymoons and lavish dos, usually either via a loan or quite often bank of Mum and dad.

Like most people Iv been to a ton of weddings, all forgettable, all a bit samey and most guests go for the free food and piss up.

Pretty pointless if you ask me.

[WellThatSucks]

I honestly don't care how much the couple and/or their parents spend on the wedding, I only start to judge when it starts costing me the guests exorbitant amounts of money otherwise they're accused of not showing enough love and support. Ridiculously extravagant hen and stag dos, destination weddings that involve guests having to stay at some expensive resort/castle/block booked hotel so the bridal couple get a discount on their accommodation or even get it free, engagement parties and showers you're expected to turn up with gifts for and are still expected to provide a gift for the wedding, the cutesy poems which are actually demands for enough cash "we have everything we need" to cover the cost of your dinner at the reception. Have a big blowout wedding if you want but make sure you can afford it and are not relying on your guests to make up the shortfalls.