To wonder how they’re affording these insane weddings on retail salaries?

[IAmAllAsttonishnent]

DP and I are planning our wedding (can’t elope as we’d planned- long story). We have an image of what we’d like but it seems impossible to get it at a reasonable price.

So far this year 6 girls I went to school with have gotten/ are getting married all of whom I know work V low paying jobs (retail, waitressing...etc) and their partners are also in low income jobs.
Their weddings are at crazy expensive venues (one which I ruled out due to cost and 2 are having theirs there). I know they don’t have family money either as we all come from V working class backgrounds.

So I’m just sat here wondering what I’m missing? How the hell are they affording this? I want to know their secret!

DP and I worked and studied V hard and now have a high income, which means we can afford a nice wedding - But coming from a working class background I’m V aware of money and value and don’t love the idea of blowing £20k on one day???😑

£££ weddings are often expensive because of convenience. You chuck your money at a pricey venue. They do everything for you. I often find weddings at fancy venues to be a soulless conveyor belt - it's all the venue does and the staff seem bored and unhelpful.

By sourcing individual elements you can have a beautiful day for a small fraction of the cost. Venues that don't often hold wedding receptions so often go the extra mile to make the day really personal.

The most recent wedding we attended was our daughter’s school friend’s where the budget was £3,000 including outfits, transport, flowers, catering etc. Guests bought food. Friends got together the day before to do the flowers and decorate the church hall, the wedding dress came from Oxfam. A few of the older/more affluent friends clubbed together to put wine on the tables. The happiness and joy was palpable

That’s my kind of wedding.

Although I agree that not everyone has the type of friends/family to achieve it.

OP - what does your/his parents disability or ill health have to do with you eloping?

‘Setting the bar’ is nonsense.

I get your question - ‘What am I missing to do this without severing a limb’. To do ‘like for like’ I don’t think you are ‘missing’ anything. Mention ‘wedding’ and everything is £££££££. However, I don’t really blame the suppliers either because the pressure for everything to be perfect is immense. They have higher costs and want some compensation for the stress. I also think it’s fine to charge for things IF you want them (ie table cloths, chair covers etc) because it keeps the base price down for people who don’t care about/can’t afford those things.

Be careful with your way of thinking though, you have both ‘done well’ and are ‘high earners’ NOW, we are all only one step away from an illness or disability that can change our lives.

One of my friends just got married, about 5 grand came from them, 5 from her parents, 2 from his and then about 17 grand on credit cards.

OP kind of has a point... if everyone gave their heads a wobble and refused to pay say £5000 to hire a room, then they'd have to lower their price. But the reality is there will always be some people willing to pay, no matter how expensive or inflated the prices.
Just be happy that you don't have to go into debt for it :)

We had a 3.5k wedding and it was brilliant. We still get comments about how much everyone liked it 15 years later. Don't be a sheep is my advice.

Our wedding and honeymoon cost around £18k , we'd saved and paid for it outright. When I mentioned this in passing to my gran she gave me the biggest hug, and told me she always knew I was 'the clever one' (out of the GCs). My cousin got married five years ago and they are still paying off the debt and live in rented accommodation. It makes no sense to me. I wouldn't have had a wedding I couldn't afford. I've been to some beautiful weddings that have cost under £5000

I wouldn't personally want to pend that amount on a wedding...

But how doe you now their parents may not have some money stashed away ? My folks are what you would call working class, but at many times in their lives they have had access to that kind of money through financial planning etc. They made a shed load on company share saves and property sales, as did many people thye worked with

It raises a totally unrealistic bar for everyone

You do realise that a big wedding is not compulsory and you don't have to copy everyone else?

I’m 26 and never been the type to be pulled in by peer pressure or compare myself to others

So why think like this about weddings?

Have the wedding you can afford now or save hard for years to afford a big wedding like the others are having. Although unless you are loaded, tens of thousands of pounds would be better spent on a house or pension.

When you say high earner though it's subjective. There are people on here scraping by day to day and people literally living in 5mil plus houses with 4 kids at private school and money to spare. You mean that you have more money coming in than them but don't appear to have as much disposable income that's all.

The people I know who have had the most lavish wedding, nicest cars etc work in uneducated fields and earn a lot of money cash in hand. Usually people who have 'done well at school' etc are more sensible

Blame Instagram.

Most of these people will most likely be divorced before they've paid it all off.

As for 'raising the bar', that's just ridiculous, you spend what it costs to have your wedding the way you want it, not include all the crap everyone else has.

Competition for wedding business is rife as well...and just remember to haggle.

We had a very beautiful and popular venue where their standard 3 course sit down meal would have been about £10k. We had 3 courses but the main was a big ‘posh’ BBQ buffet. All the sides on the individual tables and you had to go choose your own meat from the BBQ. Everything else the same but literally halved the cost.

I also bought my dress 6 weeks before the wedding, off the rack. A quarter of the price of the same dress ordered in advance...just an extra £50 for slight alterations.

Made our own stationary, copying designs from Pinterest...next to nothing. Same for favours.

Oh and finally don't assume because they're on retail 8 pound ish an hour money that they're skint. I worked 50 hour weeks in a restaurant job on about 8.75 an hour before I went back to uni and was on about 1800 a month, had no commute costs or debt to pay back and was saving about 8vgrand a year as well as having a social life and going on holidays so it's not mega bucks no but you can support yourself on it

I totally agree with everything you have said TooMuch. Well said, nothing snobby about it at all, just an observation about the society we live in.

Most likely debt, as others have said. And while I know it's a bit of a MN stereotype to say we got married in a ditch off the A2 while wearing sackcloth and serving cabbage leaves to the 1.7 guests, I absolutely loved our little wedding - registry office on a weekday morning with 8 close friends (one of them played piano for us as we walked in, another took photos), lunch at a local restaurant we loved, then back to ours for tea and M&S wedding cake. I wore a white dress from ASOS. I can't remember what it cost, but I doubt it topped £500 all in. (And we're high earners, fwiw.)

I do think people are being unrealistic with quoting the prices of their weddings just a couple of years ago though.

Wedding costs have rocketed in the past 5 years. Mine was about £8.5k in 2014...the same would probably cost at least double now though, even with my money saving activities.

You’re getting a really hard time here OP.
I’d suggest a register office wedding in a lovely building, followed by drinks and a meal in a private dining room of a smart restaurant.
But, as you want a ‘traditional’ wedding, I think that the best way of getting better value is to:
Get married out of season, in winter.
Get married on a Friday rather than Saturday.
Don’t have a starter at the meal, or canapes (arrange the ceremony and meal to be close together. We had a 4.30pm ceremony)
Buy a wedding dress from a high street, rather than wedding, shop, and have it tailored.
Base your flowers around seasonal foliage.
Don’t get sucked into big hen do/special
accessories/huge flower displays on tables/expensive favours/videographer etc.
Marry in the same venue as the party so you don’t have to hire a wedding car.
Fly on honeymoon on a weekday when flights will be less expensive.

You can still have a tasteful, traditional wedding whilst shaving thousands off the cost.

How do you even know what other people are spending on their wedding? My friend is getting married next summer and I'm bridesmaid, all I know is that our hotel room is £220, I'm paying for my own dress and shoes, and our gift to her is to pay for the hairdresser and makeup because they're on a budget.

Other people's wedding budgets have no bearing on any part of my life; we spent a lot on our wedding because we had the money there to spend. If we'd had less we'd have spent less.

Fossie
toomuchtooold hadn’t thought of that. Actually I agree with you. You won’t win friends from saying it though

Christ no, apparently not! It's a long while since I had my arse kicked on a Mumsnet thread, I thought I knew all the flash points. Might go and throw my weight around on P&C parking thread now for old times' sake

I also agree with toomuchtooold

It's crazy what people's will pay for one day - even if they do have the money.

@IAmAllAsttonishnent I'm sorry but how exactly do you know the income of everyone's partner it's not your business how much people earn, they obviously do earn good money to have the big wedding

I know someone spending £20k on wedding (destination) yet they can't even afford to rent a place together and live with a family member. They have been saving for the wedding, not their own home????

A woman I worked with recently spent £22k on her wedding. They put it all on credit cards (she told me).

I have been engaged for over six years and honestly, I don't buy into "weddings" at all, there is nothing I like about them which is why I have done nothing about "organising".

If it was like a form that could be filled in online I was be thrilled!!

I had a massive wedding. We scrimped and saved and the only amount we owed for the wedding after the wedding was £150 we still had to pay the photographer.
We didn't but we know our venue did a wedding package for x amount. I imagine they were quite popular too.

Are you in the US - your vocabulary suggests you are. My American family have all tended to have huge weddings.

People prioritise different things. If you want the huge wedding you save for it. If you want to prioritise marriage, you just go for it.

@Annie - Because we both wouldn’t feel right marrying without or parents there and one wouldn’t be able to make it 😞 to us that rules our eloping.

@tento - That’s really good advice. I’d thought about midweek weddings but the venue we really like only offer a £250 difference between a November Thursday and a summer weekend - which seems insanely small to me given the difference between the two.
The catering options are very limited as they have ‘preferred suppliers’ who it notes we need to pick from. They’ve all crafted ‘special’ menus for this venue, which are considerably more expensive than the wedding menus on the caterers websites (for exactly the same food/package).
We’re going to vue the place again tomorrow so tempted to point out this to them and ask why??? 🤔