To think people are Cruel about big’ weddings?

[MrDarcyWillBeMine]

A few wedding threads have popped up this week. Awesome, as a 2019 bride I love a good wedding thread!

However, I’m shocked and bemused by the sheer disgust MANY people openly display towards big traditional weddings. I find them very rude and small minded!

No feelings spared - plain nasty comments and even name calling! Apparently anyone who pays more than £50 to nip down their local registry office is a total ‘MUG’ and terrible person? 🤔

These nasty opinions also seems to be one sided - no ‘big weddings’ reguarlh jump in to abuse smaller cheaper ones or make crass remarks- there are plenty of ‘I’d never spend £20k on a wedding- I’d rather lick a mouldy toilet seat’ commenters

But no (very few and usually only in retaliation to abuse)
‘I’d never have a tacky function room £1k wedding - I’d rather visit a public pool 🤢’

🤔 So I can only assume that either:
A- people having cheaper wedding are generally meaner
Or
B- the abuse of large weddings is actually driven by jealousy!

With our fail it sparks a big ‘race to the bottom competition’ between commenters trying to one up each other on ‘cheapeast possible wedding’ 😒 meanwhile I just sit here thinking ‘I like my castle wedding 😬’

EVERY TYPE OF WEDDING IS LOVELY!

AIBU to think that people need to just stop being trolls and making shitty negative comments?

• I do get that weddings need to be affordable but some people CAN afford to spend £10k+ on a wedding and that’s ok!

The Wedding Industry
Couldn't have put it better myself

Yanbu, OP. I had a ‘big’ wedding and am delighted I was able to do so, the memories we have of our dream day will stay with us forever, we feel v fortunate that we could afford it. It was the best day of our lives. It was classic, classy and beautiful.

However, in another wedding thread I have been told that I ‘must have got into debt or got a loan’ and that ‘expensive weddings = divorce’!

The jealousy is so obvious it’s almost tangible!

I am not a fan of the massive, blingy wedding, where the actual reason for the wedding seems to come second to the tat, you know, the dresses, the venue, the parties etc, etc, etc. These days it seems that multiple, multiple events in exotic locations etc are required, and what the bride looks like is way more important to some brides than the actual ceremony itself. God that makes me sound old- okay, I am! Of course, I am generalising here.

That’s where you’ve got it wrong and misused the term “race to the bottom” OP - commentators are not “dropping standards”. You presume a less expensive wedding is of a lower standard. There is no analogy between people holding an inexpensive wedding and a country letting standards drop to appear more competitive.

TAAT

Sounds great OP. We spent £20k on our wedding, some contributed by parents (not including honeymoon). It wasn't over the top with 'little touches' (agree with PP - most guests don't care or notice) - no favours, bows on seats, or anything like that, and no cake (it's generally my least favourite bit of a wedding, so I thought why bother?) The car was my dad's, my dress wasn't white and cost £50 and my mum made the flower girls' dresses. The money was spent on an entire private venue (so people weren't crammed into one room all day but had space to move about), food and drink for 120 guests, a really great band and fireworks - basically just throwing the best party I could for all our family and friends. It was lovely. Oh, and my hen do was local pizza restaurant, karaoke and back to mine. Ahh, good times.

A big wedding doesn't necessarily mean blingy and tacky, it just means you have a large number of guests. I remember writing our first guest list off the top of our heads, and in spite of having small families we easily got to 90 people, and the final numbers were about 115.

We were never wrapped up in it being a unique experience, we just wanted people to enjoy celebrating our big day with us.

Why do you care so much what strangers think?

Surely people’s responses are directed towards the particular premise of the thread? Otherwise why would anyone care what a stranger on the internet spends on their wedding?

I disagree with the idea that cheap = joyless.

Ostentation is (for want of a better way of putting it) vulgar. So if something is very out of character for your usual style of entertaining family/friends, then it can misfire - usually when it's clear tomsaud familiy and friends that the couple can't really afford it.

(People generally don't criticise the big wedding of a truly rich couple, especially if their other parties cost tens of thousands of pounds. Unless it's in the context of societal inequality and why that's bad).

What no-one ever says normally is 'I had a really cheerful middle-sized wedding, with some but not all of the trappings' but I bet that's what most of us do.

Best to stop caring too much about what other people think of your overall budget. And concentrate on the things that matter: who will be there, is it affordable (no travelling to the back of beyond who limited accommodation choices), will they be fed and watered adequately and at normal mealtimes?

Basically, dump the wedding industry's race to the bottom (as currently upheld in so many mags and on so many websites) in terms of what you need to do to make your (close to identikit) day memorable/special, and just do what you want.

And stop being surprised/offended that others (especially on a left leaning site such as MN) are generally against excessive and ostentatious events.

OP you are being deliberately obtuse.

Everyone knows weddings are a complete waste of money on all sides. And that's absolutely fine, if you want to throw cash away on a floofy dress and meal that nobody enjoys, it's your lookout.

My experience is that it is not the big wedding itself that made me not like them but the attitude of the people that have them. It seems to come with either a lot of dramatics, a lot of attention seeking and/or a lot of arrogance.

We went to such a wedding shorty a few years ago. The bride was desperately looking for attention and to hear how her wedding was the best the guests have ever been too (when in our case was very far from it), it was quite off putting. Worse, we didn't even get a thank you for our £50 gift (for someone who was only an old colleague), so either they thought it wasn't enough or they were too rude to do, which I thought was very distasteful when the invitation came with one of those poorly written poem about not wanting any gift but just money.

Saying that, I would love to go to a big wedding that doesn't scream of 'look what we can afford, I bet you wish you could have the same', when everything is done purely to please the bride and groom rather to try to make a show to guests.

People aren't cruel about big weddings per se. On mumsnet I find they're just astute at spotting a bragging angry shallow poster. Hilarious.

Expensive weddings aren't a new invention, they're normal for the offspring of the wealthy, but the masses were unaware of the scale until social media came along.

The notion of a couple that doesn't have a lot of money going into debt to pay for a big wedding is a modern invention, fuelled by social media. Sensible people find it hard to understand.

I think it's a bit of a class issue.

I COULD have spent an obscene amount on a wedding, but it just wasn't for me, so we ran off to Vegas instead.

I'm not jealous. I'm also not a dick about other people's choices. 🤷🏼‍♀️

You have misused the phrase race to the bottom.

It doesn’t matter what you spend on your wedding and if you’re finding that people are seeming cross about it or jealous then you either need nicer friends or you’re going on about your wedding too much.

@MrDarcyWillBeMine YABU, especially with the attack you put on the ongoing thread about wedding costs.

You do also have to remember that no one is as interested in your wedding as you are, and some people find weddings really really boring, so they just cannot fathom spending such huge amounts of money on such tedium. (And it is often the very expensive ones that are the dullest of all)

“Afford” is interesting. In reality there are very few people who couldn’t get better use out of £20k than a one day party. Personally, I’d feel sick spending that

People have different opinions than you; no big deal.

If you're going to get annoyed and post about the posters that piss you off, you might be better staying away from wedding threads.

No one is attacking you personally; it seems like you're very defensive and it's caused you to see outside your wedding-head bubble. Have you got any doubts now? Has your wedding just got bigger & bigger, and you weren't actually planning on spending that much initially?

If you have plenty of money and want to spend £25k on a wedding, that's absolutely your choice.

Just because a percentage of people wouldn't do that for various reasons, doesn't affect you at all.

I'd be more concerned that you said you & DH initially wanted to elope. If you're only having the big wedding because of family illness/family saying 'oh you must invite so-and-so' then you may well come to regret it. I sincerely hope not, but in my experience this has happened more than once.

A lot of posters here have the wonderful benefit of experience and hindsight, that's all.

Each to their own. My wedding had 120 guests (husbands family was 75) and cost £5000. It's was a lovely day with lots of homemade things by me and home grown flowers. Tbh I felt like it was a pretty big day for me, I'd have been happy to go to a registry office with oh and dd but he waned a party with his family.

My sil had a huge day (150 day and 500 night) and spent so so much money. She regrets it though, she said she didn't speak to everyone and didn't relax at all. She was also a bridezilla and loves talking about how much more expensive her wedding was then mine but honestly I'm sure we were both just as happy and in as each other on the day

Where we are people seem to be having competition about who is the most popular and can have the most guests but IMO that spoils it

I love weddings, I've been to 3 a year for the last 4 years and have 2 in 2019 and 2 in 2020 so far. I've been to all sorts, castles, barns, village halls and they're all lovely! I'd never call anyone's wedding tacky but I know I'd always want to keep my wedding small. If I could do mine again I'd do the same again or registry office however I'm saving for my daughters weddings (or house deposit if they don't want a wedding) and have told husband I'd like to save then 15k each in case they do want a bigger day

1. Often the bigger and grander the wedding, the higher the cost to the guest.
2. It’s often about proportional spend - I would see nothing wrong with going to a big, expensive wedding if that was comfortably within the couple’s budget, but people spending either £50k of their parents’ money, or having these huge weddings on credit cards that will take them years and years to pay off seems frankly a bit silly.
3. It’s been statistically shown that the bigger and more expensive the wedding, the higher the correlation with divorce rates - presumably because more thought goes into the wedding than what it means to actually be married.

I really don't think people are "jealous" of those that have this big weddings, people prioritise different things and want to spend money on different things.

Such as, you seem quite happy to spend £25k on a wedding whereas I would never be willing to spend that on a wedding day. It's not that I couldn't afford to, it's that I choose not to. In my opinion, it's one day and not worth spending that amount of money. I would rather use that money for other things.

I also don't like weddings, I hate being the centre of attention and I don't like the formality - but that is me!

I have been to small cheap weddings and large expensive weddings and all have had their pluses and minuses and I personally prefer the smaller cheaper weddings than the big "look at how much we spent" type.

If you are happy and can afford £25k on one day, go for it. However I think saying people who wouldn't spend that are jealous is a bit ridiculous.

The brides had classic taste and that's what matters

HA HA!

No it isn't!

It's the fact that two people are committing to one another and asking you to share in their day.

That's what matters.

I spent a lot on my wedding (not 20k) however, it was our money (parents did not pay) and we didn’t take a put a loan to pay for it. Before anyone asks yes I have already bought a house so don’t need to save for a house deposit.

Many of my relatives are 70+ years old and they would expect a traditional sit down wedding breakfast. I found that food and venue was the main cost as I paid for 3 courses plus half a bottle of wine each, plus welcome drink plus evening food and exclusive use of the small venue as we had guests bring small children so they could run around in the garden without their parents worrying

However, I don’t think the amount spent on a wedding makes it more enjoyable as I have been to many wedding with more modest budgets and enjoyed them very much