To think weddings have become a money making racket?

[malificent7]

I can't wait to get married to my fiance next year but I am astounded with some of the quotes we have recieved:
£2,000 to hire a tythe barn for one evening with nothing else included only licenced till 11)...no.
£25,000 for a glamping wedding venue.

( forget it).
£30 per bottle of prosecco at our chosen wedding venue....it is a beautiful venue and better value than many but i did balk at this....why can't i bring my own? Although we chose it as the surroundings are magical and the food is included and excellent.
Plus all the extravagant hen and stag dos that i will not be having.
We have already paid the deposit for our venue and plan to spread the còst but I am tempted to run away and wed dp and spend the £ on a honeymoon.

Aibu to think that many people are cashing in on weddings and a couple does not need to start their married life in such an expensive way? Plus i have heard that the average price of a wedding is £30,000!

It is almost expected that the couple should have an extravagent do.

My friend had a very small casual wedding. They were going to registry office and for a meal, not even getting that dressed up. They had booked the restaurant for lunch for 6 and when she called back to confirm numbers she mentioned something about the wedding they told her they would have to add £200 to the bill. They were asking for no special treatment at all.
Obviously she cancelled and just booked somewhere else and didn’t tell them. Bonkers.

wedding products are generally much more expensive to produce/supply than a birthday 'equivalent'. It's not a racket, or ripping people off
Per hour the price to hire a hall should be the same for a birthday party or for a wedding. And many places it simply is not.

Also see example above of lady looking for wedding transport which was £100, then increased to £750 when told it was a wedding. If someone wants wedding flowers which are in season, are they cheaper, I assume not to the customer?

Why don’t you just have a simple registry wedding for the £50 or whatever it is, and then have a fun party somewhere for all your family and friends.

Marrying your life partner should be a fun and joyous thing, but instead people get them selves into stupid debt, worrying about it but do it anyway because they want the “best day of their life” or whatever. I think that if you can really afford it do it, but if you can’t don’t make yourself miserable by worrying about the cost of things. You are doing it for you and your partner and not to impress anyone else.

It’s awful how much more things are when you say it’s for a wedding. I have a question though. If you hire a venue but don’t say it’s for a wedding will you get into trouble? Will they not honour the agreement? A friend of mine booked a venue for a family party but it was for their wedding. Venue got pissy but didn’t actually do anything

No one needs these big, extravagant weddings ... I find it shocking that people are prepared to get into debt and/or spend £1000s that could be used for a house deposit on one day! I recently worked out that over half the weddings I have attended ended in divorce ... obviously no one gets married expecting the marriage to end .. but being realistic many will.

I've been married twice, never wanted a big white wedding; both were register office, the first one we did have a reception in my parents garden (which was not a big garden - just big enough for a scout marquee ) , my DM and I did all the catering - simple buffet. Second time around we just took 5 guests out to lunch ... perfect.

I don't understand why people want a great big wedding day, but perhaps other people don't understand why I was happy with a simple lunch.

Just choose to do the bits that you consider important.

We got married on holiday alone almost thirty years ago. It was great, no regrets, DM and DMIL soon got over it. I know this wouldn't suit al lot of people but just pick the important bits out and spend on those and don't do the things that you consider to be unimportant.

I've always said I haven't got a problem with getting married, but Weddings are nothing but trouble.

It all comes down to ego and image. Most of the time at least one of the bride or groom don't want 'the show', but do it for their partner. More often than not there are parents that want to show off and treat it as 'their day'.

It's such an obsence waste of money as well. If you are spending more than £5k on a wedding I would say you have more money than sense. £5k on one day.

Me and my partner have never done it; 16 years down the line, and even it cost £1k we could find better things to spend that money on.

I can however, see the value in a desitination wedding/honeymoon combination..keeping it reasonably simple and the guest list looks after itself.

Weddings cost as much as you want to spend on them surely? We are getting married in the summer, and we are having a big celebration but our circumstances mean that we can afford this. There are plenty of options if you want to do it more cheaply.

We eloped and got married abroad. It was wonderful.

They've always been expensive for decades - we got married 16yrs ago it was expensive then we spent a ridiculous figure but a) we had the money at that time (new jobs, property sale, no kids) b) we did what we wanted and loved it. I have no regrets.

However a lot of this is choice you can choose to spend more or less by your choices. Plenty of people we know have had gorgeous weddings and spent loads less than us.
A catered party for a huge number of guests with a beautiful venue, booze and decorations on a weekend in busy season is going to be expensive whether it's a wedding or some other event.
My neighbours had a (big) wedding anniversary party in their own (very big and posh garden) and spent tens of thousands and that was without venue hire!

Weddings are only expensive because people want the "fairytale".

Getting married doesn't actually cost a lot at all.

But you can't expect to hire a venue for minimal cost etc. - people need to make a living.

Weddings aren't any different to any other industry. You can buy clothes from Primark or Chanel, you can shop at Lidl or Waitrose, everything is a combination of affordability and choice.

A wedding in a village hall with a buffet can be just as romantic as a £££££ one in a castle.

If you want to blame something then the real problem is Instagram and Pinterest making everyone feel like the weddings on there are the norm.

If you hire a venue but don’t say it’s for a wedding will you get into trouble? Will they not honour the agreement?

That may, perhaps, depend on the venue, and their pricing structure. After all, some venues will rely on weddings to make the business viable, and the cost of weddings may make it viable to offer cheaper prices for non-wedding parties. Effectively weddings subsidise other parties - not saying they don't still make a profit, but it will be smaller and non-sustainable if that's all they do. So in this instance, I can understand that a venue may cancel a booking, or charge their wedding prices, if they subsequently find out it's a wedding (which they almost certainly will do on the day!) Not a risk I'd want to take!

@latriciamcneal

Who expects it? My husband paid for a huge wedding for us as he was keeping up with his family tradition to out-do each other. It was beautiful but now we're in debt. A wedding can cost £50 at a registry office but it's all about the party and impressing your peers. My family never valued weddings and are very small so for me the registry would have done, but not for him!

Bloody hell!

Going into debt to show off to the family!

It depends on what you want though, doesn’t it, and your focus? Having ‘your special day’ or celebrating a marriage with everyone having a great time.

Mine was the guests having a good time so everything I did was about that - nearby location, free bar, nice food, no daft gift list, partners and kids invited, playlist on iPhone,

No One cared about favours, the table plan, the flowers etc.

I hired a church hall, decorated it myself the night before and it was all good. Did my own flowers, place settings and name things with a Dymo and pretty card.

People still talk about what a great day it was. Most people left with bottles of wine as we had so much left over.

I do think it's fair to charge more for weddings to an extent, as the customer will expect so much more. We hired church hall for son's birthday - we literally just rocked up on the day, I think we had 2 emails with the admin lady?

For my wedding we had probably over 100 emails back and forth with the coordinator - I appreciate not everyone needs this, but a lot will.

Having been a waitress at a venue, weddings are much harder work than any other event. People expect way more, and are harder work in terms of getting drunk, and there's more to set up for decor etc.

This is especially true for a lot of diy type weddings - people will want access to set up and take down, and a lot of them will underestimate how long this will take.

I do think it's fair to charge more for weddings to an extent, as the customer will expect so much more

I think this is very true. Customers should expect more, but that extra service has to be paid for. Many brides will say 'Oh, but I won't be like that', but most are, and that's fair enough, it's a special occasion.

I was recently delivering a cake to a venue, and the owner was showing a couple around the hall - they were there for over an hour. They were looking to book an anniversary party, as it transpired they had got married there 10 years previously. However, it was really clear that they just wanted to look round to reminisce about their big day! I'm sure they thought they were no trouble, but that's the owner's time they're taking up!

@Ragwort in a lot of cultures, guests bring cash gifts or the parents/extended family pay or a combination of the above. Most people in my culture (and to a certain extent, DH's culture) live with their parents until marriage, so they can save up for a fancy wedding and a deposit. Thats what DH and I did, we had a registry wedding, lived with family for 3 years so we could afford the wedding celebrations with all the bells and whistles in 2 different countries plus the London flat.

Indian weddings are crazy, i have heard of 100k weddings but my indian colleagues say that the parents pay for it. My family effectively paid for my wedding, as 45 out of my 50 guests were family members and they all gave me cash as a gift (I had saved up beforehand and wasn't relying on the cash but I knew that they would give me money). My sister in law had a big wedding and was renting (so no deposit) , I think family members paid for it and we all gave cash as wedding gifts. in a sense, she would have been financially worse off if she didn't have the big wedding...

It's a simple matter of supply and demand. There's no point saying the price to hire a hall should be the same for a birthday party or for a wedding - suppliers can charge whatever they like, if people are willing to pay it, and the fact is that most people are prepared to pay more (even for the same thing) for their wedding than for a birthday party. We have a free market economy and there's no reason why suppliers shouldn't take advantage of that.

People lose their sanity when it comes to weddings. I know a couple who have a combined annual salary of £45k before tax, they live in a run-down two bed terraced house with no garden. They spent £28k on their wedding! Now they’re complaining that their house isn’t suitable for the children they hope to have in a few years time. Instead of a one-day party they could have got a bigger house with a garden that they and their future kids could enjoy for the next few decades.

As long as people are daft enough to pay the prices, this will continue to happen.

Mine was 17k in 2005 which I've just looked up would be about 28k nowadays. We were only 25 and 26 (still happily married). Parents paid around 11 of it and we paid the rest.

I have to say it was an amazing day. We hired a marquee and had it erected at the local cricket ground. There was a cricket match going on during the reception which just added to the atmosphere. We had a steel band which played the Test match tune, a string quartet, 6 bridesmaids who I paid for everything for, catering from a local farm with tons of canapés, hot buffet of things like a rib of beef, side of salmon etc then fajita wraps or sausage buns on the night. We provided loads of wine, champagne, beer etc for our guests.

Bit of a contrast to the wedding i was at last week where we were left for four hours with not a canapé or drink provided then there was a very poor excuse for a bbq with cheap burgers. The venue was lovely but I think people would rather be well fed and watered than starving in a nice venue.

We ran off and got married for £100 in a registry office.
It was lovely. Afterwards we went for a meal and that was that.

We are still as married exactly the same as someone who spent £40k doing the same thing

Weddings have always been expensive as everyone is saying, but the prices have definitely increased in the last few years particularly. We just got a quote for a venue our friends got married at in 2018 - in 2018 the venue hire, food, drink, acommodation etc was around 20k, and our quote was 28k for the same amount of people. Think the venues are trying to claw back all the money they lost during covid..

There's a thread on MN at the moment where the OP is planning on getting (legally) married and then having a big party with a white dress and personalised vows. Lots of people are agreeing with her that the party is the important bit. They're completely wrong and have bought into this idea that all the extras - meal, venue, dancing, clothes - are key. Actually the legal bit is the only part with tangible significance, but the wedding industry has made us all believe that without personalised cake toppers and photo booths and a special first dance you're not really married. It's bullshit.

@pastaislife
They will be trying to cover the losses they made due to covid but also inflation for products, services, NI etc it's frankly a lot more expensive to be operating now than it was in 2018.