....to think weddings are (mostly) ridiculous now?

[TalkSomeSense2]

Or perhaps I'm overly invested in the dramatic wedding chat on here sometimes! 😁And then with the whole dragging everyone in to all the chat/decisions/drama/flouncing. It's just all so much!

The more expensive and flamboyant the wedding, the shorter the marriage. Agree or Disagree?

I do think it’s interesting reading threads like this one and the one about bad weddings because it just shows how different everyone is and what they enjoy/want from a wedding as a guest!

For example people keep saying how a good DJ or a crowded dance floor make a great wedding - my WORST nightmare! I hate dancing and I hate that part of the wedding - I always slope off to find somewhere nice to chat to people if possible. A “good” DJ makes me groan. I’m also not that fussed about food when I’m a guest at other weddings, but I LOVE seeing a beautiful venue and I love hearing the speeches, even when they’re people I don’t know well.

@BetsHilton

Your wedding clearly catered to guests though didn’t it? Free bar, good food and subsidised accommodation? Well I don’t think many people would moan at that. Also 20k is nothing to some people. You only have to read the other post though of a couple spending 50k on a wedding (credit) and living in rented accommodation. That is bonkers!

I don't get it either. DP (I call her DW already tbh but we're not technically married yet!) are getting married next year. It's costing us £3.5k in total and that's for absolutely everything including paying for dresses for our sisters.

Ceremony by a loch with a humanist celebrant. We've hired a village hall about a 10-minute walk away where we'll have dinner delivered. We'll serve it out ourselves, decorate the hall a bit, and have some music playing. There might be some dancing. We've only got the photographer booked for the ceremony and some photos afterwards, and we're only having 18 guests. Our cake is free in exchange for me building a website. Our decor will be homemade, my dress is secondhand and something I'd wear again, and DW's suit is lovely and also wearable again. We're providing table wine and other than that it's BYOB.

It's a perfect, intimate day with the people we love the most, with no bonkers late nights and no expectations from anyone. Fair do's if other folk want to throw a proper bash but I've never understood it.

DW's family is massive and they've always had extravagant weddings with 150+ people. We're the first to break the tradition and we've got quite a few people annoyed about that but who cares? And we've inspired SIL to do the same for her wedding

Oh I don't know, I partly had this attitude when I was getting married and now I wish I threw caution to the wind and splashed out a bit more. Yes, its just one day, but its the one day, maybe the only one of your life, when people come to celebrate you, where you throw a party like that. Its something different.

My dress was really nice and it did make me feel good to wear it. Call that stupid and shallow if you want, but I've been really fat and ugly my whole life, and for that one day I felt pretty.

Marriage traditions and celebrations are a part of pretty much every culture, current and throughout history. What's wrong with wanting to be a part of it?

I wouldn't go in to debt for it though.

Yes, its just one day, but its the one day, maybe the only one of your life, when people come to celebrate you

I get that people want a really special day. I really do. But why should someone be out of pocket big time. At the very least you are asking people to spend a few hundred on your wedding (presents, travel, babysitters, hotel rooms, drinks at the bar, maybe outfits), at worst case such as mine thousands.

People are broke. We have had a pandemic, bills are shooting thru the roof. Have the wedding you want but if someone doesn't want to come, you have to suck that up with no bad feeling. Your wedding could put someone in debt, could have them in tears because they can't afford to spend the money.

The wedding we are invited to will cost us 5K. If we go we can't have another holiday for 1-2 years. If we don't, family will go nuclear. But hey, so long as the bride is "celebrated", in our case.....again.

@FairyLightPups see I read this and think, draughty village hall, a cheap non catered dinner no doubt lying around going cold until the bridal party serve it, cheap table wine and then I need to both buy and bring my own drinks if I want more than a cheap glass of wine. No band or Dj for atmosphere. No thanks!!! If you’re going to invite people to an event at least make an effort to entertain them and feed them well.

And at a cost of £3.5k between 18 people that’s nearly £200 a head. Where is all that money going if the dress is second hand, there is no entertainment, no booze, a free cake and no one to serve dinner?!

Yay! So pleased for you. Not sure what a 'twatty pipe is' but if being confrontational instead of joining in the discussion in a constructive and measured way is beyond you, then you do you.

I think the subtext there was “we are better than you”

I don’t agree size of wedding has any correlation to longevity of marriage but I totally agree they are getting more and more ridiculous.

Was on another thread discussing whether it was ok to ask guests to pay for their own food - NO! Lots of comments of “well are you saying I can’t celebrate unless I’m rich?”. No, I’m saying you cut your cloth accordingly and what makes you think I want to pay to go to your wedding. That’s pure selfishness they want a large wedding for photograph appearances but are unable to afford it - so don’t do it. Absolutely bonkers.

Most weddings are so formulaic now it’s tedious a lot of the time, because as guests you only get to see the B&G and their happiness for a fraction of the day. Rest of the time you’ll be waiting around/stuck next to someone you don’t know/is annoying.

I skipped the wedding and eloped. In an ideal world I would have had a nice back garden wedding with friends and family but people are so judgmental these days. Even home catering for a back garden wedding costs a lot of money. The thought of people moaning or judging because it wasn't fancy enough put me off. I'd rather spend my money on myself and enjoy it.

Expensive only if you choose it to be. And the drama is only seen on MN

I agree. I just really don't understand how people are willing to spend tens of thousands of pounds on a wedding, more often than not having to borrow quite substantial amounts. Isn't it about celebrating your love and commitment to each other? The true meaning of the wedding and ceremony itself seems to be completely overshadowed by the £££££

I mean no offence to anybody of course, everybody does want / what they feel is best for them, I did exactly just that and had an intimate wedding celebration (and a massive party afterwards) with our closest family and friends.

Weddings are awful. A massive waste of cash and frankly, just silly most of the time.

I think people also don't realise the cost of things
My mother is forever pushing the just get married in a registry office then go to the village hall type thing

She simply doesn't believe that still costs thousands

Agree with someone above though. People are forever saying that weddings cost too much money, that people have lost the meaning, that it's all vapid etc.... yet people are moaning forever about cheaply catered weddings, not being Invited to weddings when a guest list is cut, paying for drinks etc

I would not complain about a garden wedding (sounds lovely!) or paying for own drinks and am not expecting fillet steak either. Think the problem is if you expect guests to be there for 8-12 hours that’s 2 meals worth, which is very expensive to cater for. If one of those turns out to be just canapés people start complaining of hunger. Much better to cut down to what you can afford, either number of guests or length of day.

@Allthe4s You're my kind of person!

I went to a beautiful wedding at this village hall a few years ago iaavillagehall.co.uk
It cost about £350 to hire from Friday evening to Sunday morning. The grandmothers made bunting. Extended family picked flowers for the table. Friends provided the music until after dinner when a live band arrived to relieved them of duty. There were drinks and canapés on arrival, a serviced buffet dinner with wine and soft drinks on the table followed by a donation based bar using drinks from a booze cruise. It was the best wedding I'd been to despite it pouring with rain in the middle of June. I got all hopeful but after asking the bride and groom it still cost a few thousand pounds for 100 people. Extras like chair covers, bouquets, photographer and that catering soon added up.

@starlingdarling

That’s sounds lovely and very unique :). Still costs like you say. Everything related to a wedding has a zero on the end and goes up in multiples of £500.

Having been to 10’s of weddings and 100’s of events in hotels, I just feel bad for the B&G as many have been suckered into paying for stuff like chair covers to make an otherwise boring square room look nice. Chair covers?! It’s a chair, once everyone is sat down no one can see them and maybe hotels should stop providing fugly chairs if they need covering up.

If people can afford it and that’s what they want, go for it. It’s not something guests appreciate/notice in my experience and I’d chose to spend my money elsewhere. Same goes for lots of things like favours and and and…. Multi billion pound industry people feel they have to live up to. Bit sad really.

hopefully with the cost of living crisis some of these venues will be forced to provide much better value for money.

The majority of our budget was spent on food and drink which i thought worked well as i hate being hungry at weddings or forced to buy overpriced drinks. It was within our means and tbh pretty similar to all the weddings dating back to my parents' in the 80s (church, food, drink, disco). We paid for transportation from the church - reception.

My family is huge and i wanted them all there, i only invited a few friends in the end as my many cousins took up my side of the guests.

Possibly going against the grain but i begrudge travelling/getting a hotel for a wedding and it then being a bit rubbish. I need to be fed lots of food, on time so i dont get hangry 😅

Funny how, whatever the wedding, the poster always swears blind that theirs is the best wedding they’ve ever been to and that the guests have all said the same.

I always look out for these posts on all the wedding threads

But isn’t it lovely that most people think their wedding was the nicest day? And lovely that their loved ones all want them to think that too?

Yes, I do think that enjoying throwing a good party that I could afford is better than making judgy presuppositions about other's relationships based on very little. That IS my contribution. Glad you understood it.

Of course it is! And it should be!

But it’s the judgemental tone of “I spent £1.50 and my guests drank tap water and everyone said it was the best wedding ever SO spending anything else is an extravagant waste of money and they’ll be divorced within 2 weeks” that’s grating. In real life the friends might tell them it was amazing but they’d be straight on MN slating them for not even providing a drink.

I love a good wedding, if people want to spend their money on a huge party then good for them. I don’t understanding going into debt to drive a £30,000 car, but people do it all the time, at least with a wedding you have the memories afterwards.

Nothing wrong with having had a wonderful day. In fact, it would be great if every couple did.
I got married decades ago and still look back very fondly on the day, but I'm not so self absorbed to think anyone else thought my wedding was "the best wedding ever".
I think that is the point here.

As you see from any discussion on weddings, some people love what other people would never choose.