To think that big, expensive weddings are vulgar?

[Supernova23]

I know someone who is getting married soon-ish and the total spend will be in excess of £50,000 for the day. Anyone else think these events are horribly vulgar? I love a small, intimate wedding, but for so many it seems to be a competition on who can spend the most. All for a few naff Instagram photos.

Oh god I've just realised that every wedding I've ever been to, the couple split up.

<ponders> Sister, brother, DSS, best fried, other best friend, colleague, and my own ... I'm seeing a pattern here.

I was invited to a neighbour's wedding and couldn't go, so gave a money gift. They split up.

I'm a walking nuptial Jonah.

It's up to the couple getting married.

Tbh if someone has heaps of money and can afford a lavish do, then they would be judged as cheap and stingy if they chose a smaller/ cheaper wedding.

my annoyance is with the expectation that guests should have to pay hundreds/thousands to attend a wedding/hen/stag...

It's up to the couple.
You come out of it with a marriage certificate whether it's been large, medium or small just the same.

I had a big, expensive, very fancy wedding over 20 years ago and it was bloody marvellous! You’d no doubt think it was a vulgar display, spending far too much money - and indeed, according to the wisdom of many pp’s, by rights my husband and I should have been divorced for many years by now!

Sadly for the “expensive wedding = short marriages” brigade, my husband and I are still ridiculously in love and very happy. We also didn’t go into debt, despite the vulgar amount we spent on frivolities that made our wedding fucking brilliant 🤩

I got married 20 years ago and it was one of the best days of my life. It was costly enough without all the extras that some people pay for.
The only regret I have is getting married later in the day (3pm). That meant our celebratory knees up was over far too soon!

Very small and cheap affairs can easily be vulgar. Expensive events can easily be tasteful. I’m not sure vulgar is the word you are looking for.

OP, the sole reason for people having £50000 weddings is to piss you off.
They won’t enjoy the over lavish celebrations.
Their greatest reward will be seeing you outside the venue fuming.
Well that and riding slowly past the food bank waving at the queue.

Our wedding cost £50k for 80 guests, 20 years ago. It was neither big nor vulgar. It was awesome though 😂

You sound jealous.

We’ve had a fair few friends get divorced. The cost of their weddings had nothing to do with how successful their marriages were though 🤷🏼‍♀️

I love expensive weddings. It’s the only time the food is good.

Totally agree with this! All of the above shows contempt for your guests and that is the tackiest of all. I don't think big expensive weddings are necessarily tacky, but big expensive weddings are more likely to be culprits for making silly demands of their guests than more modest weddings, in my experience.

My own wedding was very lovely and simple. Just the two of us. Two witnesses. A meal afterwards and that was that. 17 years together and 6 kids :)

DP and I were invited to my Sikh colleague's wedding. It was miles away, a 2 and a half hour train journey and an overnight hotel stay. It was absolutely amazing. A cousin of the bride told me proudly it cost 30 grand. We felt proud and privileged to be able to attend. There were bottles of spirits on every table, and at the end my boss at work tried to smuggle out a half-empty bottle of Famous Grouse. The bride's father, grinning, took it off him and gave him a full unopened one. But that scale of things wouldn't be for us. Everybody's different.

Agreed. We spent a ridiculous amount on food, because we didn’t want standard ‘wedding’ food. We developed the menu ourselves alongside the chef, and it was lovely. The food was important to us, so we spent a lot of money on it.
Id be pissed off if someone ate our lovely food, drank our free drinks, stayed in the accommodation we paid for then went on MN and said we were vulgar and would probably split up within a year. I’d rather anyone who thought like that would just decline the invitation.

I’ve found the opposite. Weddings with a smaller budget have always cost us more as we’ve been expected to pay for everything ourselves (travel, accommodation, drinks etc).

They are great fun to attend. You sound a bit bitter OP.

Haha so true! It is a very Mumsnet thing.
DH and I had a very modest and understated wedding. Three years later, I am desperately unhappy in the marriage. So cheap wedding doesn't always equal married bliss, I regret to say.
The two couples I know who had lavish destination weddings are still happily married with 2 delightful kids apiece nearly a decade later. No way would I have spent that much money on a wedding even if I could have afforded it and the stress of being either of those brides would have given me an aneurysm. But those weddings were a blast to attend as a guest. One was literally a big fat Greek wedding and was an experience I treasure to this day.

Obviously not all expensive or extravagant weddings end in divorce but I guess it can make sense that a lot of people get so caught up with having all the bells and whistles they forget there’s a marriage to deal with at the end of it 😁 Congrats on your happy marriage 🙂

Wow this is inverse snobbery at its finest. You could also apply the same to anyone who spends a lot of money on a car, or designer clothing. I had a big wedding and I’m still happily married 15 years later. It was an amazing day - and we had an amazing honeymoon too. Why do people have to be so judgemental and bitchy. Focus on your own life.

I wouldn’t expect to have my travel and accommodation paid for whatever the budget.

Another couple to add to the list -

expecting people to use up work annual leave because you have if midweek
having it mid week during school term time when there are school age dc

Why would that be the case though? At the point you get engaged, before planning the wedding, you know there is a marriage at the end of it. Why would you forget that just because you’re planning a big wedding?

I think big expensive weddings can be rather pointless when you can still have a lovely day for a fraction of the cost.

I know one couple who spent around £25,000 on their big day, it was in a local church with the reception held in a village hall. They had a large number of bridesmaids and pageboys, which is were I think a lot of the money was spent. They also bought a lot of unnecessary tat such as personalised napkins and match-books and balloons etc. For all the money spent it wasn't a particularly elegant or classy affair and I don't recall seeing the bride smile at any point during the whole day. After the wedding the couple had a lot of debt to pay back, so much so that they needed to move back in with parents for a few years, they could only afford a few days away in the UK for their honeymoon.

On the other hand I had a family member who spent around £5000 in total on their wedding and it was a much nicer day. A church wedding followed by a reception at a rather posh country club, a lovely meal and live music and everyone had a lovely day. They only had the one bridesmaid, no pointless tat and had plenty of money left over for a fantastic long honeymoon abroad and to continue paying all their normal bills and mortgage etc.

I wouldn’t expect anything either. But we paid for our guest’s travel and accommodation, and have had it paid for at a very expensive wedding we went to (13 years ago, and they’re still married).
In terms of travel I meant more things like travelling from the church to the reception venue etc. At weddings with a lower budget, we’ve had to organise and pay for that ourselves, but at more expensive wedding taxis etc have been provided.
Honestly I’m just grateful that people care about me enough to invite me to their special day and wouldn’t dream of making comments about vulgarity/likelihood of them splitting within a few months just because of how much they spent on it. I think that’s pretty vulgar.

Not for me even if I had the cash. Don't care what others do to cast judgement.