How much do you earn and how much did you spend on wedding?

[Rehne]

Joint income = £160k (but London)
Ages: 29 and 33
Wedding cost: £25k (5k from bride’s parents)
2023

Just curious. So many of the quotes we had were crazy. And obviously Dh and I doing okay financially. Who is spending all this money given the average income?

30 years ago
Joint income £35k
Wedding £7k

So 20% of our annual income.

Yes! This is nuts.

Joint income about 50K at the time, 5 years ago.
7K including honeymoon, with 800 pounds from parents.

We did loads ourselves.

Married 2001 (aged 33). Joint income 35k Spent £2k on wedding (40 guests), 1.5k on honeymoon. No money from his family or mine either. I used the £2k my great-grandmother had left to me.
My Divorce is costing about the same.

Just choked on my coffee. £160k is comfortable-ish? Bear in mind that the average UK salary is around £30k+ and many people on here will earn a lot less than that. You may want to reassess your use of 'comfortable'.

Combined income approx £90k
Wedding was about £40k
£20k of that was parent/in law contributions- they paid for venue (which included 8 bedrooms), catering, my dress, husband's suit and the band.
Other £20k was us.

A silly amount of money but we had the best day ever and I wouldn't change it.

Joint income £500k, spent £5k! It was Covid so we had a simple registry office affair where max 10 people were permitted (including us!). I hired a lovely dress which was most of the cost and we attended a socially distanced restaurant for brunch after. Intended to have a bigger wedding post Covid but then had a baby (& another on the way) so never got around to it and tbh it seems unimportant now as we've been together a decade anyway and would rather spend our money on other things

@Didimum

I’m not sure why you are so confused, OP? Many MANY people receive help from both sets of parents for their weddings, so the income they bring in is pretty negligible.

I’m not going to pretend to be “confused” as I know this is a MN dog whistle. I am not confused about the fact people spend a lot on weddings.

But I do find it genuinely baffling that parents who have £40k to £50k to spend don’t think the money would be better spent on property for the couple to live in as opposed to being almost literally sprayed up the wall like this…

I can understand in the past how you were securing your daughter’s future by investing in a wedding but nowadays that money is so much better spent elsewhere.

Got married central London just over 20 years ago. 120 people for wedding/reception/dinner/dance
Earnings: £500k (slightly misleading as there is an ex and kids who got alimony/child support over £150k)
My parents contributed: £10k
Husband: £20k plus
Total wedding (not including honeymoon or outfits): £25k

Married 12 years ago (2012)

Joint income just under £40k at the time

Spent £8k on wedding and we had 120 people at the reception - bargain!!

just to balance things out - married six week ago in our own home. Cost £42 for the certificate. Joint income was £70k.

First wedding 2006 total income around 60k wedding and honeymoon 20k.

Second wedding 2020 ( still Married ) total income 180k wedding and honeymoon 5k we eloped.

Joint income (20 years ago,) £35k. Spent £3k my parents gave £500 and his Dad did.
We had a marquee in a friend's lovely garden got married in a registry office, brother grew the flowers, the dress was about £50. Rings £30. Cake my sister made (was amazing). Caterer food and booze and marquee was the most expensive bit. Friends did video, photos, DJing. Cheap but beautiful. Loved it and so very happily married still.

Forgot to say we about 80 guests in the day and 120 at night

Married 39 years in August. Our joint income would have been about £30,000

My parents paid for the entire day. No idea of cost but mum made my dress and the cake.

As a parent of an adult daughter I am so relieved that my daughter is overcome with anxiety when the centre of attention and would never want a large wedding. I intend to gift money to her towards a larger house ( assuming that she has any house by then).

The whole thing seems to be an exercise to print money and I hope that at some point a consumer organisation investigates the wedding mark up.

I look back at my wedding 25 years ago and I am barely in contact with a vast number who attended. Many were my parents friends and have died. Many were former work colleagues on both sides. My mother wanted the large wedding.

So I will just invest the money in her pension or a larger house.

Married just under 2 years ago, in our early 50s, second time for both of us. Joint income then was about 60k. Wedding cost about 2k. Registry office about £300, restaurant meal for 9 with drinks about £500, B&B for 2 nights including my teens about £400, dress and shoes for me about £500, jacket and shoes for DH about £100, 2 inexpensive gold bands about £200. No honeymoon, but we do go on holiday so the one the summer after our we kind of called our honeymoon.

You say 'nowadays', but I still think we are dealing with parents who come from a very different generation. Parents of 30yr olds getting married today (or 25-30yr olds who got married a few years ago) are still on the tail end of the baby boomer generation, where it is still seen as a very popular obligation to pay something towards your child's wedding (and pay for it entirely if you are well off enough). Coupled with that, I think it's still very baffling to that generation how very difficult it is for people to get solid footing on the housing ladder these days, because it was not difficult for them, they could largely rely on a one-person income and house prices were significantly lower.

Further added to that is that many engaged couples now already own a place together – they likely get a dollop of help for the deposit AND a dollop of help for the weddings.

I'm not sure about the above, though it might be the case. My parents and my husbands parents (both baby boomer generation) offered a financial contribution for our wedding, but did not offer any financial help towards a property deposit – and that came two years before our wedding!

I never would have asked them for either, nor did I question them in why they didn't offer deposit help instead of or as well as wedding help – I didn't find it appropriate to as it didn't seem like the right thing to question when offered money. I can only imagine it just aligned with their values or what they thought we would both appreciate help on. But yes, we both would have preferred deposit help, even to this day – it would mean our mortgage was less!

Joint income £65k
Wedding £6k (parents paid)
Party a year later £5k

Joint income of about £45k

Wedding cost about £5k for eveything & another £2.5k for the honeymoon. Our parents paid for the wedding, and my uncle paid for our honeymoon, so in the end we didn't end up paying anything ourselves.

Gosh, going well and truly against the grain.

Got married in 2000.

Joint income approx £45k

No clue how much wedding day actually cost, but I would be very surprised if it had come to more than about £3k.

We had about 30 guests to a sit down meal about 2p.m. followed by a cream tea about 6.00 p.m. in the same venue which another 20 or so guests came to.

We decided not to use a professional photographer as we didn't like the £2K quote. So we bought lots of disposable cameras and asked guests to use them and drop them in a box at the end. We got some cracking photos!

My parents also don’t have £1000s liquid in bank accounts

Got married last year

Joint income: £140k
Spent on wedding: £23k
Honeymoon: £6k

We had a small wedding and I didn’t want to spend a lot but we had a band, spent a lot on flowers (that were beautiful), lots of alcohol and actually too much food and I bought an expensive dress.

My parents gave us £5k as a gift at the wedding so we didn’t use this money towards the wedding.

6 years ago:

Both incomes approx. 30k, so 60k in total.

Wedding - approx. 13.5k (my parents contributed towards honeymoon, bought wine and paid for my 1.2k dress and ILs paid for venue and flowers - their contribution was approx. 9k). So we didn't pay for much ourselves - just hair, make-up, bridesmaid dresses, accessories, suit hire and food.

At the time our joint income was around £60k I think.
Wedding cost £26k including honeymoon. £10k from my parents, £10k from his and we paid for the rest. We only had such an expensive wedding because our parents really wanted it, and wanted to pay for it. Amazing day though, and I’m super grateful, I just wouldn’t have chosen to do it that way if it meant getting in debt and would have happily done a simple registry office affair.