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?

Combined income approx £30k.
We got married two years ago - 12 guests, beautiful tapas meal in a local restaurant (we had the entire space), we made our own cake and took our own photographs. Wedding cost £750. Small and intimate and perfect for us. Everyone had a great time.

Joint income £350k.
Wedding cost £24k inc rings and honeymoon in 2012. Effectively needed 2 celebrations, one in UK and one in DH's home country.
Paid by me and DH from savings, no help from parents.

Joint income of £70k in south east. Wedding was £15-17k. Paid in cash by saving over three years between engagement and wedding. Had everything we wanted, scrimped on nothing, had a free bar etc and loved every minute. Married this year

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…

In some cultures weddings are a celebration and a big deal. My parents/in laws helped with wedding and property, I don’t think it’s unusual.

We earn £250k jointly. Wedding in October this year is coming in at £45k. Honeymoon will be a further £15k (a trip of a lifetime we've been wanting to take for a long time). We have had £20k gifted from across our parents. That means we are parting with £40k of our own money this year, in total.

We didn't set out to spend this much - we've been together over a decade and putting off getting married was partly because we didn't want to spend a fortune on it, ironically!

Now we're in the thick of planning it, though, although there are absolutely areas we could cut back on a bit if we wanted, there does seem to have been a massive jump in vendor costs over the last couple of years. We are having a very nice wedding but not OTT, and definitely in line with those of friends who got married maybe 5 years ago but for £10-15k less.

God. Some people on here have SO MUCH MONEY.

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…

@Thepeopleversuswork I find it genuinely baffling that it doesn’t occur to you that it’s not an either or scenario 🤷‍♀️

But sometimes it is though.

Obviously there are wealthy people who have enough money to do both but I have known people who say their parents literally spent their life’s savings on their wedding.

Well at the least dc can use the money they haven’t had to spend on property.

2003

Joint income approx £150K
Wedding approx £5K (married at venue, 21 guests, no cake, £200 dress, drove us there, early evening/late afternoon wedding, most was on food and drink and photographer). Didn’t need to spend more - this was just what the wedding we wanted cost.

if our parents and sisters would not have killed us..this is what we would have done..Us and our 3 kids and 2 witnesses. But we still did it for a 1000 much to my snobby mothers horror, and my lovely dads joy, he would have paid anything we wanted but in our thirties it was on us as far as we were concerned. No regrets at all

Probably about £70k combined at the time, and spent somewhere around 20/22k on the wedding 5 years ago.
4k of which was on the dress.
£120k or so income now.
No regrets.
Already owned a home, have 2 DC now, car bought outright, save for the kids every month, can afford holidays and whatever else.
Had the best day with loved ones who all live far from each other and so it will be the only single day they will all have ever been in one place.

wow. that is incredible that your family paid for that..but did you not feel a little like..that could have jumpstarted your adult life if they gave you the money instead? You could have had a really nice wedding and a massive deposit on a house

Joint income was around £250k. Wedding cost around £500.

Wedding in 2006, joint income 55k, wedding cost 65k ,my parents paid for it

Married 20+ years ago
Joint income of £35-40k
No idea how much our wedding cost as my parents paid for it all

Joint income at time of wedding in 2014 was 70k

Wedding cost around 18k. Dream venue, but off season, 'high street' wedding dress, local florist and did table decs and invites ourselves, vintage car, band and pianist, university choir at a very grand chapel. My parents gave us 5k, husbands parents put 1k behind the bar.

Was tight as we bought our first joint home in run up to wedding, moved in 3 days before.
Was an amazing day, it still feels like a lot of money, but we economised where we could to get our dream venue. We have been to weddings costing over 60k at the same venue, but being low season meant we could negotiate on everything, and still had brilliant weather - so lucky

It wasn’t an either / or for us, they also supported us when we bought our first house (and in other ways, like university fees and allowances etc).

We are incredibly privileged and had an enormous amount of support. We were (and are) hugely grateful and appreciate the massive advantage it gave us. We do our best by others in the way we now behave in recognition of how privileged we are.

Joint approx 200k

Married last year -
Including dress, all in approx 3500
Dress was 1500

Relaxed meal with close friends 30 of us then evening do with Buffett

Sunday wedding

Oh I did not include rings and honey moon- that would have pushed it up. A lot.

We're north England, also.

I just can not justify spending such a lot of money on 1 day.

Also I did not have lots of things as I am ND so avoided things I hate (eg no photographer - hate posing)

Joint approx 200k
Married last year -
Including dress, all in approx 3500
Dress was 1500
Relaxed meal with close friends 30 of us then evening do with Buffett

How did you feed 30 people a meal and buffet out of 2k?!

A £20000 income in 1976 is the equivalent of earning £130k today according to the Bank of England inflation calculator.

We spent £32000 in 2022 including 10k on honeymoon. Gifted 25k. We probably would have spent 4k on a holiday anyway. Joint income about 160k

No regrets but we probably would have cut back a bit on the honeymoon without the support from our parents.

.

OP. You are not comparing the right things. You are averaging the whole UK income and comparing it with the average wedding spend. That’s a pointless comparison. To have anything meaningful you would have to do an average of the income of people who got married in any given year. That statistic is plainly not available.

Additionally you are not taking into account that most people do not fund their weddings from one years’s salary. It is usually funded by savings over 2 years or so, gifts from family and credit (or a combination). Also the average wedding spend figures will be affected by a few really extravagant weddings. I am speculating that the mean average would be different from the mode or median average.

I got married in 1996. I recall that we spent about £4,000 (that’s about £9,500 today). I had just graduated. But had some savings from previously working. DH was earning about £12,000 pa. My parents paid about half, DH’s mother gave us £300 and his father gave us £500 and we paid the balance. It was a lovely wedding. It did not feel like we were scrimping on things. But weddings today are much more lavish.