To think that wedding s never used to be such a ‘thing’?

[Serendipity12]

So I got married in the early 90s. We were basically students and had help from parents to afford the wedding, for which we were really grateful. At the time the wedding seemed fine, but looking back - and compared to how weddings are approached now - I’m amazed at how things seem to have changed - or were my standards just really low?!?! For instance, I had one of the first dresses I tried on and only had one fitting session and on the day realised it came with a hoop for under the skirt so I ended up looking like a meringue! In a baggy dress. The organist played the wrong piece of music going up the aisle (I didn’t want to say anything) and food was average, but everyone still had a good time. Looking back I do sort of feel regret but am I Aibu to think that at present the cost and effort and whole bridezilla destination wedding thing is just taking the pursuit of perfection a bit too far and that maybe comparison is just making me feel more regret than I need to?
YABU - your standards should have been higher for your own wedding
YANBU - weddings have become too much of a showcased thing in ore recent years
tempted to add a pic of the meringue but would be outing!!!

I bought my first property in the 90's and there was never any question of not putting down a deposit. I think mine was 5%.

100% mortgages, self cert mortgages and interest only mortgages have all contributed to financial problems for people.

I think it's down to personality, to an extent culture, age when marrying, and often also correlates to education level. Based on people we know, across a lot of countries, the more educated, happy and professionally busy the couple, the simpler the wedding, because no one wants to take endless time out of a busy, happy life to plan an elaborate party when you could just get married in easier and more enjoyable ways. They tended to have register office quickies with two witnesses, or small, simple weddings. The most intensively-planned 'My Special Day' weddings were by people who didn't have a lot of good stuff going on in other ways, and for whom wedding saving, planning etc became a virtual obsession. And then commemmorating it, Instagramming it, etc. DH's niece got married recently, and is clearly suffering terribly from post-wedding flatness, as is her mother, who has taken to her bed... Because neither of them has done anything for the past eight months or more other than wedding plan.

I'm a bit in two minds really.

My parents, their siblings, and even my paternal grandparents (in the very early 1950s) all had big weddings, loads of guests, amazing catered receptions etc. These aren't people with loads of money, but mainly rural families, where people are fairly proud and want to put on a good show.
My other grandparents who conversely were town dwellers and met after WW2 and had a small ish registry office wedding with just immediate family and best friends. Not sure if that has any bearing, but it's my experience! But obv no hen or stag dos, other than the men maybe going for a pint at the local!

Our wedding was in the 2000s, was. Biggish wedding, but we did a lot of it ourselves and had family doing the flowers and cake etc, and it was on a (reasonable) budget. Both had weekend long hen/stag dos but in the UK.

I think now, as others have said, there's more pressure than ever to have an 'instagram' wedding, where every minor detail is planned to the nth degree. Some close friends of ours' daughter is getting married soon, and to them it is the event of the decade. But then they're a very close family who idolise their adult children, so maybe it'd be like that irrespective of Instagram? I'm sure it'll be lovely, and am looking forward to forward to it, but really hope they've not absolutely skinted themselves to do it!

That's a lot more than inflation. I believe that a £1 around then might be roughly equal to £2 now. There are inflation calculators online you could check on that might be more accurate than my vaguely educated guess.

My sister got married 5 years ago. I priced the same wedding package this year, the price per head has doubled.

What? I think it was your age, not THE age.
My friend got married in her early 20s. Her mum did most of the arranging, she just went along with it. Dress made by a relative. Nice reception at local hotel. Honeymoon in the UK.
I however got married at 40. I planned my wedding and had a custom made dress. We had it in London and we paid for it. We had a beautiful venue, amazing food, a string quartet for the ceremony and a tribute band for the reception.
People get married later now (I think the average age is 32)? So probably more financially established and know what they want.
Remember the expense of wedding is because you are paying for things - food, flowers, venue, music and so on. It's not being wasted. It helps to keep people employed.

My wedding came to a total of £7k, including open bar. My brother's wedding cost £30k.

We both have the same piece of paper out of it and we used the same photographer so our photos basically look the same style.

It all depends on the individual but some people still have low key weddings. I loved ours, whereas I know my sister in law just lists off all the things that went wrong at their wedding when you ask her about it and I guess rightly so - she could have bought a new car for the same price, so you want it to be perfect!

Yes, you need about $600 million for a reasonable wedding these days.

As an aside I was intrigued when I saw a picture of Boris and family at a recent wedding and was taken aback by how similar looking the three children are. They must be triplets!

YANBU. Most people marrying now live together, have been together for a while, know each other well - marriage is less of a life change than it was for previous generations. So more and more pressure is placed on the wedding itself and all the details as the marriage doesn't mark a new stage of life.

I come from a culture where marriages still mark a life change for women - people don't live together before marriage - and while weddings are a huge deal, there's less pressure for everything to be perfect, and they are much more about friends and families rather than the details. Which also means marriages happen far more quickly after engagement so you don't have time to fret over details!

How long ago?

It wasn't an option when I got married.

Most weddings are broadly similar to years ago. In the last 20-25 years all my friends and fam have had either a church then local fancy hotel/gold club or have the whole thing at said hotel/golf club. My wedding was almost exactly the same as DPs.

Ive been to one really fancy/extravagant wedding but these people have Family Money and are loaded!

My wedding, the largest cost was food and drink (open bar) - im sure guests preferred that to a cheaper weddong with less food!

I prefer when my friends have beach hen dos, an overpriced cottage in the drizzly countryside is a much worse use of precious free time vs a girls' holiday in the sun. (Caveat- none of my friends are bridezillas so it's been a chilled friends' holiday)

Expensive weddings have always been a thing for some people, and of course in some cultures weddings can be huge by UK standards - it's the norm.

But, what I do think has changed is the burden tipped onto guests:

-Travelling to/from destination weddings (not the local venue, even abroad)
-Overnight stays or even longer to accomodate the above
-Gift registries (I have experienced some real 😮 cheeky-fuckery recently)
-Coordinated dress/colour rules for everyone (not just central celebrants)

Plus there are other things we didn't really see that often in the past and that make us people of a certain age go🙄

-Save the date cards weren't a thing, if you couldn't attend, that was fine
-Expensive overnight/holiday hen/stag dos (driven by cheaper flights?)
-'Demanding' behaviour, lists of rules, schedules, etc. all quite controlling
-Oh, and the constant build up months and months in advance on social media

Not true of everyone of course!

A lot of weddings are entirely curated for Instagram. Manor house, week long hen/stag dos in an exotic location, luxury fully paid for honeymoon by asking for “donations” instead of gifts. The costs are insane. I know a couple who are about to splash £50,000 on a wedding and are getting themselves into debt in the process.

Someone else I know who got married recently also cost similar. Their middle class parents footed the bill for most of it of course. They had multiple videographers, one shooting from the bride’s perspective and the other from the grooms. Personally I think that’s self indulgent nonsense; you’d think they were celebrities.

I read about someone that stopped doing weddings as a photographer as nothing is organic now. Every pose is staged and curated to an inch of its life as people don’t do natural now.

I have fond memories of weddings growing up. Usually a registry office with some sort of low key lunch afterwards. I remember my uncles; we had a Chinese buffet. Now it’s all Michelin star looking stuff for the Insta pictures. It’s a bit depressing.

I disagree with it's all for Instagram now. As someone who is currently planning a wedding, and has no social media accounts, I am still hiring a decent photographer and videographer, still having a large number of guests which we consider good friends and family, and will prob do a few DIY "extras" myself because I am into that sort of thing. To an outsider it'll look like "eyeroll, this is all for the gram" but in reality it's not. SOME people getting swept up in the social media bullshite but not all!

The cost comparison to my sisters wedding 5 years ago is insane. Everything has increased in price so much and that's only in a short space of time. Wedding dresses seem to be about the only thing that have stayed somewhat constant in price. I also think some extras became the norm during the boom and never left which adds extra expense on the couple.

Weddings have always been whatever the couple wanted. I know family who spent £20k on theirs in the 90's and I know people who spent the same last year. I spent at the most £1k on mine as we wanted a small simple wedding. The only think that's changed is that we can easily see others extravagant weddings on social media when we couldn't before.

Correct. Married in the Register Office (no other option), with the Environmental Health office right next door 😂
Off the peg frock from a High Street chain. Lounge suit for the other half.
One witness each.
Sit down meal in a hotel, cut cake then everyone goes home - definitely no dreaded "evening do".
Standard set of photos, of which you chose 24 to put in an album, and just got the others as polaroids with Proof stamped all over them.
Definitely no video!
35 years ago......

I put YABU because I was also married in the early 90s and your experience wasn’t mine. However, they’ve clearly become a much bigger thing since then.
I also bought the 4th dress I tried on (in the only shop I went in) but because I loved it. There’s no way I wouldn’t have known about hoops or whatever because I wanted a nice dress. Music in church was very important to me and I had friends perform: it so it was exactly right. Food was hotel mass market food and chosen from a limited selection. Perfectly fine though.
In conclusion - you didn’t seem to really care about stuff at your wedding, which is fine but not the fault of the 90s. My niece’s wedding in the 2010s was very similar to mine. Some people go way OTT now which possibly wouldn’t have been considered in the 90s.

I remarried in a church. It has been possible since 2002 in certain circumstances but it still isn’t guaranteed. It may have helped that we both already attended our local parish churches regularly.

We had the additional hurdle that we wanted to get married in a church 100 miles away from where we lived. We had to join that church and attend regularly including a marriage preparation course.

I didn’t dread the evening do. Mine was fab. We had a barn dance. 31 years ago.

Nobody I knew had an evening do in the early 90s, although a couple of weddings did end up back at the parents house for drinks.
You stopped at 5pm, put on your "going away dress" and that was it.

I guess people have a bit more money now - plus the introduction of social media etc has helped fuel this.

Married DH1 in late 1980s, total cost £100 (excluding DH's new jersey). I bought a gorgeous summer dress in Debenhams, our reception was a self-assembled buffet in a church hall. Had thirty guests, then honeymoon in the Cotswolds.

DH2 and I married mid-1990s in a registry office, followed by lunch in the officers' mess for thirty again (not all the same people!), total outlay c£1000. Honeymoon in Cornwall.I

People can do what they want. It's their occasion, and their money to spend. You sound quite envious.

These posts and threads are only ever about virtue -signalling humble-bragging 'I only spent £100 on my wedding so I'm a better person than you' blah anyway

A friend of mine spent £30k on her wedding 2 years ago. 6 months after the wedding she was pregnant with their second and she told me that she regretted spending so much as they were desperate to move to a bigger place.

I spent 1/10 of that getting married, and it cost me more to get divorced. I love to see wedding photos, think it's amazing that folk even come up with some of the things they do along the theme of wedding, but for each fancy table decoration, or hen party PJ set, or random gimmicky thing I do think what could that be better spent on to set a couple up in their new married life. Even if they have been together for ages.

When I got married in the late 90s, my parents were upset I didn’t want to just do a cake and punch reception at their house.

I paid for the wedding myself. Lots of bells and whistles, but nothing compared to today.