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!!!

Thanks - and to all of you who have posted really thoughtful and interesting replies! The comparisons over time and across cultures are really interesting. I am still married - so there must be something to the inverse relationship between cost of wedding and length of marriage that someone else mentioned here! 😊
I have really given it some thought and there would be very little about my day, errors and all, that I would change really - apart from a better fitting dress, maybe, but that wasn’t a priority at the time I suppose - just in hindsight! And no I certainly wouldn’t want the huge stress that would go into a large, showpiece type of wedding, there would just be far too much that could go wrong! If anything I’d go more minimal (I’d definitely ditch the hoop anyway!!☺️) My children (young adults) feel the same way and would cringe at an ‘insta’ type wedding and I think their priorities are pretty much spot on, despite being so young.

Definitely no envy from me, just a bit of dress regret and an amazement at how different, and more apparently stressful, things often are more recently. I do think social media must have a part to play in it, for a lot of people anyway.

I wouldn’t even really want to do a vow renewal in a nicer dress, as just not worth the hassle - and the marriage is the important thing, not the wedding!

Ps should add I hope everyone who wants one enjoys a wedding that is wonderful, unique and theirs alone ☺️

YANBU

We got married on a registry office and had the reception at a local social club, this was only in 2016.

Wedding dress was second hand.

Had a fantastic time and the whole thing, including honeymoon came to under 5k.

Think they have gone OTT IMHO.

Think since the relaxation of laws of you could only marry in churches and register offices closest to your home made that so.

I heard of people scoff at couples getting married in a register office instead of a barn or country hotel 200 miles away.

I hate weddings. Find them incredibly boring - esp the bit between the speeches and the evening stuff. Don't like wearing very fancy clothing. As for shoes - can't find a pair which are 1. Able to wear for hours as got feet problems 2. Look pretty and 3. Don't cost the earth as don't want to splash out loads for one wear.

About 18 years ago I was invited to a wedding of a manager of my then employer. The groom's family hired an entire 75 room country hotel for goodness knows how much in the middle of nowhere. Including the cost of taxis to/from train station to place and those who lived nearby too. I got very bored as the 5 or 6 colleagues I spoke to most only 1 turned up. Two were on holiday and one had surgery earlier that week. I slipped out of the reception room and went into my room and watched crap on TV.

Then if you get married abroad - the cost of flying out loads of people is bad enough

Then you got to have a do in the UK for those who weren't able to come to the wedding abroad - health issues, unable to book time off work, child care, their job (a teacher can't go on foreign wedding in June) etc

Instead of focusing on the marriage, too many focus on the wedding, which is exceedingly sad

That's probably because most people getting married nowadays have been living together, as if married, for years and years. We don't have to get married these days. It isn't sad at all.

The 90s wasn’t the Victorian era Kinshipug! Despite my enormous meringue dress I wasn’t actually Miss Haversham. We didn’t have to get married then either, but chose to have a wedding to celebrate the relationship, not the other way around. Just to be clear.

I think most don't realise how tight money was in the late 80s early 90s

YABU. I think weddings were always a big thing for people who had the money to make them a big thing. Just like now.

I had a church wedding and a meal after for 50, we had the night do at our house for 120 people and I did the catering - thankfully weather ok and made use of garden area to fit everyone in!

What makes you think today's wedding aren't celebrating the relationship? They're spending more money than you because they are grown, financially independent adults.

I think remember people in tears at work forced to hand keys back life was so good then

I am talking about my circumstances only, not generalising. I’m sure that people are celebrating their relationships getting married, obviously, just like they always have done. But I think there can be a lot of extra pressure due to the whole wedding industry that has become much more of a ‘thing’ in more recent years. And a lot of the replies on here do seem to bear that out.

I got married in 1981 the week after Lady Di and Charles. Wedding was in church as no choice then and all brides came down the aisle to 'Here comes the Bride'
Reception after at mum and dads house it was either that or local community centre. All friends getting married did exactly the same type of wedding. After the party went to new house as 'newlyweds' having never lived together, I would advise living together first now although worked out fine for us. Our first house we bought about 9 months before wedding with a £6,000 deposit and the price of house then was £26,000. The Building Society Manager made us top up to £6,000 as we originally had £5,000. Loved my Wedding Day.

My Nephew and his wife to be each had a week abroad, a weekend away in the UK and a local day out at the races and then on to a night club. They were only married 18 months.

My observation is actually that all the pressure for a massive wedding is coming from the older generation... but it's all anecdotal anyway.

I'm so glad that I got married in the early 80s before weddings became such 'a thing'. The total cost of my wedding must have been around £1000.

It all depends on the individual but some people still have low key weddings. I loved ours,

Same here, but I am not someone who really likes to be the centre of attention anyway. Parents expected a traditional church wedding but there wasn't much money to spare.

We had the ceremony in the village church, which is very small so that limited the number of guests. The reception was in the village hall with a buffet and some local ladies to serve it out.

DH and I bought a couple of cases of supermarket wine and some cheap fizz for the toast. When it came to the toast the serving ladies said they didn't know how to open those sort of bottles, so my two BILs (sisters husbands) and DHs two brothers immediately stepped up to help and ended up going round all the tables pouring out the fizz. It felt very friendly and family oriented.

My BIL and SIL had got married 6 months before us. It was about 2 years in the planning and her parents had pushed the boat out and gone for all the bells and whistles anyone had thought of in the 1980s. MIL confided later that she had enjoyed ours much, much more!

People routinely spend crazy amounts of money they don’t have on pointless tat for everything related to getting married. It’s utterly unnecessary. You can still have a fab hen party and a beautiful wedding without plastic tiaras, designer gowns, trips to Prague, 14 bridesmaids, and the rest. High street wedding dresses are really lovely these days for a few hundred pounds, the only thing people really want at the reception is good food and plenty to drink, do your invitations online and so on. It’s not a competition, you aren’t a Disney princess, and no one else cares.

Just, for the love of God, stop expecting other people to plan verse as holidays in order to be at your wedding.

My sister was married in the mid 80s and she had an evening do - it was in a village hall, not fancy, but there was an evening do. Ditto every wedding I knew of.

I put YABU because your comparing your wedding to other people’s weddings

I knew lots of people who had evening dos in the early 90s. It was either held in the same hotel as wedding breakfast, or in local village hall, and generally consisted of disco and buffet. Often the food was home made.

I've voted YABU because of your generalisation.

I would agree, there are some people who seem to forget what is actually happening when 2 people get married, and turn the whole event into an OTT drama.
I would also say that providers are shocking in what they charge people.
But, as has always been the case, some people have always spent vast amounts of money, some people have always got married for the price of the legal certification, and most people fit in the vast chasm between those two.

I had a lovely city wedding, registry office with a fab gastro pub/hotel for the reception. Less than 25 of us in total, no kids except my own 2, great food, plenty of booze, it was a wonderful day. We were especially happy and our guests all said it was a fabulous day because they were so well looked after.
We didn't ask for any gifts or have a cheesey poem asking for money.

All cost about £9k for absolutely everything from save the date cards to our breakfast meal the morning after.

No bridezilla behaviour from me, no hen do, no bridesmaids, no bullshit.

However, I'm willing to admit that because I was 42 at the time, I'm just past the bullshit of putting on a show. I think if I'd got married in my 20's, it would have been bigger because my life etc was different then but I'm pretty sure the debt would have outlasted any twat I dated in my 20's!