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!!!

not miffed at all, you know it's not all about you don't you? Weddings are not the time or the place to have a long chat with the newlyweds 😂

That's what the meet up lunch usually organised the following day is for!

I have been invited to big weddings, I was more than happy to meet up with friends or my cousins. The bride and groom were busy, with friends or having to spend a bit of time with boring old relatives, no one was miffed.

Lots of people have mentioned divorce meaning you couldn't get married in church. In my C of E church in the late 90s they would marry divorcees if the original wedding hadn't also been a church wedding. If you had already had a church wedding it was registry office and a blessing.
I think the Catholic rules are similar but the Catholic church I'm most familiar with is a very relaxed inclusive one with a priest who finds all the loopholes!

I went to a wedding recently where there were posh canapés and reception with champers, followed by a four course meal, followed by a sweet trolley to fill your own sweet bag. An hour later pizza was served, and an ice cream table appeared. On each table there were party favours too.
It’s the party bag generation come of age! What it all had to do with making a commitment to another I can’t fathom.
I did enjoy it, but would have if it had been a knees up with chip butties and beer.

Er no I dont. I think people spend more money, not have it.

I got married on 2010, all diy very few frills doe around 2.5k

I am due to get married again next month. We costed up a DIY wedding and it was about 7k due to the huge jikes in hall rental etc. To have the luxury of a hotel doing it all for me was only £500 more. So it made sense, far less stressful for me!

But it doesn't matter if you spend 2k or 200k as long as you get the day you are happy with.

I have been lucky to have the money to splurge on the things that are important...my photos were crap last time because we went for cheap. This time we have gone for good which costs.

You did you, let others do them.

Does other people's choices really impact on you?

But it doesn't matter if you spend 2k or 200k as long as you get the day you are happy with.

Ain't that the truth!!! 👏👏👏 well said

Yes, I was married before 2000

Thanks for your input. No, others’ choices do not directly impact on me but it is perfectly valid to look at and comment on general changes over time. Last time I looked it’s fine to have an opinion as well, and to seek a bit of perspective by asking others if they perceive the same changes. I will definitely carry on doing me.
btw congrats and I hope your wedding is a fab day! 😊

@Serendipity12 I think it is fine to have an opinion but the righteous "I spent two nickles and a dime on my wedding, and hand made my dress from silk I got off my pet silk worm" tone of this thread is a little patronising! In one group of friends I'm in alone, there have been 5 weddings, each very different to the last with varying amounts of money spent. Doesn't any couple better than the other! Each couple thoroughly enjoyed their day!

Thanks again, I have carefully re-read my original post and really don’t see anything patronising there. I comment on a perceived general trend and wondered whether I was alone in seeing this, also whether my standards way back when in the 90s were a bit low (not speaking up for myself over my ill-fitting meringue etc!). But nothing patronising or personal. And I think other posters are listing their varied experiences and opinions, as well as quoting studies and anecdotes, all really interesting and entertaining. I don’t think there has been a patronising tone? I’m not sure who exactly would be feeling patronised as there is such a wide range of experiences being shared here!

I got married for the first time in 1999 and the style trend then was much less flounce and pomp than the 80s frights I'd seen as a kid. I definitely agree that the "wedding as a Thing" has grown massively for lots of people in recent years when it seemed to have been previously only for the wealthy/high society types. It can be one hell of a circus if people can afford/want that, and more people seem to feel they should be able to have anything they can think of.

There was an explosion in where you could get married, but I think the explosion of things like Cricut machines along with social media made a massive difference too. These contributed greatly to the huge deal around, for example, personalising and/or having signs for everything.

I got married last winter for the 2nd time and was astonished at just how much Stuff was available - some incredibly affordable and lots of it lovely, if not remotely eco friendly. I didn't go down the route of things like Bridesmaid proposal boxes etc. Did find it interesting though that I regularly had to give myself a talking to about not giving in to Wedding Envy when looking for ideas for a budget-but-lovely wedding!

Not least because there was a boom in products and 'financial advisers' tied to estate agents and financial institutions were incentivised to sell those products. Hands up who had an endowment mortgage missold to them that would never have never had enough in it when it matured to pay off the mortgage? Hands up who ended up in negative equity when the housing market bottomed out?

At that time there was still some respect for institutions such as banks and building societies so we didn't have cause to be suspicious. Since then we've had so many financial scandals we are a lot more circumspect.

I remember in 1992 when the interest rates soared thinking I would just need to hand in my keys and walk away from my house. It being easier to get a mortgage was not necessarily a good thing and its the reason we have such stringent affordability checks (arguably a bit to stringent) these days.

I am all for a couple having the wedding they want, but please do not dictate to me what to wear. I am an adult and have dressed my self suitably for dozens of weddings in the past, I don't need your help now, thank you.

Haha yeah I attended one where I was given a pick of three dresses as a normal quest. Then I had to wear it in front of the bridal family to be preaproved. Then it was decided to be too boobie and given a vest top to wear with the dress they picked 🤣 read I did not wear the vest top.

I got an archbishops special licence to marry in a church that was outside either parish ....it's a beautiful document I think it was about £20.

Yep we had an endowment nightmare and are still paying the mortgage taken in the late 80s no hope of taking it easy in our retirement as we can't retire.

Wow, I'm in NZ and divorcees could get married in an anglican church in the 1970s.

Fewer people get married and they’re older so it is. ‘Bigger deal’. but it’s not always better. Your wedding sounds perfect.

We got married just before Christmas. Pub hotel wedding as not Christians so didn't want to make false promises in a church. 17 guests. Best day ever.

That is beyond the pale. If I was told what I was to wear at someone's wedding I would be declining the invitation (with pleasure, not regret).

The world's gone mad!

Things have definitely changed

Opening up “venues” for weddings = huge upselling/up-levelling

Lots of extras are relatively cheap so people add them. More marketing, bridal magazines, blogs, websites and then social media have given people more ideas and they are getting married and excited and extra.

Far more people live away from their home town, and have friends/family that moved away. I don’t care who you are, you can’t invite people to travel more than 40 miles if you are only doing sandwiches in a village hall.

Every event is more than it used to be. It’s not specific to weddings.

I used to be a waitress for a wedding catering company back in the late 80s. This was quite a fancy company as having caterers was quite unusual then. Most of the time it was in a function room of a hotel or the town hall. I do remember one that was in a marquee in the grounds of the brides home.
Most of my family weddings were at the church (as it was then or the registrars office and, wrongly, that was seen as cheap or that one of you was divorced) and then a social club or village hall.
I think the best example of an old fashioned family wedding is a in the last episode of Cradle to the Grave. Family doing the catering, drunk aunties dancing and the bride and groom leaving in a car all decorated and with tin cans tied on the back.

As for money and house buying, we bought our first house in 2002 with a 5% deposit and two of us working full time but on minimum wage. When we came to remortgage 5 years later we really struggled as they had tightened up the affordability checks!

My elderly neighbour, now deceased, got married in the 1950s after a wartime-ish courtship. She didn't have a dress; instead they each purchased similar grey flannel suits which they wore for years.

They were married after the regular Sunday service with whoever felt like sticking around in attendance. Her own mum did not attend as she was home roasting the chicken for lunch. After lunch with a few family and friends they drove off on honeymoon for two weeks, to the Lakes and other areas.

They were hard workers though - both professional musicians - and bought a house for cash a couple of years later, at around age 30. Never had a mortgage. She lived to age 90 in the same house! 2 BR, one bath. Raised two boys who both shared the same small second bedroom until they graduated from uni. Both of the sons are very prosperous now.

I miss her and her interesting stories about being a jazz player in the 1940s.

We don't accept invitations to evening dos or most receptions any more. Too boring. We get dressed up, attend the ceremony and then ta ta! Take ourselves out to dine if we feel like it but don't give up 12 hours of a precious weekend.

Especially since most of them have lived together or even had kids for yonks. What's the big deal at that point?

I got married in 2004 and it cost around 15k - it was a fairly fancy wedding and we had 80 guests so we could go to a lovely top end hotel in London for the reception. I’m an only child and my parents have good money so they let me choose whatever dress I wanted (ended up with the first one I tried and it actually was about 1k), and basically gave me free reign for the wedding. I felt like we had everything we wanted but it was based off about 5 wedding magazines because that was what was available!
My dad did baulk at what I wanted to spend on flowers and said no, and in the end the lady who did the church flowers did the hotel ones and they were so beautiful, and half the price.
We had a hen do in London with lots of friends and I felt a bit OTT as I also had a spa weekend with my three best friends.
Didn’t do favours as I knew no one would be bothered by them. Did have an amazing cake. We splurged more on food and wine but we had an afternoon wedding so only needed one meal.

It was the most amazing day and I wouldn’t change a thing.

But the truth was, we were just exposed to way fewer options back then. There wasn’t Pinterest or insta so you basically looked at a few magazines to get ideas and went to a wedding fair and that was about it!