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!!!

The rule was standing I'm the 90s, it might have been around a while. That's just the era I was involved! I only remember because we had a wedding scheduled where both of the couple had the same last name, which was commented on as a coincidence, but was actually because they had been married before to each other! Someone asked how come they could have a church wedding and the vicar explained that the first wedding hadn't been a church one.

This could be true anecdotally...but people with higher education also tend to have higher income/come from affluent families. For my wedding, it was pretty easy to hire a wedding planner; we gave him a high level overview of what we wanted for the reception and he did all the research, planning, etc. He'd present what he considered the top three options for vendors, tabletop/linens/centerpieces, flowers, etc and we'd just choose the one we liked best of the three. It definitely didn't take over our lives and I didn't have any post wedding blues, but we still had what Mumsnet would likely consider an over the top wedding.

See that describes the type who I expect would of always had larger weddings from quite well off families or old money families.

When you have someone a good someone that is who can just say I know what you require I’ve found them, here are three please select. That’s where you’ve managed to outsource all the work.

But when you’ve got Sarah who works in a nursery part time and Tom who installs kitchen having a 35k plus wedding doing all their own planning and searching (or rather Sarah is) when they have two children. It’s debt or mummy and daddy pockets.

Extremely valid point, thanks for differentiating!

The best weddings are the low key ones where it’s about people and having fun, not over the top social media circuses - in my experience those are the marriages that don’t last.

I got married in the early 90s when everyone was having an 'evening do'. I always felt second best to be invited just to an evening do so didn't have one plus we didn't have that many friends. We got married at 12 noon, sit down meal and reception at posh hotel then were on the way to our honeymoon by 7pm. H always said he would have like to stay and get drunk with his friends for another few hours - I was just glad to be out of it all! Cost £5k in total - only tried on 3 dresses, bought one of them for £400 plus a cathedral length veil for £95. Marriage lasted 20 years.

I got married in the early 90s when everyone was having an 'evening do'. I always felt second best to be invited just to an evening do so didn't have one

Neither did we. We had a party that started in the early afternoon with the wedding ceremony and ended in the early hours of the next day. Guests could come and go all day as they pleased. We even gained some extras along the way.