Wedding lunacy

[TheAmusedQuail]

I just don't get throwing money at weddings. Marriage is the important bit. Not the getting married.

The dress, the suit, diamond rings, bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girls, pageboys, button holes, bouquet, wedding reception, tablescapes (WTAF), favours, DJ, stag, hen, hair, makeup. Not to mention bridezillas and almost completely detached grooms. It's like a one woman celebration with the man just signing on the dotted line.

I've seen so many weddings where a fortune was spent and 4, 5, 6 years later the couple are either unhappily married or have split up.

WHY as a culture do we participate in this craziness?

Quite. Unless spending of large amounts of money on stuff - whether a fast car, interior decor, a horse or designer clothes - is going to force you into penury, why not? A wedding at least is a rare opportunity to bring your friends and family together in one place to celebrates one of life's key events

@TheAmusedQuail

Completely agree. But I think it represents something worse than that.
That fairy tale that girls are fed. That they must look pretty and perfect to please a man. That we need a man to make our lives complete.

That we are tied to that man when, a few years later he becomes abusive or cheats.
I think we need a societal shift away from the ideal of marriage as it traps so many women.

It’s based on a misogynistic religious ethos.

You sound like an absolute ray of sunshine, OP. Maybe a great big party would cheer you up?

People are bonkers not only weddings but birthdays, and gender reveals.Most can't afford it they get into debt.... I guess we live in a world where you need to please people more then yourselves.

I would love if people turned their anger toward the suppliers who add an extra zero to their price when told its a wedding. Bands charging 3000 when they'll play in the pub for 600. Makeup artists charging 80-100 per face when their usual rate is 40! Hotels charging 80-100 for a meal that is 45 at the Christmas Party Night!

You might be right, OP.
I had the wedding I wanted, the friends I wanted, the dress I wanted, the cake I wanted, the sit-down dinner I wanted - most of all, I had my beloved, a dashing Naval officer pilot.
I paid for my perfect wedding all by myself.
My dashing Naval officer pilot was f**king the enlisted woman in his squadron the entire time he was engaged and married to me.
He lost command because of it.
Even the dashing ones are losers.

Really? How odd.

I don’t know anyone who has divorced within a few years, and I don’t know the wedding budget for anyone’s wedding other than my own. You know many people with whose budgets you’re familiar who have divorced within a few years?

What an unusual experience you’re having.

I think you unreasonable to judge how someone wants to celebrate their wedding. Just because you think is a waste of money, doesnt mean it is to them.

I had a largish wedding (70 day guests, 110 evening guests). About £15k all in. 10 years ago.
I had a church wedding then reception at a venue. We centred our wedding around family esp as my DH family live abroad. It cost what it cost and I was lucky my dad had a wedding fund for me.
10 years later I'm 100% happy we did have a big wedding as it was the last time people were together before some elderly relatives started to pass. Everyone is forever grareful for that

I thought this! Just let people enjoy things, it’s not exactly baffling that people prioritise different expenses and experiences. I had a not-cheap, but not eye wateringly expensive wedding, 6 years ago, and I regret nothing. We had a fucking fantastic day surrounded by everyone we love and people had a great time, what’s not to love? I feel the same about (nearly!) every wedding we’re invited to, unless they involve significant cost for us as guests, I just love weddings!

ETA. I also love that when people have tiny weddings we’re not invited to due to cost or numbers or whatever. They’re doing what makes sense to them and what makes them happy, isn’t that all we want for our loved ones?

My wedding cost under £60, two witnesses, out for a meal after and back home and in bed by 8pm (we had a newborn and very young child!). Its all a bit of a blur because i was freshly postpartum, but i’m glad we did it that way. The thought of spending ££££££ on a wedding sends shudders down my spine. Plus the thought of being the center of attention all day, i’d hate that! But each to their own. I’ll gladly be involved in/get excited about someone elses big wedding if it makes someone happy. I am slightly judging (to me the cost is just ridiculous!) but its up to them what they (over)spend on!

Well i wanted something different and not casual. Obviously i dont intend to marry again (fingers crossed but anything can happen) so wanted to have a special day. If i had money to spend on a luxury reception i would, but we had to be realistic so didnt go crazy and had to do a lot of things ourselves (like my wedding bouquet, table centre pieces etc etc). I dont regret it, but i would if i had to go in debt or spent “house deposit” money on it.
my brother is getting married this year, there will be a nice decorated church, wedding dress, and lunch/dinner after, without conventional reception. And its also a great idea.

I don’t get people who:

• buy new cars every 2 years
• buy a new handbag each season
• waste their money on coffee in Costa etc
• overspend at Christmas

but I just let them get on with it. Same with weddings. You don’t need to get what others like

I had a very big wedding. It was so much fun. It wasn’t formal, but it cost a lot. Lots of elements to it. But I had a lot to spend and it was epic. That was my choice. Pretty sure my guests enjoyed it too.

If people have the money and want a big wedding fair enough.

I think the problem is that it’s become ‘aspirational’, so lots of people go into huge debt for a wedding. That puts enormous pressure on the marriage from the beginning. I knew someone who wanted a fancy wedding no matter what. Didn’t matter that the fiancé had more red flags than a Soviet Union parade or that they were broke. They put the wedding on credit cards and got a loan. She was incredibly stressed because of the repayments every month, plus the marriage wasn’t great either. A couple of years later they were separated and she was still repaying the loan.

When we got married, we knew we wanted something small, but everything seemed 10 times the price if it had the word ‘wedding’ attached. I made my own bouquet and had a Monsoon dress I found in the sales. I just couldn’t justify spending thousands on things like that.

Everyone as their own spending priorities and although having things such as ponies or picture artists wasn’t on my list of priorities when I got married, I love going to a wedding with all the extra bits.
My wedding was 2018 and quite fancy but we pulled in a lot of favours and paid heavily discounted prices for other things. We were lucky but if not and would have spent a lot more of it wasn’t for these things.

Think we spent £36k ish on our wedding, 60 guests. Still to this day it was the best day of our lives and we still get people saying how much fun it was!! Each to their own

Hen and stag dos abroad are one of the things I would tax the flights for them heavily, or by proxy.

I agree it has been upscaled far too much, all I would add is that the increase in expense and expectation is not confined to weddings. Indeed if I wanted to see reduced spend on events, weddings would be well down the list. Proms, Valentines Day, to name two that would be higher up.

If the primary purpose of your wedding is to show off how amazing you are to all and sundry, you probably aren't cut out for selfless devoted lifelong love to your spouse.

I had a moderately splashy wedding, small by Irish standards with 50 people but no expense spared on the guest oriented things like food and wine and a good DJ. Wedding party well taken care of, etc. A fair amount spent but we could afford it. We separated 10 years afterwards but in no way do I consider it a waste of money. Everyone had a great time, friends got to meet friends and it was a lovely occasion. I have been at both more modest weddings and far more elaborate ones and can't really see any relationship between the kind of wedding and the longevity of the marriage. People are far more complicated than that!

Humans like shiny things and social events.

Some people have loads of money so it doesn’t matter but for any normal person to spend £10k plus on one day is lunacy when you think of what the cash could otherwise do. I think most do it because it’s what’s expected now and ‘everyone’ does it.

This is such a miserable attitude, I hate this reverse snobbery around weddings! Having a big do doesn’t have to mean you’re showing off. A wedding is a once in a lifetime (hopefully!) experience, and so therefore some people choose to go all out and make it the best day they can for themselves and their guests. Life is about making memories and having experiences and if people spend their money on a big wedding then that’s up to them, I don’t get why people are so judgy about it! It’s literally none of your business how other people choose to spend their money.

We went to a flashy barn venue type wedding in June last year... was fine as weddings go. The food was amazing. But the costs were astronomical - flowers alone were £4,000 . It just felt such a waste.

We went to another in a very similar venue in September, it was soooo "identikit" that we get both mixed up in our heads.

It struck us that they'd both paid so much for a "unique" experience, but it ended up just the same in a very slightly different place.

Each to their own and it's all relative but I agree spending £00,000s on a wedding and not having a house deposit or getting into loads of debt doesn't seem like a good idea to me 🤷🏼‍♀️

I agree, we spent thousands on the wedding we thought we were supposed to have, inviting people we didn’t want to because his parents wanted them invited, or because we’d been to their wedding. We should have saved that and put it into a house.