[Argento]

Alrighty I have a question for all of you.

I'll be getting married in July (got engaged on the fourth, a month ago) and I was curious about wedding costs. My fiancee's parents are what you may call...cheap. So my question is how much did you married members pay for your weddings? This will be a summer wedding, on a Friday in July (if that helps).

[World Leader Pretend]

Next year?

[Kickaha]

Uh, too much.

Save the money, elope, and throw a nice party for half the cost.

If parents or relatives gripe that they're being gypped, let them pay for the difference.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Save the money, elope, and throw a nice party for half the cost.

Ding ding ding! More like a tenth of the cost or even less, in some cases.

My wife and I eloped and we couldn't be happier about it. Of course, eloping isn't for everyone.

[digitalAngel]

we got a wedding package in vegas. there are a lot of nice ones there in all different price ranges. what's nice is getting everything done with one call.. flowers, cake, hotel, etc.

my wedding was at the Aladdin. we got the honeymoon suite for 3 nights. limo pick up and drop off from airport. wedding ceremony with lots of flowers and an awesome reception package with champagne, great food we got to pick and a huge 3 tier wedding cake.. it was tasty! we got spa treatments and i got my make-up and hair was included. the package was between $6000-7000. great deal and no stress.

just remember that the wedding is all about the bride and the groom and don't get stressed out trying to make sure everyone else is happy

congrats on the engagement!

[Stone Of Love]

My father inlaw didn't drink. That meant that I had to pay the bar tab. I think it was $3500. We're talking 11 years ago....

I like the eloping idea a lot now that I look back on it! LOL

[Engine Joe]

You don't want to know how much we spent on our wedding/reception/etc.

But the costs are really up to you and your fianceé. What's important to you to have? Where do you want to do it? How many people? These things have a huge impact on what you spend.

[Dorian Gray]

I'm not married, but the average wedding costs £15,000 in the UK. That's about $28,500 at today's exchange rate, which is, frankly, obscene.

[Trumpetman]

My wife and I eloped as well and we are so happy we did. No nagging, no family guilt issues, no insane cost expectations.

Nick

[murbot]

My wedding in '97 was about $25,000. My wife's parents paid for it. My mom and dad chipped in some homemade wine.

If I was paying for it, we'd have eloped FOR SURE.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray That's about $28,500 at today's exchange rate, which is, frankly, obscene.

That's about right for the average wedding in the USA, sadly.

[Engine Joe]

Originally Posted by Brad That's about right for the average wedding in the USA, sadly.

Probably right, and then it'll vary by geography. It isn't easy to have a wedding in NYC for less than that price - venue rentals alone will eat up a large chunk of that - so the "average" wedding cost here is much higher.

[Argento]

Alright I appreciate all the help so far. I'm going to just say that eloping is out of the deal for a couple of reasons. One, my soon to be wife would probably die, and two, my mother would kill me (I owe her a wedding for everything she's done for me, also my mom is going to help pay my student loans down etc, so I realllly owe her a wedding)

Now here's what we want in terms of a wedding. It'll be a friday evening wedding. There will be an open bar. We're going to invite about 300 hundred people or so but here's the thing. I'm from Minnesota and the wedding will be in Indiana, how many guests of mine can I expect to attend? Also, what percent of her friends/family are going to attend?

[sunrain]

We made ours a small family affair where everyone helped out with food, etc.. My mother (a professional seamstress) made my wife's dress. I designed and printed invites and thank yous. We splurged on renting a nice beach house as a location and vacation spot. Our photographer was also another splurge.

By focusing on the things we wanted rather than the things we were *supposed* to have, we spent just under $9000 (60 in attendance) for the entire thing.

Just figure out your priorities and say f-off to the rest.

[Wyatt]

Originally Posted by Argento I'm from Minnesota and the wedding will be in Indiana, how many guests of mine can I expect to attend? Also, what percent of her friends/family are going to attend?

Don't expect much more than your very closest of friends to attend. Go ahead and invite everyone you want to invite, though. Assuming she's from Indiana, you can expect most of the people she invites to be there, at least those who live nearby.

Do you guys have a location picked out yet? If not, you might check out the White River Gardens in Indianapolis. It's a beautiful wedding facility. We're going to try to get it for our wedding, but I don't know if we'll be able to fit it in our budget. We should be able to save on a lot of things though: We're not having a crazy reception, I know tons of photographers who would do it fairly cheaply, and we're only inviting family and close friends.

[Engine Joe]

Originally Posted by Argento Now here's what we want in terms of a wedding. It'll be a friday evening wedding. There will be an open bar. We're going to invite about 300 hundred people or so but here's the thing. I'm from Minnesota and the wedding will be in Indiana, how many guests of mine can I expect to attend? Also, what percent of her friends/family are going to attend?

The usual rule of thumb with out-of-towners is around 35% attendance. It'll vary by family, obviously - the closer everyone is, the more likely they'll come. In my case, it was insane: we invited 170 out of towners -- and 100 of them came. Which was really gratifying, it was wonderful to see them all. I was stunned they were willing to pay NYC hotel prices just to see us. Meant a lot. On the other hand, I had to feed far more people than I had previously expected! Ouch!

Open bar can be pricey, but it's the classy thing to do unless everyone really knows that you cannot possibly afford it. Just one of those things. You might want to look at http://www.theknot.com - they have a decent budgeting webpage which gets into ranges you can expect for stuff. I also liked their to-do list; kept my now-wife and I on our toes.

[SKMDC]

When making the plans, don't say the word wedding, I think all these people have a "special" rate sheet when the word comes up, generally twice as much.

I was just at one from a fabulously wealthy family whose daughter (my wife's second cousin) absolutely did not want to "put on the ritz." They had the reception in a public park (they hired for the day) and the kids played on the swings while the grown-ups ate (hog roast) and danced. It was pretty fun.

[Engine Joe]

Originally Posted by SKMDC When making the plans, don't say the wedding, I think all these people have a "special" rate sheet when the word comes up, generally twice as much.

QFT.

And on a very closely related note buy your cake from a bakery you like, a local place. Don't use a wedding cake baker. A bakery tends to chare $1.50 - $3.00 per person. A wedding cake baker tends to start at $5 and go up to $16 per head. And the cake isn't any better.

[Argento]

The reception will be at the Oak Hill Mansion. My fiancee is family friends with the owner so we're getting a special price.

We have checked out tietheknot.com, and my fiancee often times goes to Barnes and Noble and takes notes on wedding books there. I guess the biggest problem I have is that her parents are divorced and they have both remarried and both of them make a very good income. Also she is the only girl in her family, and step family so they don't ever really have to spend much on a wedding again (they are very traditional). The problem I have is they use her to do just about everything whether its helping them run errands, or help raise their youngest child (her mom's son), and they're only going to give her 7500 each, totally 15,000.

Now my parents were willing to help with the wedding outside the grooms dinner but my mom gave us a second choice. The second being that she would pay down the interest on my student loans while I'm in school and help pay them off after I got out so we could afford a house in the near future. We obviously took her up on the latter.

This means that my family will be paying about 8,000 dollars when all is said an done (grooms dinner, loan payback) and they're only two people who's income is considerably less. My parents then will be paying 4,000 per parent, while her 4 parents will only be paying 3750 per. This is what drives me fucking nuts.

Sorry got a little off topic there. The other thing is the wedding date is the 6th of July which is the week of the fourth (obviously) do you think that'll help or hurt attendence?

[Engine Joe]

Originally Posted by Argento My parents then will be paying 4,000 per parent, while her 4 parents will only be paying 3750 per. This is what drives me fucking nuts.

I say just be happy they're all willing to throw in. My wife's parents threw in $10K, and they're college professors - it was a lot of money for them. My father, who is pretty well off, gave us $3K. You just can't let it stick in your craw. It's not about the $$ in the end. (we ended up paying for most of the wedding ourselves, by the way)

The other thing is the wedding date is the 6th of July which is the week of the fourth (obviously) do you think that'll help or hurt attendence?

Cuts both ways - people will have the time off for the holiday, but they also might have their "annual" plans for the weekend. I would expect that will increase attendance.

[SKMDC]

Some cultures spend as much on a wedding as sending a kid to college. (and they save for it the same way) go to a fancy Mexican wedding (in Mexico) and it's catered for three days of festivities.
I had a friend who was going (they broke up) to have a wedding in Germany and they were going to rent a bleeding castle for two days!
It blows my mind.

[Sauvblanc]

Our wedding in a small town in Australia was probably a little more than ~$10K US. This included a "reception dinner" which was a BBQ in my in-law's backyard, a wine tour, a rental car for a week and a week in a cottage by the ocean, our flights to Australia (we live in Los Angeles), her dress and my tux.

It would potentially have been cheaper if we had decided not to have it on New Year's Eve (because of staff costs, we had to pay for overtime), but all in all a pretty good deal.

We saved a lot by 1) having the wedding in a small town; 2) doing a lot of stuff ourselves or asking friends to help; 3) getting preferred rates because we knew the owner/manager/whatever (eg we had the reception in an art gallery, because the director is a good friend, he gave us a discount on the gallery rental); 4) it was an outdoor wedding. We tried to keep it simple. It was wonderfully laid-back and heaps of fun-lots of people said it was the best wedding they'd ever been to

A total antithesis to our wedding was my cousin's recent wedding. OMG, what excess! Wedding planner. 3 photographers. Reception dinner for 40 people @$80/head. 350 guests. Ceremony in the the oldest church in Chicago with 14 attendants. Reception in the Chicago MOCA with a 10 piece band. Dinner included salmon steak AND filet mignon-on the same plate! Open bar all night and insane amounts of finger foods throughout.

I'd guess it cost upwards of $70K. For one night. Bloody hell. Not sure who paid, though. If I had that sort of budget, I'd still spend $10K and put the rest towards a down payment on a house.

My advice? Keep it simple! Do whatever you can yourself. And-as mentioned before- don't mention "wedding"-it does jack up the price substantially.

Good luck!

[kretara]

I got married in 98 and we had to pay for almost everything. My in-laws paid for the bar tab (~2000) and my wifes wedding gown and my Mother got us first class tickets to Europe on Swiss Air and flew in about 10 people.

We had the usual chruch wedding and we rented out the Museum of Transportation in Brookline MA. We had the whole affair catered, photographed and DJ'd. There were about 100 people. We spent a little over $15,000 and that was with me forcing my wife to cut back quite a bit. Our initial estimate was $30,000.

A few years have gone by now and my wife has said how stupid she was to have wasted that much money (other than our $15,000 honeymoon which was great) on a Cinderella fantasy. She now wishes that we would have eloped.

[eventhorizon]

Originally Posted by Argento Alrighty I have a question for all of you. I'll be getting married in July (got engaged on the fourth, a month ago) and I was curious about wedding costs. My fiancee's parents are what you may call...cheap. So my question is how much did you married members pay for your weddings? This will be a summer wedding, on a Friday in July (if that helps).

1. Don't get married.

2. If you have to, elope.

[World Leader Pretend]

Am I the only one here that thinks the whole traditional wedding is stupid? I mean, your wedding is supposed to be about you and your partner, not about the money. If I was throwing a $50,000 wedding, I would be feeling nervous the whole time about the wedding living up to the cost. Personally, I would save the money and spend a bit looser during the first year or two of the marriage, when the fun happens.

I'm really appalled by all the people who don't have the money going out of their way to make their big day grander than it needs to be. Buy a new car or make a house payment!

Maybe it's because I'm too young and I'll see things differently when I'm engaged.

Eloping sounds like a good alternative, but you should still spend some money to hold a reception and have a nice honeymoon. Mostly, parts of the adult world baffles me.

[kretara]

Originally Posted by World Leader Pretend Am I the only one here that thinks the whole traditional wedding is stupid? I mean, your wedding is supposed to be about you and your partner, not about the money.

Wrong.
A wedding is about the girl living out a Cinderella story that our society has led her to believe is the only 'right' way to get married.
It is nothing more than a fairy tale story.

I certainly wish that the wedding was more about the two people and bringing their families together and much less about how well one can entertain hundreds of guests, how fashionable one can be and how much money you can make people believe that you can have.

I don't know what I will do when my girls get old enough for a wedding. Good thing I have ~14 years to worry about this.

[torifile]

Ours cost about $10k and that was cheap. It took a lot of work for us, but it was worth it. We designed our own invitations and had them printed at a local printer. We made all the envelopes by hand, etc. Her mom baked the cakes. If we hadn't done that, it would have been much more. Hopefully it's a once in a lifetime thing, so try to do what will make you (or her) happy within the money you have to spend. Don't go into debt for it but don't be cheap either.

[Engine Joe]

Originally Posted by World Leader Pretend Am I the only one here that thinks the whole traditional wedding is stupid? I mean, your wedding is supposed to be about you and your partner, not about the money. If I was throwing a $50,000 wedding, I would be feeling nervous the whole time about the wedding living up to the cost.

Well... all I can say is that my wedding was a blast. Surrounded by friends and family who (for that one day at least) were just happy and happy to be around you, and I was happy to share the moment with all of them. It was quite simply wonderful. And we had to spend a decent amount of the wedding (mostly due to prices in NYC), but once the day came, we stopped thinking about it and just treated it like a party.

The most important thing is to NOT get caught up in details. The way we saw it, no one is ever going to remember if you used the "right" china and silverware or if you had a "color scheme." it's that stuff that gets wedding planning into ugly sick morass bridezilla territory, and none of it matters?

Do most people even remember the details of weddings they've attended as guests? Or more accurately, what details to people usually remember?

We did what we wanted to, and had a blast. And, as a result, most (if not all!) of our guests did too.

[kretara]

Originally Posted by Engine Joe Do most people even remember the details of weddings they've attended as guests? Or more accurately, what details to people usually remember?

I've been to lots of weddings. I only remember the one where the brides family had 25 kegs of beer set up for everyone to enjoy.

I don't even remember my own wedding. I had a massive allergy attack the day before. I took something like 4 times the normal dose of sudafed plus 2 other meds to just keep the allergies in mild control (yes, I have very bad allergies). I was practically comatose during the ceremony.

[Engine Joe]

Originally Posted by kretara I've been to lots of weddings. I only remember the one where the brides family had 25 kegs of beer set up for everyone to enjoy.

And there's my point exactly!

Don't get caught up in trying to make things just right. Don't waste your time (or money) on stuff that just doesn't matter - to anyone.

What do people tell us they remember about our wedding? Four things: (1) the officiant (she was really good); (2) my morning suit (a relative rarity at US weddings); (3) the venue where we had our reception (it was a pretty crazy place); and (4) the fact that we had a chocolate wedding cake (it was almost jet black). No one remembers the food (they'd remember if it was terrible, perhaps), the table settings, the flowers, the runner, the name cards, the favors, the bridesmaid dresses, the music, the wine... any of that rubbish.