Did I read this right that your mom and family was paying for the reception, and his side wasn’t? And his father made his own invitations to an event he wasn’t paying for?
The necessary statement would be “Nobody who isn’t on MY invitation list gets in to the reception. I hope YOUR guests don’t mind hanging out on the sidewalk.”
Yep, you read it right. He actually asked us to have the extra invitations printed for him. We refused both because it would have cost a ton of extra money, and because we didn’t want any more than 70 people coming. In the end, we had 10 or 20 extra invitations printed for him (I don’t remember which), stating that was it - that was all the extra he was getting. Then he called us, after we had told him we had the extra printed for him, and said, “Oh, you don’t need to do that. I went ahead and had them printed myself,” then refused to tell us how many. We heard through the family grapevine that it was at least 150, but closer to 300.
I would have loved to have had a bouncer or something at that wedding. Particularly because he invited not only all the people he sent the invites to, but also made it clear that their entire families were welcome as well. Fortunately, most of them live in India and weren’t able to make arrangements in time to get over to the States. But an additional 70 were. Of those 70, I think nearly half were extended family members who hadn’t been invited by us or his dad, but whose family members who received the invitation his dad sent and had invited them. It was a complete nightmare. We requested that he chip in, but he never did. We also asked that he un-invite some people, but he refused. Then he planned a party for two nights before the wedding and sent out additional invitations, telling everyone that me, my entire family, and my husband would be there, plus all of our friends. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell us about the party until after we had already made plans, and insisted we break those plans to attend. We didn’t, thank God. Like I said, it was a total, huge, big nightmare.
But our honeymoon was lovely.
All in all, our wedding (with almost 100 guests) was about $5000. I was going for ‘fun’ more than ‘formal’ as a theme, so a lot of the pomp got left by the wayside. I was an assistant for a wedding coordinator years ago, so I already knew a lot of tricks to keep costs down.
License plus cost of JoP – $85.00
Blood Test – $28.00
We got married in the reception hall, which includes tables and chairs – $175.00
Dress (online) and alterations – $340
Invites (online) – $250 (though I created the maps and RSVP cards and printed them on my PC at home)
I made my own headpiece and veil.
I made the ring bearer’s pillow.
I made my bouquet, as well as the bridesmaids, and the throwaway.
I did all the decorative floral arrangements myself, as well as the centerpieces on the tables, (goldfish in rose bowls which the guests got to take home afterwards, a big hit with the kids.)
I did my own hair and make-up, though I did pay for a massage to calm my nerves the day before my wedding.
On my father’s side of the family, (he’s the youngest of 9) I have 2 restaurant owners, 1 caterer/professional cook, 1 baker and a carpenter. I purchased the food; they helped prepare it and provided roasters, serving bowls and what not. My husband’s aunt also helped with this. One of my aunts offered to make my wedding cake as her gift to us, a beautiful 3 tiered concoction that would have cost me $500 if I had bought it at her store. I also needed a set of sturdy wooden stairs to walk directly up onto the stage area where we were getting married, and my dad came through with that the day of the wedding. (He then sold the stairs to another relative who offered him $100 for them – a profit of about $75.00 he claims :))
I also bought gowns for my bridesmaids and flower girl and paid for the tux rentals for my husband’s groomsmen. This was our gift to them, and peace of mind for me. Money well spent.
My stepfather owns a liquor store; therefore we had an open bar.
My brothers work at a pop distributor, and brought 13 cases of pop up with them.
Instead of the traditional rehearsal dinner, I gathered everyone together the night before to decorate the reception hall and have a potluck dinner.
My great aunt JoAnn, who creates tiny little crocheted collectibles, made my cake top. A 2” high bride(with red hair) and groom.
My family was a huge part of my wedding, and they would have had it no other way. My wedding day wasn’t perfect, but it is memorable.
Everything, together with the rings, music, motel rooms and what have you… was about $5000, which was affordable for us.
Ours was somewhere around $2500, 25 years ago. The main thing we did was decide to invite our friends, not our relatives (except very close ones.) Neither of us particularly liked our relatives anyway, and inviting one meant it would explode.
The reason why we did this was that all our friends would have to travel (the wedding was in Philadelphia, but the friends were from our colleges, and all our friends had left college to have jobs.) We wanted to actually talk to our friends, not lose them in a sea of obnoxious relatives. So we got the Ethical Culture Society in Philadelphia, invited everyone to a nice pre-wedding dinner (would be the rehearsal dinner, but we were small enough to include everyone who was in town) had a nice reception, and then everyone came to her parents house for a party. We rejoined them later on. Everyone had a good time, we were able to talk to everyone, and no one but the relatives was unhappy.
Wouldn’t have done a thing differently.
My wedding cost about $2K, and that includes last-m inute airfare to Vegas. I don’t believe in big weddings (for me, anyway) because I think that money can be spent on more important things. Like houses, bills, education, whatever. But I don’t begrudge a big wedding. Especially if I’m invited!!
Sylverone, your wedding sounds like it was beautiful!
Tasteless, true. I do think there was jealousy involved. It was a VERY stylish and funky wedding. The bride and groom are both really into alternative/goth style but she is also obsessed with highbrow designer crap and art-deco 20’s-style stuff, they had a fairly well-known indy “punk-a-billy” type band play, etc. I think the gothy people were jealous of the style and thus attacked the spending, while the non-gothy people were jealous of the spending and thus criticized the style. I guess you can’t win for losing…
Yowza - I got as much generic stuff for my wedding as I could find. The only thing I really went all-out on was my wedding dress, but I still got it for a very, very low price! I can’t imagine trying to do a brand-name designer type wedding - that would cost a small fortune!
Most of our stuff is fairly inexpensive - the reception is the part that’s costing the most. But I made my flower girl’s headpiece for $15 (could’ve made it for less if I knew how to shape the wire myself), our ring pillow was like $15 (would’ve made it myself, but it was silver shantung and beautiful, and I couldn’t find the material anywhere - originally, we were going to have the ring bearer carry the Simpsons Season Three Box Set, as mr. avabeth proposed over one of the episodes, but that got shot down by my horrified mother and sister, so we went with the most untraditional ring pillow we could find), our toasting glasses are $12 from The Knot, and I’ve tried to get everything else fairly cheap. We’re using a friend for a photographer, but she’s semi-pro, so we’re getting her for $1000 - she’s already shot my bridal portraits, and did a gorgeous job, so I’m not too worried about the wedding.
Honestly, we didn’t go into the whole thing expecting to spend this much. My original budget was $10K, and had my parents let us do the Sunday brunch thing, I really think we could’ve stayed under it. So I don’t feel too bad about most things, considering they’re the ones who’ve been wanting to get the more expensive stuff for the reception (yes, I’m fighting a bit of guilt still, can you tell?). I think no matter what, our wedding will be fun. We just want to get married and have a good time. That’s why our rehearsal dinner will be a casual karaoke night.
The best wedding I’ve ever been to was my best friend’s wedding four years ago - at a bed and breakfast in West Virginia. I don’t know how much they spent, but I think they managed to do it fairly inexpensively. They hired an Irish band - some classmates and professors of ours from college - and my favorite memory is singing our alma mater in harmony in the middle of the reception, and then breaking right into the fight song at the top of our lungs. Those are the memories that money can’t buy - and we’re hoping that our guests walk away with at least one of those memories.
Ava
Our wedding was under $5000, probably under $3000. We didn’t intend to do things cheaply, just simply. Neither of us likes a big show, and we definitely didn’t want to be in the center of one!
So, a local baker did about ten small cheesecakes of all different flavors set on a tiered display. My mother made my dress out of embroidered silk. (She used to sew professionally.) My husband wore a new suit. We married at Christmas, so most of the decorations were Christmassy. We married at my parents’ house. Only immediate family was invited to the wedding, then the list was extended for the reception, also at my parents’ house. We had a string quartet playing Mozart.
We got lots of compliments on the event, especially the cheesecakes, which were so amazing.