I have never fantasized about a big wedding. I really don’t like 99% of wedding dresses I see. My first wedding (not surprisingly) cost $50. I hate formal weddings and I cringe at the cost.
My second wedding will be more expensive, mainly because I’d like to combine the wedding with a honeymoon (which I didn’t take the first time) and elope somewhere. Either a sweet wedding on a sandy beach, or the tackiest wedding I can think of in Vegas. I understand they have a wide variety of wedding chapels there.
At any rate, the guest list will be limited to my sister and my best friend, if they want to travel with us. Maybe I’ll insist they dress up as Klingons and we’ll see if we can get married in the Star Trek Hilton.
i think going into debt for just the wedding in ridiculous. i could see the parents, of husband and wife, coming up with down payment on a house and then having an inexpensive wedding in the house. but to blow a lot on just the event is absurd. almost as dumb as spending a lot on funerals.
Wildest Bill, here’s a solution you may want to consider:
When I was in college, one of my roommates (from Taiwan) told me that in China/Taiwan, the groom’s family pays for the wedding. With that in mind, his parents were encouraging all the sons to marry western women and the daughters to marry Chinese men, thus avoiding having to pay for any of them. At the time, my rommate’s gf was Taiwanese, so their plan didn’t seem to be working out that well.
i am one of four daughters, the oldest, the next oldest siater is engaged, that wedding will be three years away.(best guess)
i do not know what kind of weddding i want, but i do know that i am not going to soak my parents for a $40G wedding bill, i will make sure that the fellow i marry knows
this. i am fairly sure my parents will offer to help, if that is what they want. i wil do all the planning.
fwfw martha stewart and modern bride are not invited so why should i care what they want! and like lolagranola do not like most of the dresses.
and if you let someone else do all the paying, you are not as involved in the planning. you have much more control when you pay your own way(a no-brainer i know)
mmm… wedding… I was just thinking about flying out to California and seeing what could happen from there.
Seriously, I don’t want a big ceremony, but I do want a great party. Enough of a ceremony so I can wear a dress with a long train and a veil. (I want to be able to conceal the fact that I will be barefoot and laughing hysterically) None of that 400 closest friends bit. If not under fifty people then well under a hundred.
As for paying, since I am planning on marrying an independantly wealthy rock star… nevermind. Like the rest of my life, my parents will probably chip in a bit, but I’m on my own for the most part.
I am a week away from the second wedding I am to participate in as a groomsman. I’ll tell you, being in weddings is really turning me off to the whole concept. It just seems unnecessarily overblown. In both cases the groom’s parents house is the location, and even then all those involved in the planning appeared to be straining under the stress. The first couple (still happily married after 2 years and now 2 kids) were EXTREMELY relieved when the whole ordeal was over.
As the “professional bachelor” in my group of friends, I’m definitely leaning toward Las Vegas if the time ever comes for me. Of course, I say that knowing the girl in question will probably talk me into whatever bridal fantasy she’s been harboring since childhood…
I guess that’s the point. The men often just go with the flow. Until their daughters are engaged, of course…
My wedding was 2 months ago. My husband wanted the “big” wedding, and I wanted to elope. We ended up having a medum sized wedding due to his extensive family living in the area. The problem was that my dad had been unemployed up until 3 months prior, but insisted on paying everything. I decided to have my wedding on the beach. It was free and also the place I was proposed to at. The men wore hawaiian shirts and khakis, and the women wore sun dresses. The flower girl and I were in full-out wedding regalia.
The reception was at my parents house. It was a cake and champagne reception with a few appetizers. We had around 60-80 people there.
total cost= $2600.00
I would have rather had the money for a honeymoon, but it was a beautiful sunset ceremony on Florida shores. I can’t beleive when I hear that someone’s wedding cost over 10,000K. It is rediculous! You get a house down payment out of that! I just didn’t need it…
I didn’t elope, just invited family, and “rented” the community college lobby where my dad is assistant dean. His cooking school did the catering cheap and very professionally. (I think they were graded on it!)
But you’re right, even at that, it was too expensive for a half-day party. I would have been happy to elope, but mom insisted.
An acquaintance of mine had a unique approach for her wedding. She invited a bunch of people over to her house for a cookout. Midway thru the afternoon she announced that it was time for the wedding. She and her sweetie exchanged their vows in front of a JP right there in the yard, then they all went back to partying. I wish I’d thought to do that!
I am my father’s only daughter and he is not exactly hurting in the money department.
Knowing the type of man he is, he would want to have a hell of a celebration for his only daughter. He loves to put together this type of event and fund it, along with drinking all that booze. However, I am not a big wedding fan so here’s what I told him.
If I ever get married, it will be in a small town on the Western Slope of Colorado (Powderhorn ski area to be exact – it’s been my dream for years) at a justice of the peace…I am not religious though my family is. In attendence will only be extremely close family and a best friend or two which I will pay for their trip. I am not big at being a center of attention in that manner so this is perfect for me.
Now, after the wedding and a brief jaunt to have wild sex (aka honeymoon in a mountain town,) have a huge party, western style (no not country)with barbeque, beer, a band, volleyball, horseshoes etc…very casual and a buttload of fun is all I ask. This way your guests can be casual, enjoy a good time and not worry if they spill champagne on their favorite outfit. Also, formal affairs and I do not get along. I would rather poke my eye with a needle than have to wear high heals and a dress that costs thousands of dollars for one day.
I refuse to go the route that step-brother did and have a huge wedding at a church, limos to the country club and only giving your guests two choices of meat. Oh and yes, I have three bridesmaids dresses that are collecting dust – one friend was smart and found outfits for us girls that we can wear on a regular basis. Not going to do that to my friends or sis-in-laws.
This way my father can live out the fantasy that his daughter isn’t a total freak and is wedable (is that even a word?) and party it up, techchick style. I don’t think it will break the bank and I am more than willing to fund such a party myself. Knowing my father though, I wont need to worry about it.
My observation has been that the future success of a marriage is usually inversely proportional to the size of the wedding party. Put another way, is it the person or the party that you’re after.
One of my best friends from college got married last year. His bride was one of those who took an entire year to make sure her wedding would look exactly like every other wedding since the beginning of time. Thing is, she wasn’t really happy about it all, and couldn’t believe the $20 grand they were spending. Her justification? “I’m afraid I’ll get older and regret not having had a big wedding.” WTF?
My mother and I, increasingly birds of a feather as I get older, always add up the cost every time we get a wedding invite. (“There’s a dollar’s worth of postage in this thing,” she’ll say.) We then multiply that by the number of people they had to have invited if they got around to us, and think of what they could have bought for that.
Should Tamara and I ever get around to tying the knot, we’re going to rent out a guest house in the French Quarter for 2 or 3 nights. Anyone who wants to can drive down with us. (We may or may not ask them to kick in on it, depending on whether I’m making doctor money yet.) One of those nights, we’re going to find someone with a minister’s/judges licence and a thick N’awlins accent to perform a ten minute ceremony. Then we’ll move the wedding party to the Gumbo Shop, and then to either Donna’s or the Funky Butt, depending on the band. (Tamara wants to do all this on Halloween, and have everyone dress up in costumes.
I tell people this, and they can’t believe we’re bucking tradition to that degree. OK, I say, we’ll dress up in impractical clothes that make us look nothing like ourselves, drag a couple hundred people we don’t like to a church (in which you’d never find either of us for any other occasion), have a preacher repeat some tripe about how a beautiful rose has thorns*, then convene in Ballroom 3B of the local Sheraton to eat bad chicken and dance to the DJ stylings of Big Ed’s Outrageous Music Machine. That would be a much better celebration of our love, wouldn’t it?
Cheezit, weddings bug me.
Dr. J
Every time I’m at a wedding and the preacher starts talking about how marriage is beautiful like a rose but you have to watch out for the thorns, I have an overwhelming urge to jump up and belt out, “Just like eeeeee-vry night has it’s dawwwwwwn!”
One of our friends has stood up in something like 12 weddings over the years. He vows that when he gets married he is going to have every guy that he has ever stood up for in that damned tuxedo wear a clown suit for the ceremony.
I personally would love to see this.
Back on path here.
PS- I think weddings are over blown and over priced.
I would like to have alot of money to spend on it, but I won’t go into debt for it.
What I want the money for is to take it out of town. Nothing seems more depressing to me than planning for months, spending a fortune, and then watching the party end after 4 hours. I want to make it a whole weekend.
And i was a serious party because at my age, the only way I can get my friends to dance is to make it a requirement at my wedding.
I have plenty of time…we’ve been engaged for two years and we arent’ getting married for at least 2 more.
If this is for the reason I think it is, I’ll pay for it.
Re the OP: I think the whole idea of the bride’s family paying for the wedding is rather silly. I do believe that it does date back to times where there were “dowries”, but in this two income household day and age, it’s a pretty outmoded tradition.
No great loss, Shirley. Mine had space for about 2,000 people to sign, so of course mine only has like 3 or 4 pages used. I still don’t get it…why do I need the sigs of people who were at the wedding? It was one of those things I had to sorta “give in” on to please Mom.
