There were about 400 different people at my two wedding receptions.( My mother-in-law insisted on having a separate ethnic reception and there was some overlap in the guest lists). No co-workers of either ours or our parents. Just two huge families, some friends and a few long-time parental friends. OK, the racial difference eliminated “Your Relative or My Relative?” but “Who the Hell is That?” was eliminated by the fact that we knew every single person who was invited. I knew all my mother’s aunts and uncles and all her first cousins and all her first cousins’ children. Maybe you don’t , maybe most people don’t, but I did- and I’m still in touch with them. I couldn’t invite the cousins’ children ( it would have been too many people, so we didn’t invite each other) but my mother’s aunts/uncles and first cousins brought me over 120. That didn’t include my own aunts/uncles/cousins, my siblings, my father’s family, my husband’s family or any friends. And my husband’s family is just as large.
Lemme see: Me, my wife, my best man, four people from my immediate family, and six from hers. Everybody else was a cypher to me, but it wasn’t anywhere near 400 people other people. More like 40, but it still seemed like a performance to a room full of strangers. Which it was.
Yes, I agree with that. It’s a question of whether “big” means a long guest list, or a huge extravaganza. Now, if there are dozens of hundreds of people you want to invite, then there’s a lot of expense and bother in the service of that. You’ll have to feed them all, and probably have a bar as well, or at least something to drink. You’ll need a large venue, and then you have to decorate it somehow so it doesn’t look barren. And you’ll need a band or a DJ to entertain them, and you may have to provide transportation if the reception is far from the ceremony, and so on.
But all that is reasonable. You’re having a party, and you want everyone to enjoy it. I think it becomes ridiculous when you get into things like chair covers, as in SeaDragonTattoo’s anecdote. So it’s difficult to get chair covers just right; I believe it. What I don’t get is what difference chair covers make. What was wrong with the chairs the venue provided? Were they torn vinyl, mended with duct tape, that no one would want to sit on in their good clothes or at all? And in that case, why use that venue? Barring anything like that…chair covers, jeez. Sorry, SDT; it’s how I feel.
Also, what hasn’t been mentioned is the people who think that they should get back what they spent, in cash gifts or the worth of material gifts. (I say “people” because it’s not always the bride who has this fixation. It can also be the groom, or the bride’s parents if they’re the ones paying.) Sometimes it’s “The dinner was $76 a plate*, so if anyone gives us less than that, or a gift that cost less than that, they’re a cheapskate and I can’t believe I gave them a free meal!” Some people go further and want to recoup the overall cost per guest, factoring in things like flowers that the guests don’t consume as such. I’m just waiting to read on Etiquette Hell that someone had an addendum to their registry: “We’re spending X per person, so your gift should be or be worth at least that much, if not more.”
I am a wedding cake junkie. Birthday cake, too. Has anyone tried those new filled Chips Ahoy, with birthday cake filling or Oreo filling?
*Just pulled that out of my…ear. Have no idea if that’s a plausible cost, now or ever.
Based on averages listed from this website, the price we paid was fairly average based on the county we live in. Their figure for Wedding Cake/dessert was $416 - $693. Keep in mind when we were looking for a wedding cake, we also wanted a cake that would taste good, but my wife wanted one that looked pretty as well (not some fondant-covered monstrosity per se, but still nice looking). I was gonna show a picture of our cake but I’m embarassed to admit I don’t have one on my hard drive :o . Suffice to say my wife found an image of a beautiful seven-tier cake online which cost $2,500, went to this little mom-and-pop bakery in San Jose and asked the lady if she could make it as close as possible to the picture, with the filling of our choice, which I believe was a coffe cake with mocha filling and buttercream frosting. The cake in the picture was obviously fondant…
However, the lady came through big time. She made it EXACTLY the way my wife wanted it to. I had visited the ‘cake wrecks’ website before, so I was prepared for a half assed job. However it looked awesome and as soon as I get a chance I’ll show you what it looked like. 400 bucks does sound like a lot for a cake, though to be fair there were many bakers in this area that were quoting far more for a cake for 250 people; I was getting bakers that were gonna charge 8-12 dollars a person! :eek:
Maybe its because we live in the Bay Area so a lot of stuff here is more expensive :shrug:
I know some people hear about a big wedding and think its a huge waste of money and the bride must be some control freak bridezilla to demand that much. And that everybody is forced to do stuff they didn’t want to do but just reluctantly goes along with it. Maybe my big wedding was the exception to the rule, I dunno. But to break down more of the cost/time involved in planning it:
-Since the majority of the guests are Mexican and like to party all night long and dance, we needed a place that was big enough not just to fit 250 people, but also big enough for 250 people to dance. So that definitely limited our options. We ended up having the reception in a community center in the South Bay that was $300/hour but we booked it for 10 hours, plus insurance and security which came out to be $3,300 for the venue. I know this might sound like a lot to some people but keep in mind in the Bay Area finding an indoor place that could hold 250+ people, allow you to bring your own food/booze/etc till 11pm was not easy. That was the other reason we had to book it a year in advance- we aren’t the only ones having a huge wedding but trying to do it on a budget, so all the nice and CHEAP places get snapped up really fast. Fortunately for us my mom volunteered to pay for this part of it 
-We had live music, which if its not your musician friends playing for you, can get expensive also. Since musicians play for a living, they book lots of gigs and the earlier you contact them the better. The band that played at our wedding was also unique in that they played covers in both English and Spanish. Other then our own wedding, I’ve never heard a band that could play a Cumbia song followed by a classic English spoken oldies song. The band cost between $3,000 and $4,000, which my sister-in law was generous enough to pay for.
-Catering becomes an issue in a big wedding since most caterers charge per person. However thanks to my wife’s excellent haggling skills she managed to convince a caterer to provide both Mexican and Gringo food for the surprisingly reasonable cost of $9 a plate. Most people that hire a caterer don’t get this good of a deal (there was a poster on the SDMB that was a wedding planner and admitted she had never heard of a caterer that was willing to go this cheap)
-All the booze was provided by Costco. I just went to Costco and bought cases of wine and beer. Buying beer by the case ended up being cheaper per-beer than buying a keg, and had the advantage of having still-usable bottles of beer if any was left over (it wasn’t 
). However, we still have leftover bottles of “two buck chuck” red wine that was not consumed at the wedding.
-My wife’s dress was $350, which for a ‘traditional’ wedding dress was a pretty good deal. My tux and the 7 groomsmen were rentals. The groomsmen paid for their own rentals, but I tried to ease the burden by picking out the cheapest design. At all the weddings where I was best man/groomsmen I’ve always paid for my own suit (same with my wife) though apparently on the SDMB this is considered a tacky burden to wedding guests (shrug). My wife’s bridesmaids each paid about $200 (almost double what the groomsmen paid) for dresses, though the design wasn’t some fugly monstrosity you would never wear again. My wife’s friends and sisters also did not make a stink about the cost.
So maybe my experience is the exception to the rule, I dunno. Or maybe its a cultural difference where my wife’s Mexican culture doesn’t bitch about throwing in a hunksy or two to be a part of a wedding or help your family member out getting married. Even though my family comes from a much wealthier economic background, my wife’s family contributed FAR more monetarily. They were super involved but also very much "however you guys want to do it, its your day.) This is the attitude I have with my own family with their weddings as well. Again maybe I’m the exception to the rule but theres been a general mutual respect between family members with the married couple where people are involved and supportive and the wedding goes well without anybody being a control freak in the process. But I’ve been to weddings that had about half as many guests (my best friend and also my cousin) and they paid 2x to 3x what we paid in total. Which means per person it cost them closer to quintuple what we paid.
And our wedding was small by Mexican standards! :eek:
You have to separate the two aspects:
Getting married.
Having a party with friends and family.
Getting married is no big deal. Get a officiant of your particular faith (or non-faith), stand up, say words, sign a form. Low cost, low hassle.
Party! But c’mon. How much are you willing to spend for a party? A couple thousand dollars for a large but still manageable group of people is plenty. Far less if you have a smaller group.
Don’t think of this as a wedding party. Just a party. See how quickly the cost comes down.
If your wedding is costing much more than this, you are getting into Drinking The Kool-Aid of the wedding business. How much for a dress you’re wearing once? Plus the rest of the bride/groom’s parties? Rehearsal dinners? You have got to be bleeping kidding me.
Just forget everything you have ever been told about what a wedding “must” have.
Focus on being married. That’s the only thing that matters.
(Mrs. FtG and I got married in a Reno chapel almost 40 years ago. I’m the longest married of my many siblings. Shoot, one got married 4 times in that span, 3 of them big weddings. Haven’t met spouse 4 yet. Might be like spouse 3 that I never met. But spouse 3’s recent death made international news recently. How odd.)
When my older brother married a second time, he let his bride-to-be ['s mother] take control. They had a blow-out three hour Catholic wedding in which monster-in-law invited close to 400 people, so many that they had to put the overflow on the ‘groom’s side’ of the church. My SIL didn’t even know who the majority of these people were, but she was very much like the ‘I want the wedding flowers!!!’ woman in the Man/Woman sketches.
My brother had six people on his side, our parents, my other brother, my sister and her husband, and a strong-armed 14 year old me who was forced to be one of the troop of bridesmaids. Several times various ushers asked them to move because they needed space for Miss Vicky’s entourage, and it had to be explained to them repeatedly that they were the groom’s immediate family.
She also insisted on the ritual of sticking each pair of bridesmaids/groomsmen in a decorated car and driving around blasting horns and all that; during this ridiculous routine, the driver of my car, some friend/cousin/whatever of my SIL asked me, ‘So, how do you know Victoria?’
I answered, ‘She’s marrying my brother.’
It was an awkward ride after that.
Look at all of the things that need to be done:
[ul]
[li]Photographer[/li][li]Band[/li][li]Caterer[/li][li]Flowers[/li][li]Cake[/li][li]Officiant[/li][li]Wedding Shoes[/li][li]Wedding Dress[/li][li]Wedding Veil[/li][li]Schedule Fittings[/li][li]Purchase Unmentionables[/li][li]Makeup and Hair Tests[/li][li]Bridesmaid Dresses[/li][li]Flower Girl Dress[/li][li]Ring Bearer Pillow[/li][li]Wedding Venue[/li][li]Reserve Hotel Rooms for Guests[/li][li]Register for Gifts[/li][li]Launch Wedding Website[/li][li]Plan Honeymoon[/li][li]Select Chairs[/li][li]Place Settings[/li][li]Rehearsal Dinner Reservations[/li][li]Bridesmaid Gifts[/li][li]Approved Song List[/li][li]Guest Book[/li][li]Design Menu Cards[/li][li]Select Party Favors[/li][li]Design Programs[/li][li]Purchase Rings[/li][li]Send Event Schedule to Vendors[/li][li]Send Out Invitations[/li][li]Submit Newspaper Announcement[/li][li]Bachelorette Party[/li][li]Thank You Notes for Showers[/li][li]Enter RSVPs into Guest List[/li][li]Marriage License[/li][li]Mail Rehearsal Dinner Invites[/li][li]Last Dress Fitting[/li][li]Send Final Payments to Vendors[/li][li]Write Vows[/li][li]Assign Seating[/li][li]Email & Print Directions for Drivers[/li][li]Pick Up Dress[/li][li]Break In Shoes[/li][li]Timeline for Bridal Party[/li][li]Check for Spotting on Silverware[/li][li]Pack for Honeymoon[/li][/ul]
This was an actual, if fictional list…
This was the list of things OCD-stricken Emma had before her wedding to Will (which she bailed on) on Glee
I’m Catholic, and was married in a Catholic Mass, as were many friends and relatives. What in the world did they do to make it last three hours? Maybe 75 minutes if the priest really stretched things, but three hours?
And wasn’t the wedding on a Saturday? When was the priest’s tee time? I was at one where the priest knocked out the whole shootin’ match in 45 minutes, with a full Mass. He had plenty of time before teeing off at 1:00.
Fondant is simply a type of icing. You may not like it, but it’s definitely edible.
As for the white wedding dress being about virginity, that’s a bunch of bullshit. Brides didn’t start exclusively wearing white until roughly the 1940s. Prior to that, you wore your best dress, and it was usually something you could wear again.
Why have a wedding at all? Big deal. two people have decided to live together (or keep living together).
Yeah, I’ve heard of worse excuses for a party, but that’s because everyone wanted the party. Having a wedding and expecting all your friends and rellos to turn up to it and gush over you always seems a bit selfish to me. Then when it’s done in such a formulaic, regimented way makes it a pretty dismal process.
The big decision was when you decided to get married. THAT’s the important moment.
Today’s SDMB “Explain something that I don’t like but others do”. We should have a sticky that simply says “Some people like stuff that you don’t. That how free will and the basic concepts of humanity work”.
I gotta go on [surpressed] memory here, as it was in 1980 or so, and I can’t be arsed to dig out my diary (apologies, as it’s filled with teenaged catty remarks about my brother and Miss Vicky, but my box of diaries is hard to get to, and it’s hot and humid here this morning) – but she did all sorts of things: in addition to the Mass (keep in mind it takes a hell of a long time to process 400 people through the eucharist, which is probably what took up most of the time), as I recall, there were
*extra readings
*a blessing of the rings ceremony
*a long, long prayer vigil at one of the side altars (when I asked my mother afterwards, she explained Miss Vicky was doing some long prayer/contemplation to Mary about giving up her virginity. Myself think she was stalling actually to have to marry my horrible brother as long as possible)
*some nonsense ceremony with the blessing of the rings and the ring-bearer himself (who was about 5 years old, had no interest in being there, and, unlike most of the adults, felt free to express his disinterest. Both he and the equally young flower girl threw several full-blown, throw yourself to the floor screaming tantrums over the course of the ceremony.)
- some kind of candle-lighting ceremony signifying their eternal love for each other
*a series of super long prayers and blessings (some of which were in Ukrainian because Miss Vicky and her family, despite being 3rd or 4th generation Americans who had absolutely no connections to the old country or to any Ukrainian social groups in the States, suddenly decided to get back to their roots)
*some weird procession around to the various side altars in the church.
It seriously clocked in to about three hours when all was said and done (Mass itself is usually an hour, an hour plus for all of the extra crap Miss Vicky wanted to do, then ages to get all of those people through the communion queue).
That woman must have gone through the ‘Here are the many options for a Catholic wedding Mass’ and ticked all of the goddamned boxes. If there was a ‘throw a virgin into a live volcano option’ she would have included it. She did everything but release a flock of doves, which a schoolfriend did at her blow-out Catholic wedding.
I think it kicked off around 11am or so, lasted hours, then there was the ceremonial drive around Wilmington like muppets blowing car horns and cutting off traffic for another hour or so, then we finally arrived to the reception around 4pm-ish. God knows how long the reception lasted because of all the stuff she insisted on (more staged photography, special dances, sacrifices to Ba’al, God knows what else).
Of course it was on a hot, humid day in June, as well, and she’d stuffed all of the bridesmaids into heat-trapping polyester meringue dresses. (One of the reasons I never went to a formal school dance is because my mother always insisted that my bile-duct orange junior bridesmaid’s dress from Miss Vicky’s wedding would suffice for all formal engagements thereafter. There was at least one other occasion when she made me wear that shitty thing. But I digress.)
My other brother’s wedding was a 20 minute, middle-of-the-week Catholic Mass wedding (much to the delight of the handful of regular old ladies who attended daily Mass). Mine was 10 minutes’ tops at the Elkton Courthouse.
If you are seriously into the whole wedding thing, then planning it can be used as a way of extending the enjoyment, I suspect. It’s like spending ages poring over maps before going on a trip.
Or, to put it more perjoratively, if you are an obsessed but smart Bridezilla you are going to figure out that your wedding day is only going to last about 18 hours or so. You can get waaaaay more mileage out of it if you can spend the previous 6 months throwing your weight around as the Princess to be.
What I learned after having a small wedding (12 invited, 9 attended) at a courthouse:
Many people will not take your wedding/marriage/commitment seriously if there is not a big wedding.
I have been told many times that my wedding “didn’t count”–even by a sister who was my bridesmaid/witness–because it was not “a real wedding” (meaning “big” and “expensive”). Most of our family and friends didn’t even acknowledge that it happened, with a gift or a card or a phone call or even a “congrats” on Facebook. Some of them can’t even remember that we are married. Even those who know we are married sometimes act as if we have a second-class kind of marriage, because we did not have a big wedding.
The only people who treated us 100% like we are married and deserved a “congratulations” was a cousin I rarely see, who also had a small wedding.
I loved my tiny wedding, but sometimes you have to beat people over the head with a party costing at least $10,000 to get them to recognize that a marriage happened (apparently).
No, it is Play-Doh with added sugar.
You know, I’ve heard one criticism of having a big wedding is that with so many people, you’re not even going to know the names of everybody there. This only happens if you don’t have a lot of control over who gets invited, or you are so antisocial you don’t visit people often enough up to that point to even remember who they are.
With our wedding, there were about 70 on my side and 180 on my wife’s side. I knew everybody on my side because they were my entire extended family. I knew most of my wife’s family as well. My wife not only knew all 250 people there, she remembered them by name. But this is because my wife was assertive when it came to the guest list; of 500 people her mom wanted to invite, my wife culled it down to 180. Those 180 people were the closest in a much bigger extended family. So having a wedding in front of strangers was not a problem for us. In fact a lot of things people nay say about huge weddings were not a problem.
“You won’t recognize anybody there”: We recognized everybody.
“Its a waste of money!”: We felt it was worth every penny, and helped teach us to save and set budgets for when we were married and saving for a house.
“Everything is overpriced!”: The most expensive aspects were offered to us by family as gifts; for flowers, decorations, food, and alcohol we paid a fraction of what other people pay for a wedding of the size and quality as ours.
“Everybody hates weddings! Its just a chore people are socially obligated to go along with!”: We had so many people in our families so excited to be a part of our wedding (whether it was offering to pay for our wedding photographer, help set up/clean up, or just be present) I have a hard time believing anyone’s arm was twisted.
We had a big wedding because my husband is North Indian and that’s what they do.
In my case, my mother will not recognise a wedding (in the family) unless it was done by a priest in a Catholic church. She refused to recognise my brother’s first marriage, and still claims my two didn’t count because they were both courthouses jobs.
She records all of the family weddings in her big Bible; my brother and mine got index cards. We’re the Roger Maris of the wedded up, I guess.
My ex’s family more or less ignored our marriage because it was his second; since he had a big blow out for the first one, the second one, to them was a ‘meh’ even though it was my first one.
There are so many rules here, God knows how you’re supposed to keep track.