A-men, sistahs. Being a huge girly-boy, I like to plan my wedding, and none of it will involve anything in the bridal or groomal industries. (They don’t cater to faygelehs by and large, anyway.) Just like my funeral will involve a minimum of the funereal industries. Both are much, much, much overpriced.
Frustrating, isn’t it? You’ve got my condolences.
I wanna first say I’ve never heard of a caterer that didn’t have tastings. One of the neatest way this happens around here is done by our university catering service (a lot of people get married in the union) Every quarter or so they have “taste night.” A lot of engaged couples show up and have a great night of it, nibbling and talking to chefs.
Anyway, can’t top DeniseV’s advice. Screw the “wedding” stuff. We had a small wedding, too. 30 people. My husband wore a suit (why wear a tux, he’s not the type?) and I found a dress that was simple and elegant (no crinoline) for less than $400. I blew off any fancy “wedding” thing that didn’t mean something to me, which was just about everything. Screw the unity candle, forget the white carpet, no way am we having a bunch of friends dressed alike flanking us. No flowers other than the ones I was carrying. No huge album full of pictures with every possible configuration of family. We said to hell with a “reception” and instead we went to a fancy restaurant for a sit-down dinner. It was our most expensive “item”, but it was totally worth it. It wasn’t banquet food; we had a special menu drawn up and people ordered from that.
Obviously I don’t expect you to have MY wedding, but the key thing is that I threw out the precedent set by other weddings I had been to and tried to plan it like I’d plan a party. In the end, we had a really distinctive wedding, something I can’t say for the weddings I’ve been to where brides fretted about following all the unwritten rules to the letter. People invest a lot of time and energy to end up with a wedding that’s just like everyone else’s wedding. ARGH!
I have more to say about this on my webpage. http://www.umich.edu/~kzaruba/wedding.html
Cranky, yer my kinda gal.
Although I have some very specific ideas about what I would dearly love to do at my own wedding (having attended way too many frighteningly tacky weddings in my life it is my dream to do it up right), the cost is criminal. And it is much more so when you deal directly with the vast Wedding Industry. The best advice I ever got was this: do NOT tell ANY vendor that you are buying for a wedding. The cost doubles the minute the words are out of your mouth.
I did the big, fancy schmancy, expensive, stressful, no fun, icky sticky hair do wedding and other than the ceremony where I had the pleasure of having my dad hold me up, I didn’t really enjoy much of it. If I were to do it again, I’d have it on Halloween and have a costume party or just a very small, candle light service. No fuss, no muss and very little expense.
Retailers make a mint out of weddings and its a crime!
It’s your day, do what you’ll enjoy most.
After a succession of family weddings ranging from the farcical to the catastrophic, I put all my relatives on notice; if I ever find the Perfect Woman, and persuaded her to marry me, it will be at the nearest registry office, with the minimum of fuss, and all non-essential personnel will be informed after the event. (If it stops just one occurrence of my mother and my two aunts doing their “celebrated” impression of the Beverly Sisters, it’ll be worth it.)
We’re gearing up for another one at the end of August. The invitations have gone out, the search for cheap hotels has begun, and the family rows are already starting… I just hope we can get through this one without any actual bloodshed. Avoiding the Beverly Sisters seems too much to hope for.
UncleBill and I are planning a very, very simple wedding. Having heard other people’s wedding horror stories, we were determined not to let it get out of control. I’m going to have a wedding dress. No veil, no fancy undergarments (well, maybe something spiffy from Victoria’s Secret), no bridesmaids, no flowers (we’re having it in a beautiful garden, no need), no purse, none of that crap. Just me and him and the preacher.
We’re having the wedding in Key West, mostly because we both love the place and that’s where we had our first date, but we quickly realized one advantage of having a wedding in a place where neither of your families is, is that nobody can take it over. We plan on a very small wedding and then afterward throwing a big party that all of our friends can come to. I like keeping it simple.
Heh heh heh…we DID have our reception at a pizza place. It was a local restaurant. We had our wedding on a Sunday (I wanted March 21, and the fact that apparently almost no one gets married on a Sunday did NOT deter me), and the pizza place didn’t do a whole lot of business on Sundays (most of their business is lunch from surrounding offices), so they closed for the day and let us use it, no extra charge. There was pizza, spaghetti, and loads of chicken wings. There was no bar - if you wanted to get tanked, you could have beer from the keg. We toasted with sparkling apple cider. A couple of Tark’s friends had a three-man band, and they played and then wouldn’t accept payment…their wedding present to him. (They were actually really good…they played The Eagles and Michael Penn and the like - well - and even managed to play “Hava Nagila” which my grandparents found hysterical.) My dress was made by a friend’s mother for the cost of materials: about $83. My veil was a three-yard piece of that veil-y stuff, with a comb sewn to it (by me) about 2/3 of the way up it. I got my shoes at Pic n’ Pay, and then wore my hiking boots to the reception. (I have a couple of great pics of me in my wedding dress with hiking boots and lime green socks.)
Total cost including paying the minister? About $1200, and $800 of that was the food and the keg.
We’ve been married for over nine years now, so the cheapness of the wedding does not seem to have made us any less happy in the long run. 
(I do regret not getting my hair done. It’s very curly and frizzy and it looked like sheer hell. But oohhhhhh well. He wasn’t marrying me for my coiffure.)
I remember something I read in a guide for gay weddings (which I was reading in a moment of abject futility)…The writer went to a well-known local bakery and priced a three-tier wedding cake to feed x people. Two days later she had her partner call and price a three-tier party cake to feed x people, same flavor and filling and decoration.
One-half the price.
Anything you can do to avoid, subvert, and subject the Wedding Industrial Complex is a social good.
My first wedding was a lot like you described. Marriage lasted 18 months - it was fun (the wedding, the marriage was kind of a train wreck).
My second wedding was more fun. Dress off the rack from a department store on clearance (it was a short dress), one bridesmaid wearing an off the rack dress (that she HAS worn since, several times). Flowers done by a friend from the farmers market - yellow roses and purple irises. Six minute ceremony in front of a judge with six guests and then rent a park building and order sub sandwiches for 200 people - Plus beer and pop - and a wedding cake done by me. Had a friend DJ. My brother in law did the photos.
This one’s lasted seven (going on eight) years.
If you can’t afford an expensive wedding, don’t do it. Even if you can afford it, you have to ask yourself if the money isn’t better spent somewhere else. The wedding is one day. The marriage is suppose to last you your whole life. Remember what’s important.
My parents paid for the first - and they could afford it. But my kids are going to be told "You get $xxxxx for a wedding, and any money you don’t spend, I’ll double towards a downpayment on a house (or to pay down your existing mortgage).
I’ve been to fancy elegant $40,000 weddings, and weddings done with bridal boquets from the grocery store. And I’ve been to some very elegant weddings where friends did everything from sewing the gown to making the cake.
Hmm… nobody’s mentioned it yet, but the big bucks are a’comin’. Two words: Wedding Pictures.
You only THOUGHT things were expensive, now.
I’m in the wrong damn bidness.
Elope while you can. Better yet, don’t get married. At least, not 'til somebody does something about the marriage tax penalty. :rolleyes:
This is SO SO true. I also hang out on the Wedding Channel boards, primarily because we are planning to ge married within the next year and a half, and I like to look at pretty silk dresses.
However, according to this site, the average cost for a wedding in the US is $25K. Twenty five FUCKING thousand dollars!
It is such a goddamn scandal. Their trick is to get you accustomed to the idea of spending a certain amount of money, and then getting frustrated and just paying :whatever: the asking price is just to get it over with. Purchases for which you would institutionalize yourself any other time become “Oh well, that’s just how much it costs…” when you’re planning a wedding. It’s the same reason people feel they must pay ridiculously inflated prices to purchase a deBeers-controlled hunk of carbon of at least a carat.
Anyway, Featherlou, I have never heard of a caterer not preparing samples before you even hire them. If it’s not too late, call them and tell them you must taste the dishes. If they decline, tell them politely to go fuck themselves, and then go find a restaurant, friends, a culinary college, or hell-even a Home Ec class (do they still have those?) at the local high school or a Girl Scout troop, and pay them to do your food.
Good luck with this. Although I am looking forward to marrying my darling SO, I don’t envy you the position of trying to figure out a way to do it without mortgaging your firstborn.
Hey…also…if you are having any serious thoughts about eloping…
JUST DO IT!
I’d be suspicious of any caterer that won’t let you try their food, too. We went with a restaurant also and it turned out great. The best weddings I have been to have been the simplest. The worst wedding I have been to was outrageously expensive, the bride spent thousands and thousands on a designer wedding dress and looked terrible. She also forced us (her bridesmaids) to spend over $400 on our own hideous dresses that looked like HELL. I left mine in the hotel when it was all over…I didn’t spend that much on my own wedding dress!
Simple weddings are beautiful. IMO there is a direct correlation between how much people spend on their wedding and how tacky it all gets. And RUN, RUN away from bridal stores / planners, who charge $1,000 for a piece of lace and tacky plastic people on your wedding cake. Choose a few things that are important to you and go with it. For me:
Flowers, and
entertainment. Really, what people will remember is how fun the reception was, and so will you, and you don’t need to spend a lot for people to have a great time.
Your wedding is for…YOU!
( I also wore white slippers under my dress and had happy feet all day)
Ceremony: County courthouse, Friday afternoon, 3:30. We couldn’t even get a judge – we were married by the Family Court Commissioner. All 23 people who attended the dinner were there. We greeted people on the courthouse veranda before the ceremony.
Clothes: Red dress with black trim, $70. I wore my favorite black earrings, hat, and black patent-leather pumps. Mr. S wore a funky new shirt, cool bolo tie, and pants. I don’t recall if he bought new shoes. Our attendants (one each) showed up in their own best clothes.
Flowers: Five single white roses, for the “bridal party” and my mother. $20.
Cake: Ice-cream cake from Baskin Robbins. $20.
Dinner: Sit-down dinner in a nice restaurant, private room, for 23 people. The dinner was my mother’s gift; about $250, including champagne.
Reception: We all went down to a hotel by the water in the city to have drinks. There was a summer festival going on in the park across the street, and we were treated to a laser light show.
Honeymoon: Weekend in Milwaukee, financed in large part by the mostly cash gifts we received. We had a nice dinner on Saturday night, and went shopping and hung out the rest of the time.
People still tell us it was one of the nicest weddings they’ve been to. We invited only immediate family, and the rest were our dearest friends – no annoying “must-invite” relatives. Everyone was relaxed and had a good time. That was almost 12 years ago. One of these days we’d like to have a big anniversary gathering for all the new friends we’ve acquired since then that we would have loved to have at our wedding if we were doing it now.
My sister wore new white canvas tennis shoes with lacey shoelaces.
BTW, I want to point out something. My parents are wedding videographers. Their prices: $850-$2700 (this does get you footage from both rehearsal nights and all day wedding coverage, 4 VHS copies and a DVD, however). This is on par with others in the industry in our area.
I think everyone who pays this is crazy, but they stay fairly busy doing this, especially during the wedding season, and they get quite a few people who write out checks for $2700. I can completely see the $25K wedding when I see what people are willing to pay for just the videographer (they spend about 40 hours of work editing the footage). Tack on another $1000 for the photographer and for the low, low price of $3700, you’ve now got pictures no one will see after the first year.
“…from both rehearsal nights…” is supposed to say, “…from the rehearsal night…” Never heard of two rehearsals.
Our wedding was a DIY affair, with a lot of help from our friends. I don’t remember the numbers, and after 18 years they’re probably irrelevant anyway, but the planning went something like this:
Found a VFW hall with a free Saturday afternoon that we could rent for a reasonable fee. The fee included bartenders, but we provided the drinks (we stocked up on everything when the stores had sales, and a friend who worked at a liquor wholesalers got us a deal on the booze). About two weeks before the wedding the hall tried to force us to buy their booze at exhorbitant prices; I pointed out that the contract clearly stated that we were responsible for providing all beverages and threatened to cancel if they were going to change the rules.
The wedding dress was a gift from a friend whose sister was a dressmaker; the only “problem” we ran into was that my wife lost so much weight that the final fitting required a major alteration.
We shopped around at wholesale food outlets, and had a buffet with roast beef, lasagne, veggies. Some friends volunteered to get everything set up for us at the hall; we had several relatives ask who our caterers had been so they could hire them.
My dad’s a baker - guess who did our wedding cake:D
One of my ex-girlfriends did the artwork and lettering for our invitations as her present; I had them printed at a local copy place myself.
Hired a DJ for the music, which was supplemented by someone surprising us by hiring a piper.
A friend did the photography as his present.
We were married in a Catholic ceremony; amazingly, lightning did not strike the church when I walked in.
All in all, it went fairly well.
Hmm… I’d like to second the motion for a simple wedding. The best wedding I’ve ever been to was my cousin’s- his was held at the one-room church my grandfather taught in, many many years ago. Everyone- INCLUDING THE BRIDE- wore bluejeans.
THAT was a cool wedding.
My wedding was a waste of money. Flowers, food, pictures, none of which either of us remember or had time to notice at the time. Hopefully everyone else thought it was nice, but for us it was pretty much a waste.
Once again, excellent advice from all sources. I think I was in desperate need of a reality check. The perfect hair/make-up/shoes/underwear/flowers/whatever is NOT what Jim’s and my wedding is about. We’re getting married because we have been incredibly lucky and found the person that we want to spend the rest of our lives with. The ceremony and party afterwards is to celebrate this with our friends and family, which can be done as well with coldcuts as with a $500 meal.
I think part of the problem I’m running into is that I don’t want to look as cheap as I really am - I already have a reputation for being extremely thrifty. “She couldn’t spend a few dollars on her own WEDDING?!?” Which is ridiculous, because everyone at the wedding knows that Jim and I are paying for the whole thing ourselves (my mom left her abusive husband a couple years ago and has very little money) and I’ve been unemployed for almost a year, and they aren’t the kind of people to think like that anyway. But everyone who will be there is better off financially than Jim and I (except my mom), and maybe that’s what’s making me so crazy. Aha, I think we have a breakthrough here. I have to think about this some more. One thing I have that none of them have is puh-lenty of time to do things for myself and find the best bargains.
(And I thought a caterer that wouldn’t let me try the food first was kind of odd, too. I haven’t signed anything yet, so I think she’s going to get the old heave-ho.)
I hear you!
am I the only one on earth that thinks its insane to have a bridesmaid buy her own dress?
tacky bride: here. I want you to wear this and this. with these shoes. and that shawl. its about 200 bucks. pay for it now.
how did this tacky tradition get started?
for all brides:
if you want bridesmaids, suck up the cost of their dresses as part of your wedding cost. If you want their hair a certain way, pay for that too.
can’t afford it? Don’t have bridesmaids. It’s not like you need them anyway.
Isn’t it bad enough that they are (usually) traveling, taking time off of work, etc ?