So, in response to a question in the random facts thread of MPSIMS, the poll is about how much your wedding cost. If you had more than one wedding at different costs, check the appropriate amount for each, otherwise try Other and describe in a post. Hopefully we get a less biased result than the big Wedding Magazine polls of the same topic. Will we hit an average of $29k? I doubt it.
0 voters
Age is going to confound these results. Some people here probably married 40 years ago, or 30, or in my case, about 20. My wedding was $5,000 in '06. We got a lot of stuff free or discounted.
Very little for either of them. One was in a Navy chapel, the second was in a JP’s office.
None of my weddings exceeded $10,000. Two were not even close to that (back yard ceremonies).
My divorces, on the other hand, they were off the charts.
Wedding Chapel in Gatlinburg Tennessee. In addition, a cabin on a mountainside with a hot tub overlooking the Smokey Mountains in late October, the view of the turning leaves was spectacular. Things were cheaper in 1996, at the height of tourist season I beleive it was under $500 for all. It was the high point of our married life.
I got hitched in 1978. My father-in-law wanted to invite a lot of relatives to show off that he was more successful than them so he probably laid out $5000-$6000 for the reception which grew to about 100 people, my family was pretty small, maybe 12 people including me. My parents paid for the rehearsal dinner spending much less I’m sure.
The fanciest wedding I’ve been to might have cost $29,000. I know my wife went to several in Newport that surely exceeded that amount. Oh, there was one that I’m sure cost much more since the rehearsal party the day before easily cost that much. Probably not a $million wedding, but this was somebody who could have spent that much on his son’s wedding if he wanted to. I hadn’t seen his son since my own wedding when he was maybe 4 years old.
We had a gorgeous wedding, but the euro-cathedral was our home church, minister was my old boss, reception also at church, and people brought regional ‘small plate’ fare from their hometowns (Thanks, PNW folk for the huge smoked salmon!).
So here I am, wishing the $100-1000 answer had been subdivided more…
(Hey, the bride knew she was marrying a cheapskate!)
I voted $1k - $10k but it was much closer to $1k than $10k. The venue was free, my wife made her own dress, decorations and whatnot were basically free as we used flowers from my parent’s property. We had no photographer or videographer. The cake was a laughably simple thing a family member made. For our honeymoon we went camping (like, sleeping in a tent in the woods, eating SpaghettiOs’s cooked on a Coleman stove type camping). The two main expenses were renting the chairs, tables, and my tux and buying all the food.
It was an outdoor wedding in 2003 with maybe 100 guests total.
I’ve been to some expensive weddings over the years. Some very expensive although I don’t know if I’ve been to a $29k wedding. None of those relationships have survived.
I voted 100-1,000 because that is what the wedding that has lasted so far cost (on the lower end of that range). The first wedding cost perhaps 3,000, that taught me that the spending does not guarantee happiness, faithfulness or duration. So my second wife and me acted accordingly when we both tried again after our respective unsuccessful former attempts.
Not as much as my divorce.
24 years ago yesterday, about $40,000 Canadian.
We had about 275 guests at a vineyard. About 2 dozen guests were our friends, the rest family and friends of the parents. Our parents paid for it, so no skin off my nose.
<joke>Nearly 40 years on, I’m still paying for it.</joke>
Probably something around $5k, about 20-ish years ago. It was my insane season at work and nobody wanted to go all out which was far more than okay with me.
Ceremony was at Heisler Park – the gazebo – in Laguna Beach, CA:
Which strictly limited the number of attendees.
We certified my brother to do the actual ceremony. Handed out bags of M&M’s to all, and a fair number of custom-labeled bottles of “sparkling cider” (the location forbade alcohol. We were scofflaws).
Reception following was at the community room where my mother lives – ocean view. Simple fare. DJ. Bartender.
Rehearsal dinner was small – on somebody else’s tab – but at a place I’ve always loved: Las Brisas Restaurant – also in Laguna Beach:
Not too shabby 
The honeymoon cost a bit more than the ceremony/reception: a month in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. My mother joined us – in the rental’s MIL suite – for about ten days of it.
We got a lot of bang for our buck out of the whole thing. There isn’t a single thing I would change … including the bride
Our was around $12K, but I think we got almost the same in cash (not counting parents), so it was a wash. My brother’s wedding was a bit more expensive, but he made money on his wedding, as he had 250 or so guests, and they all pretty much gave a hundred a head (more like $150). With my Polish family and friends, the question isn’t how much did you spend on a wedding, it’s how much did you make.
We eloped to Las Vegas and got married at a drive-thru chapel. Cost us $75, I think.
It depends on how you count. I voted $100–$1000, because that’s how much we spent on the venue and meal, but if you include the wedding rings it would bring it up above $1000.
The actual wedding was cheap because we didn’t have guests for logistical reasons (we would have been a destination wedding for most friends and family, and we would rather have had no guests than make everybody spend thousands of dollars).
I voted $1,000-$10,000, but it was on the low side of that. The expenses I remember were $800 for a wedding dress, $400 for my suit, a $250 donation to the church to use the sanctuary for the ceremony, about $500 for a banquet room at a hotel and $15/head for meals for about 50 guests. So, around $3,000, in 1990. Used up both of our savings except for the bit left for a honeymoon.
First time, 1971. I’m not sure it cost anything. We got married at the Newman Center on a public university campus. Attendees: me, my husband, the priest, and three friends of ours. I’m not sure we were savvy even enough to offer the priest an honorarium. No reception. We had a picnic in a park afterwards (minus the priest). A few years later, the priest got married, to an ex-nun. Of the three friends, I’ve lost touch with one, but the other two-- a married couple-- are still married.
Second time, 1992, $1,000. There were 40 guests. We got married in a public park (cost $20 to rent), my dress was $80 from Dillard’s, reception held at a friend’s home (my best friend - he died in 2002 from AIDS), catered Mexican buffet about $150 (a close friend), cake $80, invitations printed free by a printer friend, honorarium to Lutheran pastor $200. We had the rings made by a jeweler friend of my husband’s - $450 for the pair. The photographer (we didn’t know him) was late and missed the whole thing, so he took some pictures afterward and didn’t charge us.
Lord, how that woman loved you! 
There are some things I’m not sure about. We were married in Honolulu at the office of a private firm by a judge, and I don’t remember how much we paid for that service. Then there was the taxi ride back and forth to the office, twice (once to make arrangements and pay for it, once for the actual ceremony). So I put it in the $100-$1000 range. We didn’t have a wedding party except the two of us. I was not counting the airfare and hotel and other expenses of the trip, as we were there on vacation anyway. We had a small celebration dinner that evening, again just the two of us, but we would have had dinner anyway. We already had matching rings from a previous trip to Hawaii, which transmogrified from decorative into wedding rings by virtue of the ceremony.