Married in 1983. My family was not thrilled at my choice of spouse, and I had no desire to have a Big Wedding. So we got married in a JP’s office at the local police precinct, and had a sit-down meal at a nice restaurant. I’d say the meal cost less than 500 dollars all told; my dress was about 110 dollars (not long, not even a wedding dress, just cream colored with a fair bit of lace). Maybe another 75 or so for shoes and a hat.
This was 4 weeks after my brother’s wedding; I’m quite sure my parents spent a LOT more than that on the big rehearsal dinner, and the wedding itself was fairly large. No clue what it cost (but my parents grumbled over the cost of mine…). Guess which one of us is still married?
There’s no way the honeymoon is part of the cost of a wedding. That’s on the couple who only attend (jeez, I’d hope!) unless someone gifts that to them. If it’s a destination wedding, who knows.
Sounds like mine. About $2,500 1986 dollars, held in a back yard, and a sheet cake for the wedding – about a dozen in attendance. The ‘party’ – we refused to call it a reception was a couple days later on a Saturday at the eclectic home of a friend. It included a more traditional wedding cake. My folks paid for the rehearsal dinner.
The honeymoon was mostly camping, two or three nights in a tent then one in a room. She had never been camping in her life, pointing out in Iowa you drive a hundred miles, you’re just camping in someone else’s cornfield. We did a dry run over a long weekend beforehand and she liked it so it was a go.
I have to say I did better than Spaghetti-Os, though.
I put down $1-$10k, but in reality it was well less if I recall correctly.
1981, had a celebrant perform the legal bit, made it a BYO grog and family helped with the catering…my aunt made the cake and others’ brought sides for a lamb on a spit that we had hired (the spit, not the lamb). My dress cost app $70, and so I think, in total, it would have cost app $500 all up, including the cheapo rings we exchanged!
Around $8k in 2008. My mom worked in event linens at the time and knew a lot of people in the industry and called in some favors. Had the wedding on a Sunday which made the room a lot cheaper than a Saturday plus they gave us an employee rate. Flowers were done through the local community college’s floral design program (they do one or two weddings per semester as a project) and were inexpensive and looked great. Event linens (table cloths, napkins, chair covers & bows) were, naturally, free. Wife found a dress she loved off the rack. Probably a few other things as well but I think the only major full-price service was the DJ and Photographer.
My wedding came out to about $4000 to $5000, in Toronto, in the year 2000.
We couldn’t have hordes of relatives, because my bride was American, and all her family was in the US. Her mother was too ill to travel, her sister was in Seattle, her brother was in Florida, and neither was flush enough to travel to Toronto. She hadn’t heard from her father in years (she believed he was in Alaska, but wasn’t sure). This provided us with enough of an excuse to tell all my distant relatives, who certainly expected to attend, that they couldn’t. As it was, the only relatives who were there were my Dad and my Aunt (my sister lived overseas, and my mother had passed).
The ceremony was performed in a chapel on the campus of my undergraduate university. There was a fee, but it wasn’t more than $100. The minister who performed the ceremony was the minister of the church where I sang in the choir for years. He wouldn’t accept an honorarium–“Spoons, you’ve freely given your voice to us for a long time. It’s my turn to reciprocate. Consider this my gift to you.” A friend supplied the music for the ceremony as his gift.
In all, we had no more than 20 people. The reception was drinks and a nice dinner in a small conference room at my Dad’s private club. That was the expensive part of the day; Dad may have ostensibly footed the tab, but we paid him back. No need for any recorded music; most of our friends were musical in some way, and many marched in with guitars, fiddles, and (of course) spoons. Heck, as you can imagine, I had a set of spoons with me, and there was at least one other spoon-player there. Lots of music, including vocals accompanying the instrumentalists.
As you may recall, I’m a lawyer too. A colleague offered to handle my divorce (years after our wedding) for the cost of a round of golf and a few beers on the course during it.
It was 25 years ago, we were both in college and our parents paid for everything, so I really have no idea how much it cost. But it was a modest affair - just 350 people or so, lovely outdoor venue, reasonably priced catering, photographer, video, DJ, no major frills.
41 years ago. In my parents’ garden. 50 guests. My mother and sisters brought and arranged flowers from their own gardens (we are a family of avid gardeners), and cooked the food. My dad hired a chamber quartet from the local orchestra, of which he was a patron, and filled the bathtub with bottles of champagne and ice. I bought a long white Laura Ashley dress off the rack, I think it was about $70. I did buy a tiered cake (it was chocolate, I despise white cake), and had corsages etc. made. It was a Zen Buddhist wedding which friends who were Zen priests officiated at. That stunned my southern in-laws. I remember it fondly. Altogether I’m sure it was well over $1000, but far less than $10K.
FIL was a churchwarden so we got the church and the service free. It was Easter so the church was already full of flowers.
The reception was a DIY affair. I think you call it a “potluck” in the US, and BIL was a DJ.
We went to a cousin’s wedding recently, with a couple of hundred guests in a smart hotel and a sit-down wedding breakfast. They even had some kind of majordomo, and live entertainment after. I think our wedding was better. The stupid thing is that they are not a wealthy family. The money they spent on wining and dining could have been far better spent on helping the newlyweds onto the housing market.
Hehe. That alone was worth the price of admission.
Far from being tacky, this is exactly the sort of wedding that “etiquette” (i.e., columnist Miss Manners) endorses. When people write into her column whining and complaining about the “cost of weddings these days,” she says it is and has always been perfectly proper to hold the ceremony in the parents’ back yard and serve nothing more elaborate (or expensive) than cake and punch.
$50 for the license and $125 for the Justice of the Peace, and it would have been $85 for the STD bloodwork [old old form of VD control, spotting people who have it. No idea if back then you popped positive for the clap or whatever the test was for they would do other than put you on the health department watch list and get you treated?]
I’m guessing under $10k but we never added it up and never budget for anything. Not-to-fancy catering and alcohol for ~100 was probably the biggest cost.
We eloped, so I don’t know if that counts. We paid $10 for the license and $25 for the notary (this was in FL almost 40 years ago.) Then we went to McD’s for lunch, then back to work - we were still in the Navy and a kid who worked for me was being court-martialed, so I had to be there. We did go out for a nice dinner that night, but all told, it was still under $100.
We got married in Columbia, SC in 1991. Spent about $3000, and that may have included our honeymoon trip which would have been several hundred dollars.
Our reception was in a hotel, which gave us the space for free in return for our using their in-house caterer. The reception was mid-afternoon, so we had heavy munchies rather than a sit-down dinner. Given that my wife’s family is Southern Baptist, an open bar was out of the question, but we did have a champagne toast. We had about 75 guests on hand.
Even for 1991, that was a very inexpensive wedding.
About $4000. We rented an entire summer camp for a weekend in the offseason. 100 guests, give or take. About $1200 for the site, and the rest was spent on catering, beer and wine, and flowers and other decorations. This was in 2013.
We had an absolutely beautiful little wedding for practically nothing. I had eloped previously, so I wanted something. My friend had bought the dress for me from a website called Holy Clothing, and then refused to let me pay her back, saying it was a wedding gift. I think it was about 50 bucks. I still have it and have worn it a couple times since then. There was a license and all that good stuff, the rings, a slip for my dress, I think I bought a little negligee, too. I got five bucks worth of baby’s breath at the flower shop, and the lady was nice enough to throw in a ribbon and make me a little bouquet for nothing. We got married at our home church location after Sabbath services, so that didn’t cost anything, we tried to give the minister a little something, but he wouldn’t hear of it. My folks bought some sandwiches, everybody else brought sides, the church furnished the cake, a friend (my ex!) took the pictures, my Mom sang and we had burned our own CD of music for the reception . And being near, but not on, Valentine’s Day, my folks bought us a one night Romance package for a honeymoon that included dinner . I voted the $100-1000 range, definitely being on the low end.
We were married in 1982 in the little neighborhood church that I went to my entire life. I think we paid the priest $25 and the girl that sang about the same. The food was catered by two ladies that did the cooking out of their kitchens (baked chicken and rigatonis!). The cake was made by a lady my MIL knew and MIL paid for it. My parents bought a case of wine to put on the tables for the meal which was held in the church basement. We also had punch that my aunt made. The pictures were taken by some guy my husband worked with for a nominal fee. My sisters decorated the church hall with basic stuff they made themselves. I made the programs. I don’t remember what I paid for my dress and veil but I’m sure it was under $125. Later that evening close family and friends came to my parent’s house where my dad set up a bar and my sisters’ boyfriends made drinks and played records. My mom and aunt made numerous snacks. We danced and visited. And we’re still married!
I voted "other " because I’m not sure how much my wedding cost in 1987. The reception alone was about $8-9000 and I’m not sure about the other prices so it was probably right around $10K That reception today would cost over $22K - my daughter got married in 2017 and her reception alone was about $13K . But she paid for 130 guests while I paid for 225.
We budgeted $27,500 excluding some of the items people here counted (rings, dress, airfare for us to my wife’s hometown, and honeymoon). We paid ourselves but we wanted a nice wedding with our many friends in attendance so we made some compromises and cut a few corners but we spent where we had too and went a little over budget but I think it was around 10% or so. It was beautiful and all of our 100 guests had fun - with one notable exception. I’m still happily married 12 years later to the wonderful Mrs. Charming and Rested and I wouldn’t change a thing about our wedding or our marriage. (Okay, I would hire a different photographer.)
