My mind just wobbles at these weddings. I know of people who exceeded the $29,000 mark on a couple that really could have used a down payment on a house. I do try to avoid wedding invitations, my age group in family and friends all got the marriages out of the way early, and luckily they didn’t have a lot of kids that would eventually got married. It’s absurd to spend this kind of money if you’re not rolling in dough. Perhaps now that people get married older and contribute substantially to their own weddings and their parents are older to and in better financial shape that they can better afford these weddings, I still find it absurd to do spend that kind of money on a party, and glad I had no daughters who would convince me to spend outrageously like that. I’d rather be able to put my kids on better financial ground starting out. Perhaps also I don’t need to show off my financial success to anybody, but I can sorta understand somebody who needs to give that message to their family somehow. But then again it could be done with a substantial and lasting gift to the couple instead of something that’s gone at the end of the day.
I’ve done a few free divorces for friends. As it’s not my area, I’m clear I’ll only do it if “no kids and no money” is involved.
My comment wasn’t about the cost of the lawyer, however. It wasn’t much. It was the amount I had to pay my ex. I agreed to it in mediation, and it was more than the court would have ordered (said my lawyer), but it was the right thing to do, despite causing a few periods of economic hardship.
Really I’ve no idea how much it cost, maybe 5k? the ceremony was outside in a nature preserve officiated by an evangelical Elvis look alike preacher who was my friends Dad. Fitting for a mixed marriage! Lol.
Reception was inside the glass walled pavilion. Buffet style catering. Champagne toast for all, with kegs of beer and cases of wine. DJ kept us all dancing. We stayed past the park curfew and bribed the cops with a case of champagne to leave the gates open for us.
A month later my in-laws planned a second reception for us back in Chicago so their friends and family could attend. This one was a bit of a splash, with my family in tow sightseeing and getting a taste of the big city. Catered event at fancy Italian restaurant and yes we had to get back in our wedding clothes. That was basically their gift to us with flights paid and all. Very generous. Unnecessary but appreciated.
Still yoked together.
My husband’s family is interesting. They have a lot of money and they marry into other families with a lot of money. The ostentatious display of wealth is really important to them. We have a family flag - a flag - that is displayed at every property they own. I’ve been to family birthday parties featuring giant I’ve sculptures carved with the family name. When my husband’s grandfather died, it was a three-day event with a written itinerary distributed to all of us as “mandatory” and featured a limousine procession.
It creates a lot of pressure on the grandkids many of whom are well off but not ridiculously so. So I have seen cousins save up for these big weddings because that’s what’s expected. The alternative is to let Grandma pay for it as long as she gets to control everything.
In this case I’m quite sure the parents paid for the wedding and I’m quite sure $200k was nothing to them.
This is the dream, right? To have all this money and show it off? And what do they have to show for it? I don’t get it either. We had what seemed to me like a nice outdoor budget wedding, but we didn’t invite everyone (only 50 guests). Keep in mind… We were 23 and I was still in college. There was a lot of gossip about it behind our backs. In fact one of our cousins revealed she was anxious not to make the same “mistakes” we did. Not as an insult to us but because it was genuinely stressing her out.
Our wedding (1982) was in a friend’s garden. Costs were low – the minister, the food, and the wedding dress (which wasn’t ornate or expensive – a white dress, but not a wedding dress). It was certainly under $1000 and would probably still be if held today.
Does nobody get cash gifts or is this just an immigrant (or specific immigrant) thing? Like I said above, at the Polish weddings among my family and friends here, you hope to make money off your wedding. Nobody is going home deep in debt as all the guests generally know to bring enough to cover their plate and a little extra for the couple. So at a 200 guest wedding you can expect to get $25-$30K from your guests. I’ve never attended a wedding in the last 15 years and left less than $150 for the couple. Even the very first wedding where I was a student, I’d show up with $100 (back in 1998).
This may be a class thing. But we did make out like bandits at our wedding, mostly because of one big check from the grandparents. I expected nothing of my guests other than hoping they would enjoy the day with me. And it was a beautiful day, one of the best days of our lives.
In our case, it’s mostly working class folk (though my wife and I and my brother and his wife are white collar, middle class), and I feel like I see the same in Greek weddings and Mexican weddings and the such, though I do not have insider knowledge as to how much money – I just see all the envelopes. I certainly didn’t expect anything, nor did I care about who gave what. But everyone knows the drill.
Cash gifts are common. We got something like $5000 in cash presents way back when, but only from the older generation. IIRC my family gave larger amounts while her larger family made it up in volume. It was different though, our generation was getting married younger, people weren’t established in careers and banking money they afford to use for a wedding. Most people then depended on family to cover wedding costs whether high or low.
So now days I hear proper social media etiquette requires attendees to give a cash gift sufficient to cover your share of the wedding costs. That’s in addition to a nice present of some other kind or just more cash if you couldn’t even find something nice to regift. So using that system I can see continually rising costs of weddings.
We got $2500 in cash gifts, but got at least that much again in things for our home (I bought a house six months before the wedding) that we would absolutely have bought. Registries are considered vulgar in our community, but my mother played the role impeccably.
It’s not an immigrant thing - I am the third generation born in the US in my family and I never heard of a wedding gift (except in books/movies) until my own wedding, when one couple brought a gift to the reception. It’s a specific cultural thing - the Italian side of my family only gives money , my husband’s Chinese family only gives money or jewelry. And those people who brought a gift to my wedding - I suspect they did that because they didn’t know our cultural traditions. They were Jewish and every other Jewish guest gave us money. ( And it was so unusual that 35 years later, I still remember who it was and what they gave us. )
I’ve heard of “covering your plate” but I have never heard that an additional gift is expected and it certainly isn’t in my culture. ( And the expectation of “covering the plate” is only on one direction" .I as the guest am supposed to use that as a guideline if it’s reasonable , but the bride and groom aren’t supposed to expect anything but my presence, and certainly not plan a $200 person reception that they can’t afford expecting that everyone will give them $200 - because not everyone will)
Weird, at our wedding we didn’t get anything in the form of cash gifts, but we did get a lot of gifts. Apparently everyone thought we needed towels. I think we got at least $500 worth of towels, and they weren’t on our registry. We were married for at least 15 years before we needed to buy any towels of our own.
Miss Manners says thats wrong. You are to think of what your friends would like and pick out a gift. Its the thought that counts.
I dunno, but I’m sure it was too much. We were fine with a small ceremony in my inlaws’ back yard, but MIL wanted to invite a ton of people. We let her have her way on that, but nothing else. When she wanted the wedding party to wear matching outfits we said she needed to drop that idea or we’d just elope. The actual ceremony was created by us and the minister (who is a friend of mine).
I think about $10k in 2009, depending on what you count. The bigger-ticket items were catering for ~ 100 people (Persian buffet, which everyone loved), the venue (a community facility that let us use any caterer we wanted and bring our own booze, because we refused to pay $100/person for rubber chicken and a 400% alcohol markup), rings, and my dress. Off-the-rack dresses weren’t going to work because my fairly basic requirements (no strapless, no giant poofy white polyester things, and I don’t see the point in buying something I don’t even like, that doesn’t fit me, and that I will have to spend huge amounts of money on alterations so it fits) apparently didn’t exist in off-the-rack, so I hired a local seamstress.
Lots of things were DIY (music was my iPod plugged into the venue’s stereo, sister-in-law officiated, other sister-in-law and cousin were the musicians for the processional, borrowed a chuppah that a friend had made, photos were all our friends’ digital cameras, centerpieces were glass bowls from Michael’s with floating candles and glass pebbles in them, etc.) It was important to us to have family and friends there, but when you are among the last to get married, as we both were, all your family and many of your friends have spouses and kids so it really bumps up the guest list. Everyone had a great time, though, and we wouldn’t change a thing.
Year: 1977. Cost: about $1500, not counting my dress and veil, which I paid for out of paychecks. (I was a FT college student and worked part-time.) My parents had a terrific approach that I used with my daughter: We’ll give you $X ($2,000 in my case). If you spend less, keep it. If you spend more, you make up the difference."
No, it’s a normal thing. Most cultures around the world have big (300+ people) weddings where the guests bring cash or checks. The exception is in some first-world Protestant societies - like the “default” American culture - where weddings tend to be smaller and more modest; more about the bride and groom, and less about the families as a whole.
My family (and I’m speaking only for them) never gave cash gifts. To do so would be crass and rude, and demonstrate that you didn’t care enough about the couple to give them something that they really wanted. A place setting from the bride’s preferred china pattern, for example, or a place setting from the bride’s silverware pattern. Or a Lalique crystal vase. After all, that’s why wedding registries exist–to know what the couple (especially the bride) wants.
Bingo. As you might be able to tell, this is where I come from, where actual gifts are given (and often delivered by the retailer prior to the wedding), and cash is never given, especially at the reception.
Interestingly, back in the 1980s, I had a Spanish girlfriend, and we discussed marriage. The culture clash became apparent once we did. Her family expected a huge wedding with hundreds of guests; my family expected maybe a hundred guests, from both sides, tops. Her family might provide gifts, but all of them would bring cash for us on the day itself.
“Mine won’t,” I said. “We’ll get a place setting, or an expensive crystal vase or something.”
“Well, tell them that cash is expected,” said my girlfriend. “Gifts are fine, but they should bring cash to the wedding.”
“That’s not the way they do things,” I protested. “It’s gifts, and gifts only, never cash, and especially not to the wedding.”
“Well, if you can’t convince them to change, then we’ll just sell that crap they gave, and put the proceeds towards the cost of the wedding.”
That’s what caused me to rethink the whole thing. “That crap they gave”? “The cost of the wedding?” If Spanish families expect to make money off a wedding, or at least that their guests cover the wedding costs, and WASP families (like mine) don’t, then maybe I’m marrying into the wrong culture.
I broke up with the girl. 'Nuff said.
Unrelated to weddings, I just worked for a couple of days with a generic American white guy married to a Filipino woman for over a decade now. He was describing the ongoing, and now rapidly escalating, culture clash between his expectations as a typical atomistic American and hers where extended family isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
Obviously I’m getting one side of a two-sided situation. But it’s clear he’s being made miserable and IMO it’s likely she is too. Neither is per se wrong, they’re just different; very, very different.
I put 100 to 1000. But would have to say closer to 100. We just had our house built, and had a House warming party with about 10 people. One of the guests was a Notary, and we asked her before hand if she would officiate. After all the guests arrived, we asked for witnesses, and were married before the dinner. So our wedding, about 20 years ago, was steaks, snacks, burgers, drinks, and a few disposable cameras. So around $100.