If nothing else, this thread certainly points out that women aren’t the only ones who watch Oprah’s show.
I wouldn’t call “modest” a wedding with 150 guests. It sure explains why you spent so much. Most of the costs you listed were for the accomodation (food, hall and bar) of all these people. If you’re in any way representative, it’s not the marriage per se (clothes, flowers, celebration, etc…) that is expensive but the guests, which is hardly surprising.
I enjoy going to fancy weddings, but I would never spend the money on a big bash. Our wedding cost $1100, including last-minute airfare to Vegas. Then six months later we had a party at our house. Sammiches from the grocery store deli and a bunch of booze. I don’t think it cost us $400 for 30 guests. But that’s who we are. The pomp and circumstance would be wasted on us.
To know one’s enemy, one must know how she thinks.
Wow My wedding was cheap
Dress and hair-- free( dress was like 4000$ and they let me borrow :eek: Twas beautiful.) Hair by a friend that does hair. Makeup done by my sister
Pictures- free as a wedding gift from a friend who is a photographer
Flowers-- free from a friend who is an interior decorator.
Cake – 45$ from an aquantance that does cakes
Church was free, decorations we bought at a wholesale place and put up by me and my family
Tux rentals were like 200$ paid by sis in law as gift.
Preacher and music free from church members.
After party paid in full by great new in laws 
Bridesmaid dress material was 100$ paid by me, each paid to get their own made and personalized.
Invitations printed up for free by my sister.
60,000… pshaw. It all turned out wonderful too.
wow i got lucky!
If you have your wedding at your family church, with a potluck afterward it doesn’t have to cost anything. Borrow a dress, borrow a tux, have your sister in law bake and decorate the cake…done and done. OK, rings, gold bands with no stones, a couple hundred. Or there’s always great-grandma Betty’s antique ring…
This is how people used to have weddings. Really. Only 30 years ago. But if you tell that to the young people today, they won’t believe you.
/yorkshiremen
Yes, poooooooooor Oprah, narcissistic billionaire megalomaniacal windbag. You didn’t marry because you’re a freaking mountain of a self-righteous ego. Oprah should just marry herself.
As for the 25K statistic. In this case, I suspect that the upper end of the weddings, like houses, cost waaaaaaaaaay more than the rest of the population, and in fact that the under-appreciated, rarely-reported median(50th percentile) would be a much better measure than the mean in this case, which is likely skewed to the right.
Mambowifey and I got married for $150. Honeymoon cost even less!
mm
Most wedding statistics include both the the engagement ring and the honeymoon in the cost. That can add up quick. Our $4,000 wedding was not so cheap when those items were added into the mix.
Well, neither would my parents, who were married 30 years ago in a hall (the same one as me, in fact) with a catered meal, and were, I am certain, not the only ones in the whole world to have done so at that point. As I have said, I am well aware of the fact that weddings like the one described here occur, but then, as with now, am I the only one who believes that it’s a mix of small, simple, at-home weddings, and big bashes with hundreds of people? That’s certainly been my experience – I have been to a number of both.
I guess by “modest”, I meant “modest for a formal wedding”, as in, compared to many of my friends, relatives, and colleagues who, though not rich by any means, had stuff like strolling violinists, ice sculptures, designer gowns, 300+ guests, etc. No, not modest in comparison to potlucks at home, but my secondhand dress and lack of limos and cakes and whatnot truly does seem modest to me in comparison to what I honestly think is more common than most people in this thread believe. Several of the halls we looked at had a 100-150 person minimum – so someone is having much bigger weddings than we did. Our number could also be due to us having somewhat large families – between us we have 5 siblings who are married with kids, add in our parents and that’s 35 people right there. If we are unusual in that we also invited aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, well, that is a surprise to me.
I’m sorry if I seem defensive, I really don’t mean to, I just feel like I was maybe misunderstood – I wasn’t trying to imply that weddings can’t be or aren’t ever inexpensive and small, or trying to get advice on how I could have spent less on my own – or that I possibly misunderstood Athena’s original post I was replying to. I interpreted the post as: “That seems like a lot for a wedding, I don’t know what would possibly cost so much?”, and I was just trying to point out some of the things involved in a certain (relatively common) style of wedding that she may not have considered.
Just to clarify - I know what makes things cost so much. The only thing I question is that the average wedding costs $25K. I know some weddings cost $25K and some cost $100K and some cost $1K. And so far, I still don’t believe the average is $25K. I think it’s a number made up by Bridal magazines.
Sorry. I did misunderstand.
Thanks for clarifying.
:eek:
I was married a couple months ago.
Chapel & Clergyman and 20 pictures: $250
New blouse for me: $38 (slacks & shoes were things I already owned)
Bouquet that I made myself with fake flowers from JoAnn Fabrics: $6.50
Sneaking off to get married in a cheap chapel & old clothes: PRICELESS
But that’s just me, I’ve always been a tightwad.
Feh!
My blue dress (what, you thought I’d marry in white?) cost about US$30.00.
Bureaucracy: about US$80.00
Lunch for the three friends that attended the wedding: US$110.00
Honeymoon: US$90.00 (got bored after the first night, drove back home).
Photos: free, courtesy of one of the guests, who’s an award-winning photographer.
My brother got married a month later, with all the pomp and circumstance. He kept telling me how smarter than him I was.
How stupid save-the-date cards are is going to depend on the person. I wish they had been common when I got married. Instead, I had to call a whole bunch of relatives before I set my date - to make sure I didn’t pick a date some cousin had already chosen, and then call again to put my date on the “taken” list.
Now, back to our originally scheduled OP.
I think there’s deep issues with Oprah not marrying Stedman. Perhaps they have very different views on some core issues. Maybe she doesn’t want her billions of dollars left to a man who might leave them to a charity she doesn’t endorse after her death. Maybe she doesn’t want to encourage her death by marrying, that’s some serious $$ to entrust to another individual if say, an anvil fell on her head. Maybe she already has charities in mind to donate her estate to, and want to ensure it will happen that way. Only Gayle knows for sure.
:rolleyes:
As if you can know anything about that situation from one little article. There are tons of reasons why couples break up. And just because someone helped you with your career doesn’t mean that you have to stay with them if you don’t want to.
Sheryl is awesome.