I think we spent around $40k for our wedding. We kind of lucked out. Originally we were looking to hold it either in New York City or Hudson County, NJ which would have been super expensive. On a whim we decided to check out the city where we met in college. It ended up being really nice - the town’s main street, including the big old historic hotel where we had the reception had been renovated recently. And we managed to luck out and land a slot at the 130 year old on-campus church which usually has a years-long waitlist for weddings.
We’re a bit of an outlier though, since we were dating forever before we decided to make it official. So turns out the cost of the wedding is often proportional to the length your future wife had to wait for you to decide to shit or get off the pot.
Church is still going, but the restaurant for the reception and the honeymoon B&B are both out of business after more than 25 years.
Had a discussion with my parents recently and I thought it was $16,000.00, they thought $8,000.00, and I remember that my outfit was close to $1000.00. Wouldn’t have minded a simpler wedding, but the one we had was fun and everybody had a good time.
I had a coworker who woke up on the morning of her wedding and told her parents she didn’t want to get married. Her mother encouraged her to do so anyway, since all the arrangements were made, and they had already started the wedding celebrations.
She got married, went on the honeymoon, etc. Got the wedding annulled in less than a year. Would have been cheaper to cancel the priest and just have the party, but far more embarassing.
Friend’s first wedding was cheaper than her second, but her second marriage has lasted 20 years and still going. And her second wedding was what she and her second husband wanted, not what the first husband demanded.
Ducky and I got married in 1987 for $160 not including the rings ($500). We got married in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of the Doo Dah parade in Columbus, OH. There were 45,000 people at my wedding that I didn’t have to feed.
I’ve heard of this as a theory long before 2014, the date of that study, though. I think I even heard of it as a child, but I certainly had by 2006, when one of my then in-laws had a huge wedding. They’re still together and very happy; they also managed the big wedding by saving on some major costs (like the wedding dress and music - the bride wanted a simple dress, and they were musicians) and splurging on accommodation and venue, and choosing April 1st, which meant they could get a prestigious wedding venue on a date many other people would avoid.
Despite that, it was still a huge and lavish wedding. The topic of “big weddings = quick divorce” came up. Nobody who knew either of them well thought that there would be a quick divorce whatever wedding they had, but the trope was already there.
So it being correlated to income makes sense, but I would have thought that’s what most people were assuming - I mean, they wouldn’t expect millionaires to spend the same on a “simple” wedding as a an average low-wage couple.
Looking back, the weddings that were more lavish than I expected have not lasted.
Yeah, I reckon this will at least be a factor, even if it’s not the whole story. Basically compensating for something that’s missing by throwing money at it.
DH asked me if I wanted an engagement ring, and I told him “No.” I’m generally opposed to what is basically carbon with the atoms in a particular formation that makes it transparent, being so goddamed expensive, but also opposed to the abuses in the diamond industry.
I’m really glad he asked and didn’t just buy one.
I went to one really lavish, practically royal-wedding scale wedding, given by a family for whom it was just a blip on their financial radar. In fact, there was a story circulating, entirely believable, that they matched what they spent on the wedding with a charitable donation.
We had a dilemma of what to get a couple like that for a gift. We finally settled on some handmade Shabbes candle holders, made by a fair-to-middling famous (but highly talented) artist in Israel, whom, as it happens, I know personally. The Thank You note was both beautiful, and very prompt. And handwritten. I’m pretty sure the bride wrote the whole thing herself, and she and the groom both signed it. It specifically referenced the candle holders, and how much they liked that artist’s work.
They are still married, and it hasn’t been really long, but it’s been long enough-- about 13 years (I remember getting a baby-sitter for the boychik).
One of the reasons, I think, for the expensive wedding was the fact that there were so many guests, because it is a family with a lot of connections, and one that didn’t want to leave anyone out, so it was going to be a big group, require a big venue, etc., etc.; once you are already doing that, you almost need to go with table service, waiters circulating with champagne and appetizers, and a good-sized live band. Also, a cake big enough for all those people.
Actually, I suspect that the cake really wasn’t, albeit, it was pretty big, and there were “satellite” cakes in the kitchen.
FWIW, the bride and groom, as well as both sets of parents, went around the room, and talked to every table.
A friend of mine had a guy setting up chairs for the reception keel over and die of a heart attack. They rolled him out to the meat-wagon just as the guests were arriving.
I have been to many weddings with price tags over $20k and a few that (I’m estimating) approached $100k. I’ve also been to very inexpensive weddings. In my admittedly small sample, there’s no correlation between wedding size and marriage strength. All those really expensive weddings were paid for by people with plenty of money. The divorcees of weddings I’ve attended divorced over “irreconcilable differences”, not financial constraints.
Yeah, I think it’s ok to be seriously upset if your wedding reception venue collapses on you. I’m probably never going to have a party as big as my wedding with as much of my extended family and friends in attendance. Some of the people who attended have died since then, so they’re certainly not going to be present. It would majorly suck to have that celebration literally ruined to the extent that you have to like call ambulances and evacuate the building, as opposed to the bridezilla sort of “ruined”, where, like, the flowers were arranged poorly or they ran out of your favorite appetizer.
In my limited experience the study seems to be true, but it’s usually because the desire and acceptance of a wedding beyond everyone’s means is a sign of immaturity. Mature people who might stay married longer would opt for a wedding within everyone’s means, whether that means a cheaper wedding, a non-destination wedding, etc…
There needs to be a followup study of honeymoon cost vs. marriage duration.
At the time of our marriage, money and job constraints meant no tropical island resort for me and Mrs. J.
I was able to get just enough time off work to take her for a romantic weekend on Lake MacBride (Iowa). If you’re ever passing through the Solon area, it’s worth a stop (great walleye and crappie fishing from what I hear).
*the lowlight of our trip was when I attempted to rescue a large turtle from the road near the lake, and it turned out to be a snapping turtle in a bad mood. Luckily there were no casualties.
We were both in grad school for our wedding so we didn’t have a honeymoon. A year later we took a week long vacation driving around California to celebrate graduation and called it our honeymoon. Our total cost was like $2k.
Our wedding cost $50 for the magistrate and not much more for the small backyard BBQ for immediate family. No engagement ring - this was her second marriage and she didn’t want one, and the wedding rings were both heirlooms. We’ve been married for 27 years, plus the 10 years we lived in sin before that (probably a better indication of marriage longevity than anything else).
We’d decided early on that we wouldn’t bother making it legal as long as there were tax advantages to being officially single, and when the income tax rules change to eliminate any tax benefits, OK it was time to get married. For some reason there was no problem getting a magistrate to perform the ceremony on our chosen date, Friday the 13th. (We wanted the 14th, which would have been exactly 10 years after we moved in together, but they didn’t do Saturday marriages at the courthouse, so every year we have Anniversary 1 followed a day later by Anniversary 2.)
First marriage, wedding cost about $2k all including rings and honeymoon. Divorced 14 years later, which cost me all in about $250k.
Second marriage wedding cost about $100k all including rings and honeymoon. Still married after 17+ years, however if I were to divorce now, which I don’t expect to happen, would cost me seriously a lot more, than my first divorce.
I don’t remember the cost of our wedding-I was still in grad school and wifee had just graduated her practicals. We scheduled the wedding on a Saturday because of my class schedule. Everything was paid for by us, parents were invited (I think. I don’t remember) but couldn’t make the cross-country trip. One of the married grad students held the reception in their house-our apartment would have been awfully tight and it was in Oregon in February. Not suitable weather to be outdoors for any length of time. Details are a bit hazy, it was 43 years ago. We are still quite happy together.
33 years ago for us and counting. We we both 30-ish adults with good jobs who paid for the whole shindig ourselves.
We had a sit down dinner reception for about 100 people total at a medium high end resort in the city she lived in. We didn’t pay for anyone’s accommodations or travel. Probably $15K at the time including the dresses. Two rings at ~5K each. A 7-10 day honeymoon in another tourist / resort city near by. So another couple-to few $K for accomodations and food & such.
Seems to have been money well spent. Or at least well-amortized.
