I simply cannot fathom throwing a wedding whose expenses will be more than those of actually beginning married life.
Oh, and that bit about having your ovaries revoked is going on the Page o’ Flames. 
I’ll toss in another plug for elopements. I eloped in April of this year. We told our families all the details in advance, and everyone was fine with it. We took off to the San Juan islands with our two best friends, stayed at an estate for the weekend with a wedding thrown into the middle of the weekend. We wore formal clothes to make for nice pictures to share, spent about as much on a photog as we did for everything else, went to dinner afterwards and took off on a long honeymoon. A month or so after we got back we threw a huge backyard cookout party for about 100 people, and in a month we’re going back to our hometowns and our families are throwing little parties for family and friends who couldn’t come out for the big party.
We were able to afford the downpayment on our house and a new car, my parents gave us a nice wad of cash for saving them money, and we’re still celebrating. I love the way we did (are doing) it - I not only had a wedding day, it’s turning into a ‘wedding year’. (And I got such a great husband out of the deal!)
Mostly him. He was so excited about planning the thing, I actually had to ask him if he needed me to do anything. I’m a lucky girl, I tell ya.
Exactly. If you wanna go frilly, do it. If you wanna go simple, do it. Don’t let anyone else tell you how you should have your wedding. I hate it when I see women going insane because they “have to” have this thing or other. The only things you absolutely must have at a wedding are a bride, a groom, and a hitcher of some sort. Everything else is optional.
I don’t have any wedding plans, but if I were making them, I’d go as low key as possible. I wouldn’t spend thousands, or even hundreds, on the flowers, gown and so forth.
So, count me in as another “simplifier.”
I plan to have a wonderful, beautiful, wedding with lots of trimmings, for very little money, because the trimmings will be CHEAP. Also, my blushing bridegroom (there’s another little detail I have to take care of) and I will be under strict oaths of silence so as never to let slip that the thing is actually a wedding. 500% price increase!
Hey, CrazycatLady, which site do you frequent? I am also addicted to one-it started out as me trying to find a reception site in this area, finding the site and making fun of all these women, and then genuinely becoming somewhat perversely addicted to it despite myself!
I’ll tell you my handle if you’ll tell me yours!
(Aw-crikey-never mind-forgot my username is the same on every board, so not like it’s gonna be hard to spot me!)
Yeah, I really don’t care about a lot of it. I will probably try to cater mine myself, and I’m having a chocolate cake (inside AND out, dammit!) and no matching dresses-hell-no wedding party at all except the two of us, and so on. Then again, I do get giddy about throwing this killer party with Chinese lanterns in the trees, so although it won’t be some girlie gig, I guess I’m still caught up in the idea.
However, not to the tune of the average cost of an American wedding according to these sites=
25 Thousand Frickin’ Dollars
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
If it’s somebody’s idea of a worthy investment, hey, who am I to say em no?
Me, though? No way no how!
When I was planning my wedding in 1998 everything wrong happened, so I ended up not having a wedding. No dress, no flowers, no nothing. Nada, zip, zero.
I was really really upset about it for the first year, now I’m GLAD we didn’t have one! Weddings basically are just a big show for everyone else … I’d recommend to anyone getting married to elope and go on a really great honeymoon.
What’s the use of blowing all that money on the ceremony and reception and then spending the night at the Econo Lodge?
I suspect that the people on the wedding planning sites are the ones who are crazy.
We spent $500 on our wedding, and it was great. My mom sewed my dress (undyed silk, $7/yard), the guys wore suits, and my uncle did the photography (one of my goals was that I was not going to let a photographer run everything). Pansies in baskets! Jordan almonds! Pineapple punch!
We got a lot of compliments on the relaxed atmosphere of the reception, and have great memories. This was probably helped by my mom’s attitude–“I’ll help you pay for it if I don’t have to plan it.”
My wife sent out our invitations with bug stamps. You know, praying mantis’, iridescent beetles, that kind of thing.
My wife is cool.
My god, that is such an awesome idea. Just from what you said I have got this fantastic wedding party already planned out in my head, next to the ocean. Everybody wears beach-themed outfits during the ceremony, hawaiian print wedding dress and groom’s outfit, after the ceremony everybody rips off their clothes to reveal bathing suits and spends the reception somewhere between a luau (sp?) and the sea. I so want to do that for my wedding…
I would love to have a teeny tiny cheap wedding, but if I end up marrying my current boyfriend ::crossing fingers:: we might have to end up doing the Big Honking Indian Wedding just to keep his family happy. I wouldn’t mind spending 2000 dollars on a deluxe sari… but, like many of you guys, I’d rather spend it on furniture or a house.
- tsarina, looking forward to the big henna party.
I’m with Pessor on this. I eloped to Vegas with Mrs. Dec and never regretted it. We were going to Vegas anyhow so we figured what the hell, let’s get married. Cost 30 bucks at the JP in downtown Vegas. That was 20 years ago next week. We bought a house the week after we got back with the money we saved by not having a big wedding. We did have a big party/reception after we got home but it was thrown by friends so it only cost for the food and booze. Some of the $ 20,000 weddings I go to these days make me want to barf. What a waste…but, to each his/her own.
Sidle, I spend a lot of time on here and my username is the same. I’ve never noticed you around though, but there is at least one other Doper there.
So far, there’s been a grand total of around $200 spent on our wedding. Of course, that’s just my dress, shoes, jewelry, flowers and veil, but I’m still a couple thousand below average already. The reception site we’re looking at will be right around $900, and my grandma’s making our cake for free. Actually, now that I think about it, we’re probably already $10,000 below average with the cake and reception figured in. Pure insanity, I tell you.
Do any of you feel that your ovaries will be revoked (love that line, by the way) because you don’t care much about other people’s big wedding toodoos? I had a simple wedding myself–you’d think that would be the hint that I don’t care about this stuff, but I’m still expected to gush over other women’s (especially relatives) wedding plans. Smile and nod, smile and nod. I don’t know–perhaps other women are particularily good actors, but they seem genuinely interested.
Then again, “Love” stamps don’t cost any more than other stamps. It’s not just money that’s involved in this “everything must be PERFECT” obsessive-princess attitude. (The obsessive princess is not always the bride, either.) The bridal industry just preys on this attitude by jacking up the price on anything that’s specifically marketed for a “wedding”.
I eloped over 12 yeas ago, no regrets. Just me, the hubby, the minister, the minister’s wife, and the friend whose apartment we borrowed. Hey, let’s be honest - we were so poor we couldn’t even afford all of that - the minister volunteered to do it for free and my friend paid for the cake (just a plain pan-baked cake, with white icing, decorated with red roses with chocolate stems - friend’s hobby was cooking) and didn’t charge for the apartment.
Bride and groom were both in Scottish highland attire which, come to think of it, didn’t not feature white to any great degree (I wore Royal Stewart, which is predominantly red)
Do what YOU want. Some people DO want the over-done way-too-expensive frippery. That’s fine - if they can afford it. Others want to frolic naked on a beach at sunrise. That’s cool, too.
Most of the crap pushed on those wedding planner sites are “traditions” that weren’t heard of until maybe 10-30 years ago, at most.
For rational wedding-planning advice, I heartily recommend Miss Manners. There are wedding sections in most of her books (compilations of her advice column).
Sample wisdom (paraphrased): Don’t forget that what you are planning is a big party. Yes, it’s a very big party with you as the center of attention, but it is only a party. If this is the best day of your life, your marriage is in trouble.
or:
A wedding should be your social customs at their best, not an attempt to emulate the imagined doings of the fabulously wealthy. The idea is to have a festive good time, not to break the bank.
or:
I don’t care who sits where or who wears what. How do you like that? Break any tradition that you like, most of them are more recent than you imagine.
Very common-sense type stuff. I used her good ideas as a guide to my own wedding, which I considered “medium” at 65 guests. I recently heard a friend refer to her “small” wedding of 250. (??)
-Theobroma
PS- I bought pearly nail polish, then forgot to use it…so I clipped my fingernails right before the ceremony with a toenail clipper. No polish. Still went ahead with the wedding. Still married.
PSS-My sister had a bouquet in the shape of a cross delivered to the Temple for a Jewish wedding. She freaked, until my mother bent each arm around to make an oval bouquet. My sister’s immortal line: “Great, I’m getting married with a swastika bouquet…”
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I got an invitation to a wedding yesterday. The outer envelope had one of the “antique toys” stamps…I don’t know where I put the inner one, so I can’t check to see what it had on it.
LOL!
Count me in the ovary-revoked crowd. Having been to two very traditional weddings recently I realised that what made them successful wasn’t the dress, or the flowers, or the venue: it was a mixture of good company and plenty of booze. I plan to have these two in abundance when I get married.
This, coupled with the fact that both me and mr bifar are very stingy, have no other family weddings to live up to, have few (and old) relatives and my mother’s agoraphobic – it’ll be just the two of us and a tete a tete over a Macdonalds.
In 1989, El Hubbo and I were married by a JOP in Iowa Park, Texas. The bride wore Converse hightops; the couple exchanged invisible wedding rings.
My only regret is that we didn’t have a reception. I’d love to be able to celebrate our marriage with friends and family. We’re thinking we’ll do it on our 15th anniversary in 2004.
Well, the reason you didn’t get love stamps on your invitation was that the 37 and 60 cent ones aren’t out yet. Trust me, this is a source of great wailing and gnashing of teeth for at least one person on the board I visit. There was even more wailing when someone actually looked at the new ones. For some reason the postal service’s stamp-buying page won’t come up, but I saw them last night and they’re way cool.
Oh, and the swastika line nearly made me spit tea all over the keyboard.