Are large weddings worth the money?

[Tweety]

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as long as people know what they are getting into at a wedding (cash bar, or light food, or whatever) there is nothing wrong with making whatever arrangement you want. nowhere is it written in stone that you have to feed people at your wedding, or get them drunk, or whatever.

personally i have been to several weddings that featured a potluck-style meal afterwards but copious free booze, this was great.

my own wedding, i would prefer to spend a bunch of money on food and booze and not much on anything else.

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I guess if everyone you know thinks cash bars are normal, and they represent the majority of folks at your wedding, then it's fine. In that case, you probably wouldn't need to indicate that it was cash bar style on the invitation.

I agree with you on focusing on food and booze costs and pinching more on extras like flowers, video guys, fancy invitations, and stuff like that. If you're not going to have a band, you should have a pretty good DJ. Emcees I can take or leave- in fact they're sometimes a bit cheesy.

[Tweety]

Do you think a marriage is successful if at least one of the spouses illicitly cheats regularly?

[NT!]

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Do you think a marriage is successful if at least one of the spouses illicitly cheats regularly?

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i have no interest in speculating on whether people are happy in their marriages. i am just correcting a common factual error, that 50% of marriages end in divorce, and the perception that this supposed 'average' represents the real tendencies of average people who get married.

[Tweety]

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Sooo you talk about not liking big weddings but spent 30k?

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I never said I didn't like big weddings. I just personally don't think they come close to being worth the money that is spent on them.

From where I come from, 30k is not a lot for a wedding and honeymoon. And for a large, reasonably-nice-or-better wedding (let's say north of 150 people) and an at least half-decent honeymoon, it's pretty tough to get out for less than 30k anywhere in America.

Heck, in many circles $30k covers the flowers, dress, and tent, before any money is spent on food, booze, and all the other extras.

If you took a 2 week vacation to various nice parts of Europe and wanted to stay in reasonably nice to very nice places, what do you think your all-in budget would need to be?

Don't forget about the massive tax you pay at hotels, not to mention the weak dollar.

[Tweety]

Understood, and that's an interesting article.

However, regardless of what the "true" number is, I still believe Americans spend astonishingly too much money on weddings, even given the tendency of Americans to spend too much in general. I find wedding expense to be particularly bizarre, even for our culture of spending on things we cannot really afford.

[esad]

I've long held the belief that two biggest wastes of money in this life are wedding and funerals.

Why people will spend 25-100K on a single day event that ultimately won't bring them any real happiness, peace or wisdom is beyond me.

[guids]

If guys were the ones with the final say in weddings, there would be no big weddings, unfortunelty we dont adn never will. So my advice, is to suck it up, and make sure you at least have a wedding that rocks. So many times I go to weddings that cost an inordinate amount of money because of the venue, but the food, liquor, etc all sucks, this is probably the part that you engaged guys can probably finagle into something that is worth it.

[theblackkeys]

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Given that there's a 50% chance the marriage you're spending all this money on partying over will fail,

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Just explain this to your fiancee.....


Don't worry, 50% of OTHER PEOPLE'S marriages fail but yours will always last, so its worth it.




As for getaway weddings, things get annoying with old relatives, new passport regulations, etc.

Personally I want to have a simple ceremony, a simple reception, then like a VIP reception later that night or the next day/night where its just like our best friends, and spend money making that a real blowout.

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You say this now but good luck when it comes time to actually planning it. Things sneak up on you that end up costing you big. Friends that aren't invited are sore about it.

Destination weddings are ideal because you're spending money on something you might spend a lot of money on anyway: a great vacation. Also, it is much easier to justify not inviting certain people if you get married in a remote place than if you do it near home.

We talked about doing a blowout party at home when we got back, but we ended up bagging that idea due to the cost. Renting out a bar or restaurant in NYC and inviting 150-200 people for an open bar with hors d'oeuvres isn't exactly a small cost.

We got married at a 5 star hotel in Italy with about 30 of our closest friends and relatives. We then spent 5 days on our own in Capri as a honeymoon, also at a 5 star property. We picked up the travel and hotel costs for certain relatives who couldn't afford the hotel or airfare.

Total cost of everything, including the honeymoon, the dinners we picked up for everyone, the hotel costs for ourselves and the others we paid for, general spending money throughout the trip, flowers, string quartet, the dinner (at this top notch hotel), and everything else: about $30,000. We were gone for a total of two weeks. People who go to Europe for two weeks and stay in nice places spend no less than 10k, and sometimes more like 20k if they're really pimping it up.

Take a look at what $30,000 gets you back home if you want to invite over 150 people. The last few weddings I have been to have been 200-plus.

Nothing is worse than a big wedding that is painfully cheap and adhering to a strict budget. Cash bars, a lack of food at the cocktail hour, chintsing out on tents, no bands, etc., is just lame. If you can't afford it don't do it at all. Nobody is going to care 2 years later. People are way too obsessed with appearances.

It cracks me up that people flip out when gas prices go up by 30 cents, but then they go and spend everything they have in their savings account on a single party to celebrate an institution that fails as often as it succeeds.

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$30,000 is a lot of money. Why exactly are YOU ranting about expensive weddings? You certainly have a point though.

I got married for around $10,000 (give or take a couple grand), had 150 people attend my wedding, had an awesome DJ (and therefore great reception), good food, OPEN BAR, and a nice ceremony.

[The Glidd]

Me and my wife just spent about 18,000 on ours. It helped that I knew the band, she worked for the caterer in HS, I knew ceremony musicians, etc. Her parents chipped in some and my parents gave us a little.

The whole day went by in an instant but was fantastic. Every penny was well spent.

[The Glidd]

Also, I perform at weddings every weekend. Here's what makes a good, rockin' wedding:

1. Collection of people - if your family and friends are lame, nothing else matters.

2. Free booze - everything else can be perfect but this is a deal-breaker.

3. Good music - this can be a band or DJ, as long as they're good. Nothing beats a good band on a stage with the right size dance floor, though.

4. Venue - size/ shape of the room, placement of tables, geographical location all come into play - some of it obvious (people traveling to wedding from out of town are more likely to party) some of it not so obvious (if tables are too far apart, it's harder for people to be social).

4. Good appetizers - if you went with rule 2, taste buds will be dull to the the meal, anyway.

5. Good dinner - you can really define yourself at appetizers - most caterers can whip up something distinctive - but meals are usual snooze-fests of filet mignon, chicken, salmon, etc.

Of course, this only applies to the reception. The ceremony is a different ballgame with fewer guidelines for success. [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]