Do you take this debt, to have and to hold, from this day forth, until it drives you to bankruptcy?
What does it cost to get married these days?
More and more often we’re hearing of couples spending up around thirty or forty thousand dollars on their wedding day. Brides are insisting on fairytale weddings with all the trimmings and often it’s up to the parents of the bride and groom to foot the bill.
Should weddings really be that expensive? Are some people putting more effort into the wedding day than they are into preparing for a lifetime of marriage?
Life Skills Trainer, Jill Bonanno, joined me this morning on 98.5 Sonshine FM for our regular Friday morning radio segment, Simply Living.
We talked about simplifying weddings. Jill mentioned two couples she knew who had extremely expensive, fairytale weddings. One of those marriages lasted 3 months, the other 3 weeks. While spending excessive amounts of money on a wedding isn’t a certain indicator of an unhappy or short marriage, it can give us a clue about a couple’s priorities. If all the preparation and planning has been put towards a Hollywood style wedding, to the neglect of preparation for the next 50 years, it might just be that the bride and groom are headed for a Hollywood style divorce.
A couple’s wedding day should be a special celebration, and there’s nothing wrong with being extravagant if you can afford it, but how much is too much? What are the real priorities on a wedding day? A display of spending power – or simply spending time celebrating with those close to us?
You can hear our discussion by clicking here. As part of the segment we spoke to a number of listeners who gave their hints on keeping costs down while still creating a very special day.
One listener who is getting married in England early next year told us that the cost of their wedding was reduced by half because they were prepared to get married on the 2nd of January, a day that no one else wanted to book. Another listener decided on the style of everything for her wedding then set about creating that style herself, rather than paying many times as much for others to do it.
I wonder if the enormous cost of wedding days are dissuading couples from tying the knot.
I’d love to hear your point of view. Leave a comment or two. Were you able to create a stylish wedding on a budget?
We’re going to look at weddings again next week so I’d really appreciate your input.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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With a lot of help from family, both my own wedding nearly 29 years ago and my daughter’s wedding nearly 3 years ago were very nice and very inexpensive.
My mother made all the dresses for both weddings (with the exception of my daughter’s clearance rack wedding gown – $100 – and my own clearance rack mother-of-the bride dress marked down from $180 to $45!).
I made all the silk florals, bows, table arrangements, bouquets & boutonnières for both weddings. There were 10 total in my wedding party and 14 in my daughter’s wedding party.
Friends sang and played the music at both our weddings.
A friend made my wedding cake; a grocery store made my daughter’s.
The brother of a friend from church acted as my photographer; a friend was my daughter’s photographer.
The women from my mother’s ladies group at church made the nibbles & punch for my wedding (500 guests – cake & punch reception). My mother, my two sisters, and I made the finger foods for my daughter’s wedding (200 guests, heavy hors d’oeuvres, cake & punch).
We each married in the same church where we were active; the pastor returned his fee to my husband, and the pastor reduced his fee to my daughter.
My father-in-law’s co-workers prepared a meal at my in-laws’ home for the rehearsal dinner. My sister-in-law prepared a meal in her home for my daughter’s rehearsal dinner.
We each took very inexpensive, local honeymoons.
Total cost of my long-ago wedding was about $500 USD. Total cost of my daughter’s wedding was under $3000 USD…cash.
I believe the big money that is sometimes spent on weddings is really needed for more permanent things (saving for a home, paying off a student loan, decreasing debt, etc.). Any wedding can be made memorable without being expensive. The purpose isn’t to please the public, but to please God and make something we’ll always remember and cherish and honor.
Twenty three years ago we married with only our immediate family present followed by a family dinner and cake provided by my sister-in-law. I did buy myself a very pretty new dress, that I wore to work the following week. I always regretted that my wedding was practical rather than special.
Both my son and my daughter had very nice formal weddings with 100-150 guests (mostly family) for about 10,000 AUD. That is still very expensive to my mind but both brides were beautiful and the days unforgettable, so to my mind worth the expense.
the cost of weddings is rediculous! we’re trying to keep ours as simple as possible. wedding dresses i’ve seen run from about $1000+. i don’t even like them. i think i’m going for a nice evening dress…..much cheaper and nicer.
for food we’re hoping to use the asylum seekers catering service so at least the money is going to a good cause (and the prices are reasonable too).
i think the most expesive bit is gonna be a photographer cuz we don’t have any friends that could do a professional job of it.
we’re trying to keep everything simple and not spend a ton of money on decorations etc for a 1 day (although we’re thinking weekend long) celebration.
a wedding should be a celebration of the couple’s relationhip with family and friends. not a big showy party that leaves you in debt for years to come.
the best weddings i’ve been to are the casual and least extravagent ones. there’s lots of time to visit with the bride and groom and all the other guests. a room with some simple candles and a few decorations on the wall is just as nice as one covered in expesive flower arrangements, extravagent center pieces and all the other showy bits (those rooms say to me “waste of money on a bunch of stuff that’ll be thrown out in 24hrs”).
My son and daughter law had a wedding that outshone Princess Diana’s and all her glory.
It was very simple with many things being home made. The church family contributed much.
Why do I say it out shone a glorius wedding like the Princess?
God was in the middle of it and they made that so evident in everything they did.
First, and formost, before they got married they decided to honor God in every way. One of their first decisions: Not to kiss till they were married. I am not saying they had some superhuman abilities to resist this, they didn’t. But this was their way of honoring the Lord.
For the rest of us watching them, this was such a special way to see all the beginnings of all the firsts they were going to embark on.
Why was this so special a wedding? For its purity and obedience to God.
Here are images of that day, along with that very first kiss. 🙂
http://xerraireart.com/Photos/categories.php?cat_id=11
I am a wedding photographer, and got into the business because as a bride I was appauled by the feeling of being a lamb lead to slaughter.
Even now in the industry it is nauseating to me to see the culture of excess that is put on couples to have the ‘perfect wedding’. When I talk to couples about having a frugal wedding they say to me “Are you sure you are in the WEDDING business?”
But, I also see this as a symptom of modern and American life at large. We are constantly marketed to and driven to have bigger houses, cars, stuff, clothes, phones….debt.
I purposely live a frugal life, and I reflect it in my business philosophy and my business practice. I gain huge satisfaction from being part of the solution instead of running people over when they should be focusing on the joy of such a special time in their lives.