My wife and I had a notary-friend and her husband join us for a dinner celebration at a local restaurant. We rented out one of their banquet rooms and had a little civil ceremony with candle lighting and all the usual stuff in a wedding.
It cost us just a little over $1,000 for the whole shebang. The down payment we fronted for a reception at a local golf resort was $1,000 alone.
My wife said it best: “I want a marriage not a wedding.”
That’s because weddings—even small-scale ones—are more pageant than sincerity.
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if they’ve been living together, for TEN YEARS,
then i agree.
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but, i know people who did NOT live together.
and their wedding was much more than pageantry.
(and, their wedding are much more likely to be permanent.)
Definitely beats $25k of debt and a year of stress.
The mystique of these huge, lavish weddings has always eluded me. When I got married it was at the minister’s house, I wore a fancy dress of the bride’s, it was over in fifteen minutes. My folks were there, we had a toast, and off I went to work. (I was a casino band leader, so we celebrated at my gig.)
These big affairs really scare me.
I have seen weddings lead to more divorces than anything else
Maybe because it was Holy Matrimony rather than shackup-deluxe edition or "lets see if this works out for the short-term"
There is no rule stating there has to be a reception or lavish party. The Sacrament is what it is all about.
My husband and I got married in a desert park north of Phoenix. We had chili and beer for the reception. I think the entire wedding cost us $500, including the rings. We wanted something simple and fun. The inexpensive part was because we had no money. It must have been memorable because people talked about it for years.
When our daughter got married, we kept reminding the kids it’s about the marriage. The wedding is a ceremony to proclaim and bless the marriage in front of witnesses. They spent a bit more money on theirs, but not too much. It was truly a blessed day.
30 years ago:
We had the wedding and reception at the church we both attended. My mother in law sewed my wife’s dress. My wife and her sister sewed the bridesmaid’s dresses. The photographer was a friend of the family who did it as a gift. That left the wedding cake, tuxedos, and rehearsal dinner as the greatest expenses. Working through how to pay for all this and still have enough to set up an apartment for both of us was good practice for later.
We got through all of it on the strength of the two and a half years of practice deciding things together leading up to the wedding. After all this, we had our first kiss and spent more on the honeymoon than the wedding. All those $100 bills handed to my wife by her father’s family changed that simple honeymoon to something lavish.
I would recommend a destination wedding in Las Vegas. Find a Christian minister for about $150, have the ceremony at one of the alcoves along the strip in front of the Belagio, and have the reception in your suite at one of the hotels with a cake and ready to eat food that can be purchased at the local Costco.
In fact, Costco once had an article on its site about catering your reception with Costco. Get a larger suite for the wedding day for the reception and move to a smaller one for the rest of the Honeymoon. If the bride gets a very nice white evening or cocktail dress, the entire expense should be about $3,000, including airfare for the couple and hotel for 5-6 days. Friends and family can pay their own way and make it a vacation.
Waste of money, and tons of stress.
Have a simple service, and share some cake.
Had my beloved SO not passed away suddenly, we would most likely have a simple wedding, dressed up in nice Sunday worship clothes and look at heading south with the cats and us.
Congrats.
30 years ago come October, my wife and I were married. We lived in Denver, far away from our families and we didn’t have much money and went the simple route. We got married by the JP in Aurora on a Friday and had a nice lunch afterwards with my wife’s maid of honor, her sister and her husband and my best man and his wife. I was working on a maintenance crew of an apartment complex at the time and my boss gave us the party room in the clubhouse to use free of charge and we had our reception there the next day on Saturday. We provided the food and drink and some people even brought their own bottles. :-) It seems like yesterday, 30 years and 3 kids later, it flies by fast!
25 bucks to the Justice of the Peace in Belton, Texas. Still married 40 years later.
Fifty dollars for five minutes from a "civil celebrant"?
I agree.
I think extravagant weddings are an attempt to compensate for an inner suspicion that the marriage of the two people involved is not a good idea.
I wonder if anyone’s done research to see if there’s a correlation between expensive weddings and divorce rates and between oddball weddings (getting married in a non-traditional manner or setting, like getting married at the beach or while skydiving) and divorce rates.
I’ll bet there’s a correlation.
It is amazing to see how many regular people have the amazing ability to walk on water! it must be something special about living in a glass house. (/s)
My husband and I wed on the rim of Bryce Canyon National Park where we were both employed, 30 years ago.
The attendees included my parents, my three children, one friend, my brother, sister-in-law and my grandmother. From his side were his parents, grandmother, sisters, one cousin and their spouses.
We went to Ruby’s Inn for breakfast following our sunrise services at Fairyland point. Followed by our Las Vegas reception that was a gift.
It was inexpensive, special, it was unique, it honored our families and best of all it stuck!
We did talk about eloping somewhere along the way when it was getting crazy, but that was never going to happen.
Our granddaughter and her husband had a modest wedding that no one will forget. It was a country-rapper wedding.
Their friend, an AA Christian rapper, sang and rapped in the service and also entertained at the reception on the lawn of the tiny Ozark church.