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Posted on 08/08/2026 6:48:01 AM PDT by DoodleBob
Weddings are a joyous occasion, and I’ve heard of at least three in my social circles in the upcoming months. But two of these weddings are diverting from the norm of a weekend celebratory affair, choosing instead to hold their nuptials on a weekday.
“A weekday?!” one might well say. “How inconsiderate! I can’t take a whole day off from work just to attend a wedding!”
But perhaps that’s the whole point – not to be inconsiderate, of course, but to trim costs. After all, setting a wedding for a weekday reduces the costs of venues, caterers, florists, and other services, while also automatically lowering the wedding guestlist – not through invites from the couple, but through each guest’s own decision on how far they are willing to go to be available on the big day.
This trend isn’t just in my social circles, however. As a recent article in Elle explained, the younger generation is riding the pendulum away from the millennial trend of bombastic, Instagram-worthy weddings, opting instead for small, quiet, budget-friendly ceremonies that rely on dresses from grandma’s attic and a friend with a film camera.
“In many ways, this shouldn’t come as a surprise,” author Rowan Beaird writes. “Gen Z has lived most of their lives amid periods of profound economic precarity, and the idea of spending thousands and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars on a single day seems absurd.”
Beaird believes these young couples are onto something, asking, “What would it mean for us to think of these celebrations not as a performance, but as simply what they are at their core: traditions, rituals, ceremonies marking the start of a marriage?”
Wait, weddings that are traditions, rituals, and ceremonies to mark the start of a marriage? What a novel idea!
Except … that’s exactly what a wedding was always supposed to be: a solemn pledge which marks two lives coming together symbolically and physically, promising to love and to cherish one another in sickness and in health, not a big party that celebrates a physical relationship that’s already started – and may even be on the rocks soon given the debt required to make the party bigger and better than the one the Joneses had last year.
In 1786, George Washington dropped a profound little line while writing to Charles Armand-Tuffin:
For in my estimation more permanent & genuine happiness is to be found in the sequestered walks of connubial life, than in the giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure, or the more tumultuous and imposing scenes of successful ambition.
Washington was writing more about the daily aspects of married life more than he was speaking of wedding ceremonies, but I believe his advice speaks to the trend away from over-the-top weddings. Essentially, Washington saw that a happy marriage isn’t necessarily one which has all the bells and whistles, the sights and sounds, the smells and the tastes that make a wedding Instagram perfection. Those things all appeal to the senses – the “giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure” and the “imposing scenes of successful ambition.”
Instead, it is the quiet solemnity – those “sequestered walks” – of a simple marriage ceremony surrounded by family, old traditions, and even homemade cake, that tend to create true happiness. For such events are not spectacles of eye candy that fool guests into thinking the couple has it all together; rather, they are humble attempts to focus on the people and realities of life – the stuff that all marriages are really made of in the end.
And when we recognize that true marital success is found in how we handle the simple, foundational things of life – God, family, friends, and resources – then perhaps we’ll have more couples who make it further than a few years after they walk down the aisle.
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My wife and I were married at 6:30 PM on a Friday.
Been married 56 years, our wedding was less than 100 1970s dollars.
You got married in a church. Well done. That does not seem to be the norm these days.
A high percentage of the couples getting married today have already been living together for years. They already have most of the household items that people used to give for presents so they put on their wish list money for a honeymoon. Yikes.
Where’s the map showing average divorce cost in the US?
The participants need their weekends free to get drunk and chase eachother.
wy69
I am a musician who gets hire to play weddings. The funnest ones are at someone’s house in the back yard where everything is done by friends and family of the couple. I went to one wedding they flied me all the way out to a fancy vinyard. It was insane how much they spent. It must have cost $150k. And they are boring.
Or, the couple could remember that Divorce is a sin, grow up, and work it out.
That was the norm.
https://youtube.com/shorts/VX0f6eJrOqI
This “wedding band” is covering Knocked Loose, a hardcore punk band.
The guests are moshing.
That was probably a killer reception.
August 1977 - my wife and I married in her parents’ backyard on a Saturday. She was in a wedding dress she had sewn herself and I was in my US Army dress blues. We had about 80 guests, IIRC. A friend played guitar for the music and the cakes were probably the biggest custom spend.
My daughter married her husband in our backyard in August 2011 so she continued a new tradition.
In the Orthodox Church, marriage is a sacrament! Weddings belong in Church, with a Priest! Other Christian denominations also prescribe church weddings.
It is possible to keep post-wedding reception costs down, especially if the couple does not expect expensive gifts.
We spent $1200. 38 years ago. And that was too darn much; tied the knot on Saturday, back to work on Monday.
Excellent point.
Good point!
Re: Destination weddings
A niece recently married in Rome. She was divorced less than a year later.
First marriage. Went to JPs after work on Friday. BIL and SIL stood up for us. then up to the parents summer home with certificate in hand to surprise them. Didn’t even remember a camera for pics
A woman expects a lot of money on her wedding because she expects a lot from the divorce.
Also got married while I was still in the USAF. The wedding was at the pastor’s home. We had (as I recall) a best man, maid of honor, pastor’s wife as a witness (maybe she played the piano) & my new in-laws. Very inexpensive, un- pretenscious affair. I had almost no money anyway. I could pay the pastor as I recall. We were married for 59 yrs. until her death. All on a Friday evening as I recall & we had only 2 days for a honeymoon. We had a reception in her hometown later & that was probably the only time any amount of money was spent.
My nephew will be getting married at 1 pm.
I was married on a Thursday after work.
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