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The Manzos' lifestyle would not work for everyone. Their wedding 30 years ago cost all of $700.

Compared to these $20,000 weddings which are very common (and insane!), its quite cheap.

My parents can't keep from reminding me that they were married 62 years ago, for less than $50.00 including the honeymoon at the Lemmington Hotel in Minneapolis for which they still have the room receipt ($7.00).

How times have changed!

Mr. S2R hocked his guitar and watch to pay for the marriage licence and a nice dinner for two afterwards. It was very nice. The owner of the restaurant gave us a bottle of champagne on the house when he found out about our very recent nuptuals...

:-)

"Compared to these $20,000 weddings which are very common (and insane!), its quite cheap"

When we got married in 1958 my father in law offered us $5,000 to go to Vegas and get married but my wife wouldn't hear of it and had to have 350 guests and the country club reception.

It took me almost 8 years to save the $7000 for 20% down on our home! After a complete remodel and addition it's now worth $800k but we could have bought it when we got married, put down 20% and had money left over with the $5000!

Compared to these $20,000 weddings which are very common (and insane!), its quite cheap. I got married at our house 7.5 years ago for under $2000. We had a Luau wedding. It wasn't that we couldn't afford an expensive wedding...we were making well over six figures at the time. The reason is, she did the white wedding/big debt/pay forever for a day thing once and refused to do it again. I was just looking for a no stress, happy event. It was catered, 75 people and in fact was really a 4 day(friday, sat, sun, mon on labor day) party with all our friends and family, including the minister who married us. The requirement? You must wear a flower shirt :). I figured, and rightly so, who can be stressed out wearing a flowered/Hawaiian shirt? Heh. After seeing any number of my friends do penguin weddings and the subsequent stress involved...I knew I had to do better. I must also add what has been stated repeatedly here. Get your debts paid off. I racked up a boat load of debt in my 20s(making low wages in high tech in Ohio). Even making as much as we do, it took a good 5 years to get it all put away. Now it's amazing how much money we have when we aren't paying all that interest.