I wonder how much cost plays in, I mean, my fiancée and I are adult middle class millennials and we’ve been saving for two years to have a wedding, and we’re planning a relatively cheap one.
My parents got married in a friend's house and they had the reception in the backyard with friends playing music. I think the wedding cost like $100 or something. Unclear why modern weddings have to be so expensive. Mine definitely was overpriced.
Weddings became a market to manipulate just like any other. From the rings to the honeymoon, everything has been commoditized, including an entire industry that perpetuates the 'ideal' (magazines, pinterest, etc.).
What used to be private, family-only affairs has now morphed into a 'need' to invite 200 or so people you don't know and feed them so they give you gifts.
My wife and I had an amazing wedding for $5000. Certainly that isn’t necessarily an easy amount to save for everyone, but a wedding is one (or so) day(s) in a lifetime. Don’t spend much on it. Use your savings for longer term and more impactful things (down payment on a house or car, college education, retirement, etc)
The real racket isn't in ripping people off for services, but that everyone needs these services. Weddings used to be relatively private affairs. Costs were far less. Churches provided services to parishioners and associated gatherings were at family houses. Today we are expected to purchase everything.
Take wedding dresses. They were not always white. Brides bought expensive dresses, but they would expect to use them for many years to come. Even Kings and Queens would use their wedding clothes many times. The recent switch to white made them single-use garments. That freed them to become very expensive and elaborate.
"Controlling for a number of demographic and relationship characteristics, we find evidence that marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony."
An upper middle-class wedding on the coasts at any venue goes for a minimum of 30k. A really cheap wedding is just having in your back yard with a keg, but I don't think the OP is talking about that. A nice wedding with all your college buddies, looking at 100k.
Idk, most of the more memorable I have attended were maybe a few grand. Mostly for the venue and bar, with friends and family helping out. The impersonal 100k affairs are embarrasing to attend pesrsonally. I have friends still eatig ramen, living in debt, and fighting bitterly over finances thanks to a 'dream wedding' that a majority of their actual friends couldn't even afford to attend. To call it depressing is to undersell the effect in my eyes.
The point of a wedding is to publicly (and legally) commit yourselves to each other - to tell yourselves, and everybody else, that you are now off limits for everyone except each other. Everything else is fluff, and the fluff disappears.
I've been married for 28 years. Much of the fluff is gone. The wedding cake is long gone. The developer lost our honeymoon pictures (28 years ago was still in the era of film cameras). The building we got married in has been torn down. I lost my wedding ring. But our marriage is still here.
yters|7 years ago
Zimahl|7 years ago
What used to be private, family-only affairs has now morphed into a 'need' to invite 200 or so people you don't know and feed them so they give you gifts.
neogodless|7 years ago
Don't have a relatively cheap wedding. Have a _cheap_ wedding.
(Do not waste two years of your life making money that you blow on 6 hours of rituals.)
Our wedding cost less than $1000 (near Philadelphia, so HCOL area), and is described by friends as "beautiful" and "one of my all-time favorites."
magic_beans|7 years ago
malyk|7 years ago
jandrese|7 years ago
sandworm101|7 years ago
Take wedding dresses. They were not always white. Brides bought expensive dresses, but they would expect to use them for many years to come. Even Kings and Queens would use their wedding clothes many times. The recent switch to white made them single-use garments. That freed them to become very expensive and elaborate.
txsoftwaredev|7 years ago
https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/living/wedding-expenses-study...
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480
thaumasiotes|7 years ago
The second part here is in conflict with the first part...
pastor_elm|7 years ago
draw_down|7 years ago
[deleted]
gascan|7 years ago
pastor_elm|7 years ago
justtopost|7 years ago
AnimalMuppet|7 years ago
The point of a wedding is to publicly (and legally) commit yourselves to each other - to tell yourselves, and everybody else, that you are now off limits for everyone except each other. Everything else is fluff, and the fluff disappears.
I've been married for 28 years. Much of the fluff is gone. The wedding cake is long gone. The developer lost our honeymoon pictures (28 years ago was still in the era of film cameras). The building we got married in has been torn down. I lost my wedding ring. But our marriage is still here.
sidstling|7 years ago