Great Comments on Saving on Wedding Costs

I've written a few posts on saving on wedding costs including the following:

• Save on Your Wedding

• Money Saving Tip: Have an Off-Day Wedding

• Money Moves for the Soon-to-be-Married: From Wedding to Marriage

But on my post titled Cost of a Wedding Just Went Up -- for Attendees, which was about destination weddings, I received a few great comment that were worth sharing with all of you. Here's the first:

From what I saw, the marriage industry (and don't ever forget - it's an industry) capitalizes on two things:

• The sentiment that you only ever do this once, so it must be perfect
• There seem to be a lot of women out there who really, really want to be a princess (and a lot of parents who want to indulge them)

That doesn't capture all brides by a long shot (not mine, for example). But it does seem to be quite common. If both of those things are true, you're going to spend a lot of money. Yeah, the $1,500 cake is nice, but the $6,000 one is so much nicer and you're only going to do this once. Sure, there are $500 dresses that would look OK with a few alterations, but the $5,000 one that's like the one on the cover of Modern Bride? You only go down the aisle once and don't you want to look beautiful? Yeah, you can get a photographer for $1,500, but don't you want the award-winning one for $8,000? You can't retake those pictures. And don't you want video? But you don't want just one camera - you could miss something - so get two. We saw some really gorgeous invitations in one of the magazines that were laser-etched mahogany and cost $35 a piece, for crying out loud. And don't get me started on the cost of flowers.

It goes on and on. None of these choices are illegitimate, by the way. If you (or your parents) have the money and want to spend it on those things, that's your business. But understand that these costs add up. Soon, somebody's writing checks for $50K or more.

At our wedding, we broken expenses into three categories:

• Things that are important and that we will spend the bucks on.
• Things that are important but which can be done inexpensively.
• Things that aren't important.

For us, the first category included the location and the photographer. Those two things made up about half of our total budget and we were thrilled with both. The second category included the cakes (a friend pointed us to an inexpensive bakery that produced a wonderful cake), the food (Texas barbeque, which was far tastier than most wedding food), the music (it helps to have a friend with a Grammy nomination under his belt) and the dress. The third category included a lot of other stuff that I don't remember (which is the point - it wasn't important).

Our wedding wasn't cheap, but it was well under the average given by the bridal magazines. You know what? At the end of it, we were bride and groom, just like couples that spent a lot more.

Just some great overall advice here -- from the fact that the wedding industry is an industry (and like all industries, they're in it to make the most they can) to being satisfied with the "good" rather than the "best" (the difference in value is minimal while the cost difference is staggering) to the tips on how to think about different categories of wedding expenses.

Here's the next one I wanted to share:

This is an interesting post just because my sister and I are having drastically different weddings. Her wedding is in 2 weeks and in San Diego (granted this is where she lives) but most of our family is in the midwest so, in essence it's a destination wedding. I will be getting married in a year so it's been really interesting witnessing the planning. My parents are giving us the same amount and this is how we are utilizing it:

She pretty much racked up a bill of the average cost of a wedding, church, reception hall, designer dress etc...not to mention most of my family (I have a large immediate family and even larger extended family) is traveling out to California to attend the wedding.

My fiancee and I on the other hand, knew that we wanted to elope and throw a party when we got back. We never expected anyone to show up at all. We are spending money on the trip, photography, and the wedding attire (ok...I had to get a designer dress too!) but other than that we have no other real cost. My sisters were pretty mad about us eloping and not expecting people to travel until my youngest sister realized how much it would be to travel to my other sister's wedding in SD.

I was expecting that we'd have to pay for the wedding ourselves. It wasn't until recently that my mother brought up that she was giving us that money. After my mom saw how much everything was, she remarked to me that she would rather see me elope and save/invest the money (we already bought a house) than for me to throw a wedding. And I agreed with her 100%.

Call me unromantic, a miser, or whatever you will, but this seems like a better option to me. Why spend $25,000 on a wedding when you can have a great wedding for "only" $10,000 and put $15,000 in the bank (or into a new house/whatever) to get your life together started out on the right foot?

Finally, here's a bit of a different perspective on the issue:

My fiancee and I seriously considered getting married in Michigan (where all of her family and about half of mine are...and the other half are closer to Michigan than to Chicago where we now live). But the Church really, really, very strongly pushes back against having the wedding at a parish you don't attend...especially a different one than the one where you get your pre-cana counseling. Which means that, in order to get married in Michigan, we'd have to drive 5 hours each way, and stay in hotel rooms, every weekend for the next year. Which is pretty expensive (not to mention time-consuming...that's 520 hours, also known as a hair over three weeks, just commuting between cities) by itself, even before you add in the approximately $3,150 in gasoline and $8,400 in hotel bills. And remember, this is before factoring in the cost of the wedding itself...this would just be the extra costs associated with having it in a place that's convenient to family but not to us. Making all the arrangements from two states away would likely lead to things going avoidably awry as well.

Flying away to some far-flung destination not convenient to either you or your guests may indeed be destructively self-indulgent. And I lack words to express my outrage at the concept of a marrying couple angrily dropping friendships with people who couldn't manage to attend their wedding (for any good reason or even most bad ones). But before unilaterally condemning every marrying couple who don't bend over as far backwards as necessary to spare their would-be guests any inconvenience whatsoever, folks should try to remember that guests only have to spend one day at the wedding. The couple getting married, on the other hand, has much more invested in the process, spends much more time on it, and consequently has their expenses balloon much faster when distance from their home to the wedding site expands.

Yes, we'll be happy to help out those of our relatives who genuinely can't afford to come and genuinely want to. The house we're buying this summer (which I won't actually live in until after we're married) has 4 guest rooms, for those who mightn't be able to swing a hotel. And if any folks, other than the ones we're actually flying in all-expenses-paid (her mother, my mother, her maid of honor, my best man and his wife and kids), still can't come, we'll miss them but understand. And of course 90%+ of our current friends live here in Chicago anyway, so travel is a nonissue for them.

And if folks don't want to give gifts, that's up to them. This is a wedding...a celebration of devotion and a Holy Sacrament...not a fundraising drive or an entertainment venue with a ticket price.

(Total current projected cost to us: $18,000. We can afford it. Total cost to our families, other than their travel expenses: $0.)

If they want to spend that much on a wedding, then that's their choice. (After all, what's all this talk about "saving money" if you can't spend it on the things you like?) And they seem to have the right attitude as far as costs go for attendees. He's right to say, "This is a wedding...a celebration of devotion and a Holy Sacrament...not a fundraising drive or an entertainment venue with a ticket price." My main issue is with people who expect friends and family to fork out a significant amount of cash to attend the wedding -- and are then mad if the invitees choose to decline.

Comments

[Blaine Moore (First Time Homeowner)]

As for being mad when people decline...my fiancé has some family that sent regrets. We would not have minded, except they sent notes with why they sent regrets. We would much rather not have known the petty reasons they weren't coming. Then it would not have bothered us at all.

As for the expenses, we put most of our money into the location and food. After that, we spent a grand on a photo-journalist (since we don't take very good posed shots anyway), made our own invitations, save the dates, programs, and wedding favors, and spent a bit on a DJ and cake. Making our own invites/favors et cetera was not easy or cheap, but it was much cheaper than buying something and much more personal. Especially the home brew and home made root beer; those were definately not cheap to produce and were very time consuming. But both came out tasting really good, so we can't wait to give them away this weekend.

[annab]

Friends of my mom had a potluck wedding for their daughter (the daughter was going through some rough financial times.) they had the wedding at their home, and rented chairs & equipment. Close friends of the parents brought treats, and the family provided party trays & etc. It was a really nice wedding, and people had a great time. I think it's the people who make the party, so low $$ doesn't have to mean a bad wedding.

[Skott]

My wife and I got married last month, and it was everything we wanted and cost nowhere near the $25,000 "average cost" we've read about. That figure must be exaggerated by a small percentage of extremely lavish, expensive weddings. Ours maybe ended up costing about $10k with everything. Split three ways between her parents, my parents, and us it was very manageable as well as "perfect".

[monitorinvest.com]

Just some great overall advice here -- from the fact that the wedding industry is an industry (and like all industries, they're in it to make the most they can) to being satisfied with the "good" rather than the "best" (the difference in value is minimal while the cost difference is staggering) to the tips on how to think about different categories of wedding expenses.

[Duane Gran]

My biggest tip regarding wedding planning: Don't tell them its for a wedding. I witnessed a caterer literally remove a price list from someone's hand and give them another (inflated) list for weddings. Call it a "gathering" or whatever you must, but don't settle for the wedding tax which many vendors charge.

[Mary]

I was wondering if I should take $10,000 to elope? I don't care anything about being a princess for a day. I am however, worried that I will disapoint my family and my fiance. I am also slightly concerned that once that money is spent I will regret not having a wedding.

I wasn't the type of little girl that dreamed about a big wedding, but I really am afraid of making the wrong choice. Someone PLEASE help me!

[Barry]

Mary,
First bit of advice, don't worry about who you disappoint. No matter how hard you try to please, someone will be upset. The day is for you and your husband...remember that!

My wife and I had similar thoughts to you, and she had no desire to be the princess for a day. We chose to have a family-only (siblings/parents/grandparents) wedding. We have a small family, so we only had 10 in the wedding party.

For around $700, we had a phenomenal ceremony, which was professionally produced on a dvd (w/ sound). We simply showed up at our time, went through a 20 minute briefing, then had the ceremony and photo shoot. We did choose to have the ceremony out-of-town, so as to eliminate any awkwardness of our non-invited in-town friends and family.

We then went on our honeymoon. Upon returning, we did have a wedding celebration w/ about 100 of our friends and family, but this was still significantly less cost than a traditional wedding.

I highly recommend a similar approach. We never heard any complaints from anyone, and often heard "it's so awesome/cool/great how you are doing this."

This is the place we used in Savannah, GA. I'm sure there are similar places near you.