How to Really Spend a Fortune on a Wedding

Here's another noteworthy piece from my reading earlier today. It tells how some couples are spending big money to make sure their weddings are extra special:

As more than 2 million U.S. couples sort out their wedding budgets — which averaged $28,732 in 2007 — they'll collectively be spending more than $62.8 billion this year to make the experience as memorable and personal as possible.

A couple examples:

At Wedding Ring Workshop USA, for instance, couples not only design, but also make their own rings with the guidance of an experienced jeweler. The daylong process includes lunch, a disposable camera to document the experience and a bottle of champagne at the end  — when Barnes says their faces beam at their creations because the jeweler guarantees customers they won't mess it up.

Nora Donston, 52, also found a unique way to enhance the wedding experience with her business, A Butterfly Affaire in Hemet, Calif. By partnering with a butterfly breeder, Donston farms beautiful monarch butterflies every week and then carefully and safely packages them in individual boxes. When the butterflies arrive, they're healthy so ceremony guests can take boxes and release the butterflies together.

Heh. For an alternative view on this issue, see How to Have Half a Million Dollars at Retirement by Controlling Wedding Costs and More Great Ways to Save on Wedding Costs.

Comments

[MattC]

We actually considered the butterflies, but since my wife and mother-in-law are deathly afraid of bugs landing on them, the idea was quickly rejected.

I thought it would make a great wedding video :)

[MattC]

We actually considered the butterflies, but since my wife and mother-in-law are deathly afraid of bugs landing on them, the idea was quickly rejected.

I thought it would make a great wedding video :)

[Bill]

I attended a wedding where they gave each guest a butterfly in a box. When we all released them, a lot of them flew into peoples hair and a bunch landed on the bride. I found it quite funny but others were freaking out especially the bride.
Wedding spending is crazy business. My wife is a wedding photographer so we can't complain too much about how much people pay. Her philosophy is that after the wedding, all you have is a frozen piece of old cake and the pictures so don't skimp on photography.

[walden]

As a bride in the middle of planning her wedding (which admittedly is going to be ridiculously expensive) one thing that I don't think has been addressed on this site is EXPECTATIONS. Meaning, how does a budget-minded bride keep wedding costs low while satisfying the expectations of family (namely parents) who have ALSO been waiting for this day for years and years and understandably have their own set of expectations for the day?

[CI]

I agree that some weddings can be a bit too extreme, but is it inherently bad to have a big, somewhat expensive wedding?

Perhaps parents have been saving for some time to throw an amazing wedding for their duaghter? If that has been their goal, that they have devoted savings toward, then I see nothing wrong with it.

My wife and I had an amazing wedding, and I'm sure it was quite expensive. However, my in-laws loved every minute of it, and I would never have dreamed of asking them to tone it down and write me a check for the difference. That crosses the line from frugal to tacky, in my opinion.

All this is to say that if you have the means, "expensive" does not always mean "bad."

[Anitra]

walden: Depends on who is paying. Other family gets a say in how the money is spent ONLY if they are footing (that part of) the bill.

Mom think's it's tacky for the bride to get married in a simple department-store white dress? Then she can provide the money to buy a traditional wedding gown instead.

This covers the guest list, too. If Mom & Dad need to invite certain of their own friends, they'd better be paying for a large portion of the reception.

[Todd the Bod]

Eh, my wedding cost about $2000. We didn't have a wedding to put on a show for our guests. Nor did we feel the pressure to live up to their expectations. It was OUR day and WE paid for it. Even if someone else would have offered to throw us the average $28,000 wedding there's no way I would have accepted it. So as far as we're concerned we had a beautiful wedding and we still have that $26,000 in the bank. Yay for us!