So would you spend a lot on the wedding or small amount and save for a house etc and snub in the face of overpriced wedding venues etc
(my friend said he wanted to hold a party and the venue said x, then he said it is a wedding party and the amount went to 2x. Bit of a joke!) ANyone else with similar experiences?
Out of curiosity how much did people end up spending?
stop the political correctness crap Karen
Honestly your asking the wrong community the answer will be a resounding no
Wait, I don’t get your poll options.
“No”=no I wouldn’t spend a lot on a wedding
“yes save”=I would rather save my money
I would not spend and rather save.
Yes. Happy wife happy life.
Also the whole family comes then you do networking with them all. Maybe some of them can help you out professionally too one day, now that you're in the family.
Define "a lot"?
A medium wedding is routinely over $50k these days, an ‘ethnic’ wedding, to use the old school description, can easily nudge $200k.
Yeah, I wouldn't (and didn't) spend anything like those numbers.
I often think about the relative costs of a wedding (or anything else for that matter) in terms of a percentage of a person's income or wealth … and then wonder how much money you have to have to drop $200k on a wedding?
I think it is extremely driven culturally, hard to be a 23 yro raised in a circumstance where this is the ‘done thing’ and insist on something different.
In the decreasingly small Anglo culture in Australia where people get married at 30+ yro it is somewhat different, and I don’t expect to be staging performance weddings for my kids.
But to be honest, I have been to plenty of big weddings and had a ball. So I should be advocating to invite everyone!
i woudl have thought medium would be like 20-30k lol
I don’t know anybody who had an expensive wedding that would recommend it for value to others.
If you can convince your partner, the best deal is to elope with maybe a best friend each at somewhere amazing, and still save $50,000 compared to a big wedding.
Exactly what we did. Don't regret a thing!
I had a big wog wedding and agree. But a few things:
I do know some others who did in fact enjoy their big wedding.
I always wonder if I didn't have the big wog wedding would I now be disappointed that I never experienced it? Sometimes people just have to do something to get it out of their system.
Depending on the culture you may end up ahead (financially) from all the cash gifts. I did.
If i had the money I'd do both. You can spend a lot on a wedding and still be thrifty. Maybe pay a party planner to have a look and tell you what you're doing wrong, where the deadzones across the night are in your current plan, if people will be hungry, etc. even if i thought the marriage would only last a few years I'd want a party for my wedding.
And 80 inch oled/HDR display is absolutely essential. And some good speakers. Nothing else matters.
I think this is good advice, except a party isn’t a wedding, where people have lots of expectations and I remember being a young single person being railroaded into lots of stuff I didn’t want to please family as they have expectations of a wedding.
When I was of marriageable age, lots of friends had a massive variety of weddings, from registry office elopements to Indian or Greek performances with many hundreds of guests.
If you don’t have connections with your wider family, you can likely do what suits you.
If you are part of an extended family/culture, you probably have obligations to fulfil and it will be largely out of your hands.
<shrug>
I love my extended family, but won’t be pushing those expectations on my kids.
I love my extended family, but won’t be pushing those expectations on my kids.
I feel conflicted about this. Been to weddings within the (extended) family where you see some of those extended family only at weddings.
On the one hand, I think it is nice to keeps doors open with your extended family even if you are really not in touch with them before or after. On the other hand, deep down I feel with many it is pointless as you will probably never see or talk to them again.
We've always said we'd have a small private wedding and spend the money on a 'round-the-world' honeymoon trip. Anything 3-12 months depending on situation at the time. Feels like a better way to explore the planet, open your eyes/mind to new people/cultures/food/places and nothing gets people closer together like travel across unknown lands.
Also, your poll is atrocious. Should be well ashamed. Tsk.
My wife and I spent 28K on our wedding in 2017. It was overseas. Even then we wanted to spend less as there's no point in blowing a huge amount of money for a day pretty much everyone else is going to forget. It would suck pretty hard to begin your married life with crippling debt. I also consider the wedding industry a massive scam that preys on people who will just accept inflated prices just because.
Save the money. Travel the world when this pandemic gets over :)
Coming from an ethnic background where its expected to have a big wedding, I'm literally wondering if I'm saving up for my wedding or my house. It'll be for whatever comes first, so that'll probably be the house unless it's legal to marry yourself in Australia haha
stuff whateveryone else wants..it's your debt you have to pay back, i say screw them for a day and live a good few years than live a good day and get screwed for a few years.
this is exactly what I say. But need the bride on board as well.
I would rather spend $440 at the registry than have a fancy wedding. No drama, no issues with getting enough money from relatives to recover the cost. Many of the boomers I know (parents' friends) spent <$1k on their weddings and are happily married.
I had a friend whom I was a bridesmaid for, total bridezilla, wanted the wedding to be perfect! Wedding ended up costing $46k+, her parents paid for it. But guess what, less than 2.5 years later, they filed for divorce. Price of the wedding doesn't dictate marital happiness, might as well do it at a budget you're comfortable with, and that you can pay for yourself.
Yeah, the poll is hard to figure out.
We spent just over $9k on our wedding. We went the traditional white wedding route, but did everything on the cheap - last season's dress off the rack, decorated the reception ourselves, got a newly-started photographer, and only 40ish guests. We didn't scrimp on nice food and alcohol, but looking back we could have done even cheaper on most things. We're still going strong 12 years later. We've got friends and family who put themselves into massive debt for their weddings, and are no longer together. Each to their own, but it CAN be done cheaper!
13 ppl in total for about $3k (fine dining, private room on Sydney Harbour). Dress from ASOS for $80.
Had I all the money in the world my love ,
I would shower you in gold and silver,
Cover you in diamonds and sapphires and rubies;
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
We eloped. We had the biggest, goofiest smile on our faces. We were just delirious with happiness :) Less than $300 including her dress and my suit.
This one sounds the most romantic aww. But I have a soft spot for how do you say underdog poverty small type flex things.
Something about going against the norm of going big is what entices me.. I like to go small or cute in most things.. like those romantic movies where the poor beggar boy gets the rich high upper class girl.. ah the notebook.
Married life from up plays
3 years later, I divorced her and pocketed $2.7mil in the settlement.
P.s: Just kidding. We're still happily married :P
Sadly not all endings end happily.
We got married in Las Vegas back in 2015. A dozen close friends turned up from around the world. Was a challenge planning everything from Australia but managed to exceed our expectation. We got to share our week with friends we wanted to rather than pleasing the parents and spending a fortune on something that just wasn't what we wanted.
Friend of mine married a Japanese girl in Japan, they had two wedding ceremonies, both in Japan. First western one was small numbers and expensive, the second traditional one was cheap and had 120+ people. Everyone's expected to bring money as a gift to J weddings, so the second wedding ceremony paid for the first one. Winning!
If ur in Melbourne go with Greg Evans as ur celebrant, double the price but worth every cent
Spent about $20K on everything including Thailand honeymoon in 2002, with about 100 guests, fully catered, nice wedding venue although not tier-1. Everyone had a great time.
I have been to weddings where the couple went into debt to pay for it without assets behind them and all I can think of is what a colossal waste it is. It's ONE DAY of your life.
We saved money by doing the floral arrangements ourselves, got the flowers from the markets directly at 3/4AM a few days before, wedding dress was from "bridal row" at Wetherill Park in Sydney (heaps of bridal shops around there), organised our own limos, wedding photographer was a work mate. Ceremony at a church.
From outside appearances, it didn't look like a cheap wedding at all. I wouldn't call it cheap - I'd call it "good value".
I really can't understand the need to spend $100K+ on a wedding unless you're wealthy. It's a single day out of your life. Certain ethnic groups see a big wedding as an ego boost, and I've been to some of these, but I just can't see why you'd willingly do this unless it was due to pressure from family.
Even I had pressure from family to invite people I've never seen since and hardly ever saw beforehand. Only regret I have is that I gave in to that pressure. But all in all, I certainly don't regret keeping the wedding costs limited. Attendees couldn't believe we did it that inexpensively.
I don't understand your poll options. I spent less than $10,000 all up including two nights accommodation, wedding dress ($160), celebrant, bridesmaids outfits, groom and groomsmen's outfits (shirts from Kmart), donation to garden club at our venue, hall hire, catering, seat cover hire, photography, wedding cake and whatever else was required.
I've been married twice. The things I regretted from my first wedding, I fixed in my second. But I still didn't spend much either time. It was not sensible to get into debt for one single day. My first marriage lasted 18 months. My second has lasted considerably longer.
We were ecstatic to receive some cash gifts that came to about $2000, it was greatly appreciated, but definitely not expected. We had around 80 people in total. I had a gift registry at a homewares store and we received some gorgeous things that were priced from around $10 to $100. We were not in it to make money or to expect people to pay their way. We were just celebrating our wedding with our family and friends.
Every wedding that we’ve attended made a profit. Somewhere between $10k to $30k.
Had a 60 person event in Fiji, flew from Aus, cost us $10k for our 2 week holiday in Fiji, plus wedding, and reception, and photos and flowers.
Would buy again.
Spent a lot but saved a lot. $30k,130 guests.
The main costs were the venue, the photographer and the videographer. Venue costs was dependent on guests and there was no avoiding that with a large extended family that were important to us. We could have gone to a cheaper venue but the one we picked had a lot of inclusions like a very nice drinks selection and table decos. Photographer and videographer were friends of ours but still professionals, so they gave us an excellent rate.
Costs can balloon out if you're not keeping track of things. Makeup artist, DJ, MC, decorations, it's a hundred here and there and it runs up the total each time. We planned it ourselves with help from family and friends, sourced our own decorations and saved money here and there so anything we wanted someone experienced to handle, we could fit it in the budget.
Was there more money to be saved? Absolutely. But with the number of guests, some from overseas and interstate and wanting everyone to have a fantastic time, we spent a bit more to avoid stress and enjoy ourselves. Absolutely worth it, we spent it in the right places, had a day we'll never forget for the right reasons and our family and friends were very generous that we ended up net positive at the end.
I would ask my fiance if they would like an expensive wedding or put the money saved towards a house. If they opted for the expensive wedding I would end the relationship immediately.
For 50k, I'd be taking 10 of our nearest and dearest on a fantastic overseas resort, beach, or island holiday.
I don't need my family at my wedding. Yes I have issues.
But honestly, I know how long it took me to save that 50k (say 2 years) and I'm not blowing 2 years savings in a night when I don't have a house. But a house, build a future. And I promise when I am getting ahead I'll shoot 200 of you a—holes dinner and give a speech.
can I have the dinner without getting shot
Dunno. Can you dance? Pew Pew pew shoots at feet
Oh, (profanity) no.
I've worked more weddings that I care to remember which have had more guests than I'd even know, much less like enough to want to shout them a meal and get them drunk.
What about non binary poll option