Fifty Plus (50+) - Speaking of the cost of weddings...

A couple of comments in the thread on the cost of college got me thinking about weddings. But first, this message:
We got our kids through school (one's done, one graduates in June) with a fund we started in 1981 with $25 a month, all we could afford at the time, and added to whenever we could. The first graduated in 2005 debt-free (actually with about $5000 left over, which we gave him in cash). The second pretty much pissed away a year, and we made her take out a student loan to cover the money we'd wasted while she partied. She's back in school now and doing fine, and probably the money we'd saved will just about repay her loan. So the moral of that story is that if you expect EVER to have to put a kid through school, save whatever you can starting as early as you're able. This has been a nearly painless experience for us.
But the wedding thing: A couple of my friends have recently spent more than $30,000 each on their daughters' weddings. One is a physician and could afford it fairly easily (though he has two girls to go), but it's a real strain on the other couple--they'll be repaying the money well into their retirement, and will have to live frugally for YEARS to make up for what they spent on this one afternoon.
We fall somewhere between the two financially. I love my daughter more than my life, but I don't feel any obligation to go into debt for five years to throw her a fancy wedding. I've been driving used cars until they drop and taking $500 vacations for 20 years to get her this far, and if she needed anything in a crisis, I'd literally die to provide it for her. But I'm 63, and I'm not going into debt for the rest of my life so she can have lobster instead of cocktail weenies at the reception.
Actually this is purely theoretical at this point, because she doesn't even have a serious boyfriend. But as far as I know, I'm the only father in America who feels this way. Any comments?

Good comments about the saving bit but that takes a lot of commitment when things get too hard.

On the wedding- I am a cheapskate. Knew what I could afford and told my daughter that this is the amount. Anything over the top and you pay. It worked. They paid for the rest.

Now a second daughter getting married in September. Same budget and same conditions- Difference is that daughter No2 went to uni for 4 years living on nothing after the fees etc. She has asked if she can keep the change.

Think they call them tightwads over here.

These old traditions of the father of the bride paying for the wedding are dead in my opinion, its like providing a dowry. I am willing to help out in a reasonable way when my daughter decides to get married but I think this would be a joint situation between the kids and both sets of parents.

No with that said, I know a lot of people that spend >$10k on Bar Mitzvahs, and for this you are pretty much on the hook since there is no one else involved. But again in my sons case we probably spent more like $5,000 ten years ago when he had his.

These old traditions of the father of the bride paying for the wedding are dead in my opinion, its like providing a dowry. I am willing to help out in a reasonable way when my daughter decides to get married but I think this would be a joint situation between the kids and both sets of parents.

No with that said, I know a lot of people that spend >$10k on Bar Mitzvahs, and for this you are pretty much on the hook since there is no one else involved. But again in my sons case we probably spent more like $5,000 ten years ago when he had his.

I don't know why parents are expected to pay for any of it. Give them a cash wedding gift... they can use it on a wedding, a honeymoon or life....or to save up for their future kid's college!

Honestly. I felt like this even planning my own wedding... weddings are lame! You pay 4 times as much for everything, just because it's for a wedding. It's like future brides walk around with the word "sucker" written on their foreheads.

I actually ended up backing out of my wedding twice, and no small part of it was my inner dislike of extravagant weddings. And when I go to someone else's over-the-top wedding (which, to me, is anything where I have to remember what fork is for what) I don't appreciate the beauty of it, I only think of how much that couple is losing in compounded returns over the next 60 years.

Bah humbug!

(Can you tell I've just spent 4 hours on the phone in a conference call with my Tivo and Cable people, and am still left with no working cable???!!!:fight::mad::cry::lol:)

PS: and my wedding was NOT my idea, it was my fiancee's mother (and him)...I would have taken the money my dad offered and had a volleyball game at the lake with hot dogs. I think that would have been way more fun. As opposed to priests coming in from frigging Italy. Grrrr. Now I'm all wound up with no one to crab at.

Think they call them tightwads over here.

Well done. When my ex was planning our wedding, since both of us were older and had plenty of household gear, she asked the guests to contribute to the wedding instead. We got married at the Unitarian Church in Solana Beach (http://www.uufsd.org/availability.html), CA. which has a wonderful outdoor sanctuary and patio area. Guests helped supply the balloons, the beer, the food, the flowers etc. That really cut the costs and we still had a great wedding.

http://www.uufsd.org/images/outdoors.jpg http://www.uufsd.org/images/courtyard2.jpg

I could go on and on about the source of the problem being the disconnect between the person(s) making decisions about the wedding and the person(s) footing the bill, but I won't.

My only advice is to do whatever you can to maintain complete and total control over the alcohol. Buy your own alcohol, hire your own bartender, keep your own inventory control. Otherwise the caterer will be presenting you a document that is so steeped in blatant fraud that it would be a felony if it weren't protected inside the wedding industry. And I have found no one to disagree with me who works in the catering industry. When your daughter and wife are driving hard bargains to bring the per-plate cost down the rep is silently thinking "No problem. I am going to make all that back and so much more on the bar."

I protested my bar bill. I told them that there was no way that every man, woman and child had eight drinks apiece in three hours time. They stood fast. Their "documents" showed that that's how much they served. If truly that much alcohol had been served we would have been loading guests into vehicles horizontally. My daughter's new in-laws weren't willing to press the issue since it was their country club. In the interest of familial relations, I caved.

Sorry for the rant but I've had to keep my mouth shut on this subject for years. You can keep a party happy and well lubricated for a reasonable outlay of money and you get to restock your own liquor locker with whatever is left over, which is a lot because most people really don't drink very much.

My wedding was a justice of the peace with a guard with a gun on his belt as a witness. The price I think was $35. Considering the outcome of the marriage I'm glad we didn't invest more.

34 years ago and I had no money- Neither did my parents or my Fiances family. In those days- You did not live together until you married and it was always a church wedding.

We had a flat for rent come up and just about had the money for a deposit. So we went for it- Went straight round to the Vicar and just got the Bans read for the wedding. We got married on a Friday----Because- on Sunday was the Paris 6 hour Endurance race and Paris would be a nice place for a honeymoon. Got The wedding and the Race amalgamated and I had it arranged for the Chauffeur- to pick us up at My Fiances house at 4 pm to catch the 7pm ferry to France-

Chauffeur-- In 6 hour races- you have two drivers- So the Co-Driver had to come on Honeymoon with us.

The only after effect of us getting married- Was that about 6 months later we started to get the odd comment- Like How long before I become a father- And you don't look pregnant. Due to the short time we gave everyone- Most assumed it was a shotgun wedding.

From such a low expense wedding- I cannot see the sense in paying a lot for others to enjoy themselves at my expense. Most important thing for me was to get the New Bike before the wedding in January- which I did manage. And as to drinks at my Daughters reception- We had a pay bar so no big unexpected bills at the end. And to make it even better- I left my wallet at home so couldn't even Buy an expensive round of drinks. I had to rely on others generosity to slake my thirst. Perhaps that's why I stayed sober all night.

34 years ago and I had no money- .

Have to admit that 34 years later I still have no money. Spent it all on bikes and bits in the last year. So anyone planning a big expense- Like a wedding or stock market crash- Get your priorities right and get the new Bike(s) before the bills come in.

In case y'all don't know, big weddings are a Southern thing.....

Two years ago, my oldest daughter got married. We had her rehearsal dinner at our home in our backyard. We had the wedding in our family church, and we had the reception in my parents' home and yard. We controlled the food and liquor(beer and wine) at the reception, but it still hit the hardest. When my wife and daughter asked me what we could afford, I told them. That was the LAST time they asked me anything. We spent about 10k over that figure. :(

Yeah, I caved, and yeah, a wedding's a big hole to throw money in. But, my daughter still says it was the best day of her life, and lots of friends and family say it was the best party they ever attended. The cops even came TWICE to tell us to hold it down! Good thing the mayor was there. :D

The really bad news.....I got two more girls. :eek:

Have to admit that 34 years later I still have no money. Spent it all on bikes and bits in the last year. So anyone planning a big expense- Like a wedding or stock market crash- Get your priorities right and get the new Bike(s) before the bills come in.

Or combine them all...;)

http://digave.com/images/wedding/Wed2a.jpg
Wedding Couch Bike (http://digave.com/couch/wedding.htm)

The future wife and I were Engineering students and found near the end of the fall semester we could move in together in a tiny apartment in an old motel the Alumni association owned. If; we were married in a couple of days. Free blood test as we were both students, $5.00 for the liceince, $10.00 for the county Judge to marry us, and ~$12.00 for us and our 4 classmates/witnesses at the local Arby's to celebrate. $27.00 total. And we could tell her Catholic mom we were married by a priest because the Judge's last name was Priest. Much more $$$ then that still seems insane to me. We could have saved the $27 as common-law marriage was legal in that state at that time.

Here's what I'm talking about, about brides being ripped off:

This is a photo, a few weeks old, of a cake from the daughter of a friend's wedding. I can't remember the exact cost, but it was well over $200. Possibly in the $300's. They forgot the topper on it, and it made her cry on her wedding day.

Now, I'm sure it looked prettier in real life, but I'm thinking I could do just as well with 3 Sarah Lee cakes... and some Christmas ornaments.


http://homepage.mac.com/sbacig/.Pictures/Me/JasonKarnaCutCake.jpg

And the worst part is that you only shop for wedding stuff once (hopefully), so after the initial shock hits in, you start to think a $199 cake is a bargain.

In case y'all don't know, big weddings are a Southern thing.....


You obviously haven't experienced a big city Italian wedding. Other ethnics and nationalities can be substituted.

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Big wedding. Or successful marriage?

The latter is better.

I never saw the point in asking my parents to pay for my big day. So I never asked.

Cgallag and I put on a great wedding on a shoestring (I was going to college, he was in a new position at work, and we had to move 2 days after the wedding to a new city and state). We were in agreement as to the budget and our expectations. With non-financial help from family and friends we had a blast, as did our guests.

We figure if it's good enough for us, it's good enough for our kids. If they want a big production, then I'm all for letting them finance it. We put our daughter through college, are doing likewise for our son, and hope they have enough common sense to stay out of debt when it comes time for their weddings.

How do you know when to draw the line, when to tell the kids it's time for them to get off the parental teat?

A couple of comments in the thread on the cost of college got me thinking about weddings. ...... I've been driving used cars until they drop and taking $500 vacations for 20 years to get her this far, and if she needed anything in a crisis, I'd literally die to provide it for her. But I'm 63, and I'm not going into debt for the rest of my life so she can have lobster instead of cocktail weenies at the reception.
But as far as I know, I'm the only father in America who feels this way. Any comments?

I knew there was another father like me out there somewhere...thanks for speaking up.

The best way to avoid the cost of weddings altogether is to encourage them to live together first. You know, try before you buy, and all that. Most young couples will appreciate how 'forward' your thinking is. Little do they know.

When they again approach you for that big bucks wedding, you say; You're shacking, and I ain't paying for squat. Your fallback position is to cough 5K for a week in Vegas/Tahoe/Atlantic City or wherever, so they can hitch up cheap and have a little fun. It helps if they have to really drag that 5K out of you. You can end the obligation easily, by thinking a little farther forward than they will. bk

Most of the time when you hit the family exchequer for a sizable purchase, you get some sort of guarantee or warranty in return.

Based on the experience of hundreds of weddings, I would suggest that the bride's parents should feel obligated to give their daughter their love and her new husband a fair chance. Beyond that, everything else is VOLUNTARY and best done out of joy rather than a sense of obligation. Great weddings, not okay weddings but really great weddings, need not put anyone into debt.

By far the best wedding I ever went to was at the home of the couple, with contributions from all of their friends in terms of food, decor, cake, DJ. A true celebration of love as well as friendship. However, we were all older, 2nd marriage for both, and no family members to please.

As opposed to my wedding, paid for by me, which was budget but still quite nice--yet as the marriage deteriorated, in retropect I can't say it was money well spent.