JediMindTricks

congrats!

badboy

Got married in July 2008. Had close to 180 people at the reception.

All in all, it cost us about 52K for everything. We got back about 23K in gifts, thanks to one person who wrote a check for 5K.

Me and my wife paid for all of the wedding. Also, the ring was another big expense I had.

KaMLuNg

iTrader: (5)

thanks JMT

pmptx

Drew,
Congrats welcome to the married life!

Married in 1997 120 person reception about 12K and my parents footed the bill. Thanks M/D

amisconception

I have a story about a friend of mine who married a girl he met in high school.

They were together for 7 years at the time they decided to get married. He bought her a ring, and 8 months later they were married.

The wedding ceremony was at the Beverly Hills Hotel. There were limos, multiple photographers, huge ice sculptures, ridiculous flower arrangements, an orchestra, belly dancers, a band, a dj, open bars, and the main reception was held in the grand ballroom. Too much stuff to list.

It cost a little over $250k, and it was all paid for by the wife's father. It was the most ridiculous and over the top wedding I've ever been to.

Well, they hate each other and they're at each other's throats all the time. He got married thinking it would make her happy and essentially shut her up. As you could probably tell, her father spoiled her, and she expected a fairy tale, and still does in many ways.

My friend is miserable, overweight, and with a second kid on the way. He loves his first daughter, and will surely love the second, but he drinks too much and has to work for his father-in-law because he can't make the type of income she "needs" to be supported as a stay-at-home wife.

He lives in a nice house, has new clothes all the time, expensive watches, nice cars - but is incredibly unhappy. He has very little self-confidence, and I'm frankly surprised he was able to knock up his wife a second time, considering her weight gain and lack of self-discipline when baking multiple batches of cupcakes weekly.

So don't be fooled by expensive weddings, sometimes they're just a cover for underlying misery.

TS_eXpeed

250k?!?

KaMLuNg

iTrader: (5)

thanks pete... we are due for a TX visit... i know Ethan has been on my ass about it...

oh yeah back on thread topic... if you ever wanted a destination wedding... i say do it...

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

We were low $30k's with all of that... cash... no loans.

We paid for it ourselves and my wife was in school the entire engagement (she was 20, I was 22 when we got engaged)... so she only worked part-time. When we were together for a couple of years we knew where we were headed, so we opened a joint bank account and put a deposit a week each into the account (typically ranged from $25-$50/week). This was in addition to what we had in our own savings account (which actually went lower when I bought her ring ). Then when we got engaged we put our saving into overdrive.

Not only did we pay for the wedding ourselves which was in July of 2002, but we signed a contract in May of 2002 for a new construction townhome where we had to put 10% down at contract. The builder was nice enough to let us do 5% in May, 5% in August since we had our wedding in July... but yeah... 2002 was an expensive year!!

Thankfully all of our planning paid off and it set us on the road we are on today. Best part? We actually made a small profit on our wedding after all gifts were tallied

vas25tl

Lots of good stories in here.

I'm headed for the $32-33K mark this October. I hope it doesn't get too much more than that.

Dano04

I got married in July 2008 at age of 20. Parents paid for the food. Like 5K or so. I paid for everything else, came out to like 13K or so. Wedding was for 300 people. Friends and Family had a lot of contacts so I got decent discounts. Plus a two week Honeymoon and cruise and rings were more expenses. I Paid everything off in 3 months. Working 60+ hours a week. Now a Kid on the Way Thank God for all the Blessings!

fsttyms1

Ours was a little north of 35k without the bands. We had close to 300 people.

Maximized

My fiance and I are just beginning to plan our wedding. We are trying to keep it smaller (125) and around 15K. Both my fiance and I are of the mindset that it's pointless to go all out when it's one night. We are looking at a house right now and would rather spend our money there.

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

so the fiance and I want a nice wedding but she doesn't want to spend the money of one. I estimated or wedding to cost about $25k for everything (granted we got the flowers and cake as a freebie). It is hard to explain to her that you cant have elegant and cheap at the same time. Especially at the place we reserved for our ceremony and reception. I just got a quote for 8k from a tenting company who will be providing the tents, tables, chairs, linens, setup, clean-up and break down at our location and the fiance is freaking out. I currently have 15k saved so the other 10 will have to come from either credit card or whatever money we can save. We are trying to finance this whole thing ourselves and what ever money we get from our parents will be accepted as gifts. With that being said i have gotten into more fights or arguments with her about money issuses. She wants to have a nice Hawaii wedding since all of her family is from the mainland and wants to give them a nice experience but its hard to do that without being prepared to spend money. I on the other hand, is like just do whatever it cost to do your family the experience you want. We expect 250 guest.

Pics of our location

TS_eXpeed

250 guests at a Hawaii wedding.

Have fun with the food bill alone....
A gallon of milk there alone is 8 bucks last time I was there (3 years ago).

wndrlst

I'll shoot it for free if you'll fly me there and give me a sleeping bag.

Majofo

:shakehead

Exaggerating a little? Food on Hawaii is about 30-40% more than the mainland. The only real pricey areas are the tourist traps. Even ABC stores aren't that greedy.

250 guests..

Prus one for me!! I'm actually headed back for the weekend June 18th. My good buddy is getting married, real small ceremony in Manoa Valley.. then reception at 3660 On the Rise.

TS_eXpeed

Uh...no?
It was somewhere right around there.
Similarly, a loaf a bread was in the neighborhood of $5. And not some specialty bread either.

Majofo

I have no idea where you bought that gallon of milk but for the years I lived on Oahu it was never over $5.50. A loaf of bread was never more than a couple of dollars.

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

Well the food cost is actually cheaper than at a hotel. The hotels we were looking at the food was about $90 bucks a head and that was a full spread of prime rib and crab legs. Since my brother owns a catering business im paying for all food at cost. So we are looking at 2 sushi bars, 1 prime rib & roast pig station, 1 salad and fruits station, 1 seafood station and dessert station. The only difference with a hotel and the location im at is that we have to coordinate everything.

svtmike

Broke is no way to start married life. Especially if one of the partners is concerned about it going in -- you're effectively making a unilateral decision to live under the yoke of debt (over a single evening's party, no less) that will not be forgotten if the financial strain on your relationship isn't relieved.

Unless you are certain to have very generous guests who are going to give enough that you come out of your wedding day financially ahead of when you went in, you should scale back your plans to something you can afford.

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

We know for a fact that her father will be putting up 10k but we would rather except that as a gift than as funding for our wedding. Plus the way Hawaii weddings are done is, most give money rather than presents. I never heard of a registry until my fiance and i have started dating, she would ask if we can get something from their registry But the last resort will be credit cards. Im able to save about 1k a month (if no unforeseen things arise) So since we are getting married in December than i can cut the 10k down to 4k. I know my parents want to pay for things but id rather accept the money they are willing to give me as gift rather than paying for wedding items. So im not worried about a 10k credit card debt

thunder04

iTrader: (1)

I'm not looking forward to the costs of our wedding! I'm thankful my fiancée understands that we have ziltch to pay for a wedding (well, maybe a couple thousand, but that's peanuts) if we're to foot the bill ourselves and agrees that we shouldn't go into debt for it. Her mom told her a few years ago that she'd pay for her wedding...but that was two jobs ago and slightly higher income, so we'll have to see what monies are like with her family.

We threw together a rough guest list the other day just to see how many people would potentially attend. We were guessing at least 200 people, but to our surprise it only came to about ~100 people (definitely not a bad thing, lol).

Whiskers

Went to a Bar Mitzvah last night that cost more then most weddings...

StonedCL

iTrader: (1)

My girl is planning our wedding right now..
We are having a destination wedding and so far she looked at the four seasons in west palm beach and a few hotelsmin Miami, the delano and the gains worth and it will prob cost $20 - 30k.. The date will be 11-11-11

svtmike

Well then what's she worried about? Tell her to shut up and make you a sandwich.

Street Spirit

We were just at a beautiful venue in 'the country' and staff there said the wedding that was coming in yesterday was worth $180,000!

We saw the bride and the bridal party arrive on a coach bus and they all looked like hoochies. The bride was on her cellphone in some meaningless conversation, walking around, ignoring what was going on around her as she was being filmed and photographed...the bridesmaids, who were being called for photos told the photographer to wait until they were finished their smoke break, and their dresses were ugly, beige and gold mini-skirts. Errr. Yeah.

svtmike

:shakehead The wedding industry is out of control.

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

note to self never tell a asian woman to shut up

Yeah tell me about it. The flowers for our wedding alone totalled about 13k but like i said earlier that it was all free.

Outlaw06

Yeah.... it's funny how girls in sweet 16 birthday party spent more money than your average wedding.

mdkxtreme

For those that paid 25k-30k, what did you spend it on?

I'm asking because I'm engaged but haven't really decided on what kind of wedding I want (or she wants).

vas25tl

The reception is what really sets you back. If you decide to decorate everything, every...little...thing....ads up.

Drapes to cover walls - $3500, flowers - $3000, service fees, limo, all the stuff you don't think is that expensive actually is.

It's not difficult to spend $25-30K on a wedding...

Pete2010

I'm actually glad I have no idea how much mine was. We had about 150 people come for the weekend to a place in NJ. We did golf on friday(probably 16 people @ father-in-law's course) with a rehearsal dinner for everyone who flew in and was local (probably like 70 people). Then Saturday night for the wedding, outside @ our venue, then cocktail hour, open bar etc.. Needless to say her father-in-law is a self made man and has done very well for himself. They paid for the wedding and my parents paid for part of the rehearsal dinner.

We did pay for the honeymoon ourselves, 12k - We went to Australia for 3 weeks. I paid for that w/ some of my retention bonus from a startup that got acquired.

One thing I can say for anyone going to get married. Do an open bar no matter what, skimp on other stuff, but a cash bar at a wedding is just tacky. Hell, my buddy got married, did a clam bake with kegs of beer. Just make sure to booze up your guests real nice.

phee

iTrader: (5)

so im guessing your circumsition is immaculate

MWalsh9152

did you happen to buy this milk at a store with a big "A" out front?

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

This is what my answer was based on:
I pretty much included everything but the honeymoon and wedding bands. It adds up quick!

But like I said in my reply, we planned ahead and planned well... so no debt, no problems, no regrets. We were actually just talking about it the other day and said for our 10 year we may hold another bash just for the hell of it. No presents or anything... just a big party since our wedding was so much fun. That would be cool!

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

^^^ renewing your vows. This has been a big fad as of lately. My friend just renewed his vows for his 10 year anniversary and the party they had was so much fun that i can envision my future wife and i doing something fun like that.