I appreciate the story about a reasonably-priced wedding though! Too often I hear about the other end of the spectrum, so this was a really refreshing post to stumble upon.

People are more than willing to pay for their own drinks. You can have wine on the tables if you want but anything else is unnecessary. It’s your wedding! People should be buying you drinks!

In retrospect, the only thing I would change is I would have hired someone to come out and do pictures rather than rely on friends with a photography hobby.

Congratulations on your marriage!

Also, it would be nice to see wedding announcement cards for sale somewhere on the net. I can’t find any.

Sorry for the late response to most of the comments. I don’t read blogs much on weekends, and this was a long one to boot.

Our wedding was too small to get any “bennies” from the hotel. So no, we didn’t get any freebies or discounts at the expense of our guests. I did outline the travel costs in the main story, and they weren’t terrible.

My side of the family would have had to travel by plane no matter what. It was actually cheaper for my family, all things considered, for them to go to Vegas. Truth be told, my family preferred Vegas over where my wife and I live. So it’s not like the destination and cost issue was merely “us vs. the world.” And I had more family present than she did.

But then some people say, the wedding isn’t for the groom, it’s for the bride. And if that’s the case, shouldn’t the bride’s family be paying for it, as tradition has held?

For those that say, “don’t have a wedding you can’t afford…” well, one thing that did come across our minds was to simply have a JOP wedding. But then we would be leaving out people who wanted to see us get married!

So yea, the thought crossed my mind that if the bride’s side wanted to help us out with a local wedding so they could keep their travel costs down, we would have obliged. What is true is that you can’t keep everybody happy. If you can’t, then what do you do?

The guest list was CLOSE family… brothers and sisters, moms and dads, and spouses. (And a close aunt and uncle.) These are people who are going to attend your wedding no matter what.

To the poster who asked if my wife and I had the money talk prior to getting married… oh yeah. She tells me I talk about finances more than anybody she knows. We’re reasonably compatible when it comes to finances, but it doesn’t always mean it’s easy.

Nonetheless, what really matters is everybody had the time of their lives, and nobody feels put out about the fact that they had to travel to our wedding. I brought up the issue because I wanted to hear how others may handle a situation like that.

1. Had a potluck reception. Many might think this is tacky, but it in keeping with older traditions (think 1800′s) and believe me, you get much better food, a wider variety, and folks are happy to make their “signature dish” for such a special occasion.

2. Borrowed a wedding dress and tux. I borrowed the tux from my brother and my wife actually borrowed two dresses, one for the ceremony and one for the reception.

3. Asked friends to do the pictures in lieu of a gift. We weren’t expecting professional quality photos from this, just fun pictures of people at the wedding and reception. They had fun taking pictures and did a fine job.

4. Friends volunteered to play music and call contra dances (which are like square dances).

5. My boss volunteered to make our wedding cake.

6. We didn’t serve alcohol for the reception. The hall didn’t allow it and we didn’t really think we needed it, since we had great food and entertainment already.

So, the things we DID spend money on were
1. Invitations
2. The church
3. The hall
4. Pop and some sparkling cider for the toast.

I’m sure there’s a couple of things we are forgetting. The point is that, if the shared experience with your guests is what matters, a potluck reception is fine. And think about the talents that your friends have–cake baking, cooking, photography, entertainment. We had people who volunteered to do all of these things as their gift to us.

BTW, we got married in Alaska, but since that is where we live we didn’t count it as a “destination” wedding. However, for many of our guests, it was a destination. Since we were married in our hometown, we put the word out that we would be having guests, and many friends offered housing for free. Again, having a good network of friends made our wedding memorable and far, far richer than a more expensive one.

My only regret was not having a wedding video. Neither one of us can remember exactly what our vows were since we wrote them ourselves and have lost our “notes”…plus I cried all the way through mine so nobody could understand me anyway (happy tears…I’m an emotional girl).

Our expenses were as follows:

Apparel: $300 ($125 gorgeous David’s bridal special, a $150 tux with tails and accessories rental, and my mom spent $25 on all the materials to make my 5 foot long veil…it was amazing and decorated with shinies and fake pearls…the patterns were awesome against the back of my dress and went great with the train)

Rings: $250 ($250 for hubby’s band, my two wedding bands are from his mother and my engagement ring is from his grandmother)

Music: $0 (my mother set up a sound system and we played CD’s)

Miscellaneous: $500 (reception decorations and the fake flowers used for bouquets and decorations)

Ceremony Site and Officiant: $250 ($150 for chapel and organist and $100 for the preacher)

Flowers: $50 (the roses that my youngest sister handed out as the flower girl came from Sam’s Club)

Cake: $125 (3 tier decorated in our light blue wedding color from Kroger’s…it was really yummy)

Reception/Catering: $500-$800 (reception hall for 60 guests and linens were $125, my mother bought trays from Sam’s Club of shrimp, vegetables, meat, and fruit, my MIL baked and decorated an awesome groom’s cake, and my aunt-in-law and my MIL decorated the tables with glitter and little reception souvenirs)

Photography: $500

Videography: $0 (But we wish we had one)

Invitations: $100

Limo: $0 (our reception hall was in walking distance and we lived nearby so we used our car)

So our whole wedding was less than $3000 and was absolutely fantastic!

I totally agree that the marriage is the important part. My husband and I were 21 and 22 respectively and it was nice to start our married life with no wedding debt. It’s been about 5 years and we still remember our wedding day as absolutely perfect.

OTOH, destination weddings that specifically exclude one or both partner’s young child(ren) are just wrong.

I don’t see these types of comments as a “race to the bottom” as you said. I think it’s good for someone thinking about getting married to read this kind of information. Otherwise the only exposure they’ll get might be watching Bridezillas on TV or hearing from wedding planners and other people depending on the event for their livelihood how much they “should” spend.

Not only that, but many of these destination weddings are in places that might require a week off from work – time to get there, the actual wedding and reception, then flying home. I have a coworker who went to a friend’s destination wedding (I think it was the Bahamas) and tried to only go for as little time as possible. She still missed about three days of work, and that was with flying out after work and flying home the night before she was due back at work.

Actually, destination weddings themselves don’t really bother me. It’s when the couple guilts guests that makes it rude – “Why can’t you spend $3,000 and a week’s vacation on OUR wedding?!”

This is a practice that’s becomming more prevalent, and in my opinion it’s really inappropriate.

So not only are the guests shelling out for plane tickets and their hotel, but they are now also paying for their own meal, drinks and entertainment.

I have been invited to two of these weddings in the last year, and I really feel negative about it. On top of that, both parties made it a point to let their invited guests know where they had registered. If you are going to ask your guests to pay for your wedding, the least you can do is make sure they know that their presence is the only gift required.

It just stuck me as selfish and greedy.

Truly, if you cannot afford to have a wedding, just don’t have one. Maybe you aren’t ready for it.

As a guest, what most people seem to notice are if the bride is beautiful (she always is), if the couple is happy, if the venue is nice and if the food is good, timely, and there’s enough of it. It’s also nice to be able to catch up with or meet new people at the reception. That can all come at $40,000 or it can come at $500. People don’t remember the flowers or the favors or a million other details that can drive the planners crazy at the last minute. They’re not important.

I have noticed an inverse relationship between the amount of money spent on a wedding and the fun had by guests. Usually that’s because fussy formal weddings are no fun and stressed out brides are no fun. Often the DJ has the music too loud, the photographer is constantly in the way recording an event that didn’t really happen (is the photographer really supposed to come down the aisle backwards before the bride?), and there’s a huge wait between wedding and reception which are in two different venues. Sometimes people are blessed with a wedding planner who takes care of things and everything runs beautifully, but more often than not, the fancy wedding is a much more unpleasant experience than it needs to be. Less expensive weddings just tend to be more relaxed.

The best weddings we’ve been to were simple ones full of love and shared commitment. The ones we’ve left early obviously cost a fortune.

We’ve had the opposite experience of another poster… as we’re getting older the weddings we go to tend to be simpler rather than fancy, even among those who have cohabited for years. The couples are paying for them rather than the parents, and our friends in their 30s are more focused on what their wedding means to them (and learning from previous weddings they’ve attended) rather than some external dream of a fairytale wedding.

Side note: If you’re having an outdoor reception… don’t choose shrimp as an appetizer. Wasps like it too much.

A friend DJ’d our wedding for us. He had the gear, we supplied the (premixed) music, and he was in a walking cast so he couldn’t dance anyway.

My sister and her partner did our photography. This was my sister’s choice as otherwise she would have been drafted as one of my attendants, the very idea of which gave her hives.

My husband’s good friend (not a clergyman) did our ceremony. He would have been a member of the wedding party anyway, but was a gifted writer and speaker, and was pleased and proud to officiate for us. In fact, he later officiated another wedding.

Our wedding was a “destination” wedding in our city of residence; nearly all our family had to travel in. This was their choice. We paid for airfare for one of my attendants, traveling from across the country. The other (I only had two) was local as were both of my husband’s.

We shopped for flowers and vases at a wholesaler; the hotel’s staff assembled the centerpieces the morning of the ceremony for no extra charge.

I bought my dress on eBay for $150 and did the alterations myself. My husband spent 15 times that much for a custom-made dance tuxedo (we are ballroom dancers).

We had one hour of open bar, wine service with dinner, and a champagne toast. Our guests did not have to buy their own drinks but some of them managed to get drunk anyway.

Our wedding, for about 80 people, cost just under $10K. This amounted to about $100 per person for the seated dinner, room rental, setup, bar services, extra-large dance floor, ceremony setup and decorating assistance from the Marina del Rey Hotel. The extra $2000 went to a string quartet for our ceremony, gifts for our wedding party, flowers, and the cake.

I would have been happy with Vegas, but out of five kids between our two sets of parents, we were the only ones in a position to have a big family wedding. At 35 and 41 respectively, we didn’t have any fairy-tale ideas about “the biggest day of our lives;” we just decided to accommodate some of the FAMILY’s fairy-tale ideas.

Our most successful “rule” was no kids (no one under 18 invited). The extended family griped a little, but it was a formal evening wedding with drinking and serious dancing, not an afternoon in a park, and neither of us wanted our party to be about other people’s kids. Speaking just for myself, I would have a hard time relaxing and enjoying myself with kids running round, diving under tables, climbing the railing by the marina, etc.

Our least successful idea was having disposable cameras on the tables. Most of those shots were a waste of processing fees. When we have our 10th-anniversary party, I’m going to get a couple of cheap digital cameras and hand those to people who a) I can trust to take meaningful pictures and who b) wouldn’t mind taking that on.

To this day, the thing most people remember about our wedding is the dance lesson that kicked off the reception, which was donated by our teacher (in whose class we met).

We planned for this party by deciding first what kind of wedding we wanted (formal, with dinner and dancing). Then we had to research how much that would cost in our city ($80 to $150 per person). Then we had to figure out how many people we had to invite. And then we set a wedding date far enough out to let us save the money.

Good for you! I’m sure you’ll get a lot of flack for spending so much on your wedding, but the point is it’s YOUR money and YOUR wedding. Congrats on making it happen and not having debt hanging over your head for years to come.

You also made a great point about putting your guests to work. I wonder whether a lot of these people who put their friends/families to work at their weddings realize that they’re robbing them of the experience of being a guest. You cannot relax and enjoy in the celebration of your brother’s wedding if you’re worried about nailing the photograph of the first kiss, or getting into position to photograph the recessional. You can’t really enjoy the best man’s speech if you’re busy wheeling the cake out of the kitchen and setting it up. You can’t dance with your new sister-in-law if you’re DJ-ing. Etc.

We got a mid-range photographer, and I’m so glad we did. We got great pictures of family members who have since passed away. I have some great pictures and vides of me dancing with my dad.

“You spent $15,000 on your wedding? Outrageous! We got married for $8,000 and had 125 guests!”

“$8,000? What decadence! We got married for $3,000 and only had 20 guests!”

“$3,000? What a waste! We got married for $18, and we didn’t even have rings!”

I tend to agree with the posters who pointed out that having a Vegas wedding isn’t really saving money – it’s just shifting the (increased) costs onto your guests. And for those who say, “no one’s forcing them to go,” that’s not really fair. There’s an expectation that guests will come. If the couple really didn’t care about having guests, then they’d just get married on the courthouse steps and be done with it. The very fact that they’re organizing an official ceremony, with reception and everything, reflects their true desire to have friends and family be present. That creates pressure on invitees. They feel that if they decline, they’ll be disappointing their friend/sister/whatever, not to mention their own feelings of regret between being forced to choose between saving money, or attending a close friend/relative’s wedding. I think Vegas weddings like the one described in the post are a selfish decision. If you can’t afford a real wedding that your friends and family can actually attend, then put it off. What’s the hurry? Save up until you can do it properly.

Weddings can either be about YOU, or about your guests. If it’s really just about you, then go ahead and do the Justice of the Peace thing and get it over with. No one will blame you. But if you’re organizing a big wedding, then clearly you want to share it with friends and family. That’s fine too, but you have to accept that there’s a cost associated with that. Doing the Vegas thing just seems like a cop-out. It’s saying, “We want a fancy wedding with all our friends and family, but we don’t want to pay for it, and we don’t mind inconveniencing our guests and having them foot the majority of the bill for OUR wedding.” It’s selfish, in my opinion.

One last thing. I’m a wedding photographer. It breaks my heart to hear these stories of couples who put so much work into having a memorable, romantic ceremony, handcrafting the decorations and having a really personal, meaningful reception, and then skimping on the photography. At the end of the day, after the food is eaten and the flowers have wilted, what do you have to remember your day? The photos vividly take you back to let you relive every moment of your once-in-a-lifetime day. You’re saving so much money in other areas, why not spend the cash to ensure you have a top-quality record of your day? 25 years from now, when you’re going out to dinner for your quarter-century anniversary, do you really think your wife will say, “It’s too bad we don’t have any photos to remember what we looked like on our wedding day, but I’m sure glad we saved that $800!”

My husband and I were married in 1999 – in Vegas. We chose to semi-elope and have a big party afterwards at home. His brother is a minister and was living in Vegas at the time, so he married us and his wife was our witness. We drove out to Valley of Fire State Park (really gorgeous), a huge stone was our altar and the sun was setting. We wore jeans and hiking boots. I carried flowers from Albertson’s. It was beautiful and stress-less. Afterwards we all went to dinner. Total cost: $200.

Now for the really cheap part. We knew in advance we would be in Vegas on business, so planned the wedding for the end of the trip. Airfare and hotel accommodations were written off as a business expense. Hey, I’m a bookkeeper, what can I say! Of course this was a second marriage and we were more interested in being married than getting married.

We had a wonderful time exploring the natural beauty of Nevada – Lake Mead, Red Rock (the park, not the casino!), Mt. Charleston. And of course, the desert in the spring is fairly alive with color. Nobodies feeling got hurt because NOBODY was there and we had a great party when we got home.

My daughter liked the idea so much, she’s doing the same thing in Hawaii this March – just the two of them. With a party later this summer when the weather’s better.

If I had been invited to Lars’ wedding, then had to hear him crow about “cheap” it was (after I had to spend $$$ on airfare, hotel stay, etc.), I wouldn’t be too happy. It’s no better than asking people to contribute to a potluck wedding reception.

And I’m with Alexandra – we had a nice wedding, too, for about $25,000, including a 10-day honeymoon to England, without incurring any debt. It was a fun way to kick off our marriage, and we had a lot of wonderful memories.

We both worked in jobs that had good salaries, had no debt and spent the engagement year saving up. No help from our parents. Just a vision of exactly what we wanted, and the determination and work ethic to make it happen.

Our wedding was exactly what we wanted with no compromises. No one needed to be cut from the list. Six courses of gourmet food, open bar, the best photographer in town, etc. Our guests were not put to work on our wedding day – they were pampered.

We emerged from the wedding with zero debt.

Just wanted to let you know that not all expensive weddings end in disaster. If the couple can afford to do it and that’s what they want, it can be done without any financial harm to their future or their kid’s college funds .