Is a Wedding "worth" the cost?

Our budget was 10,000 and went went over $2000. We didn’t have any spending regrets because we were pleased with everything. We too had just bought a new home while planning a wedding. Thoughts ran across my mind that maybe we should’ve went to a courthouse but I wouldn’t have traded my wedding day for anything. I miss it so much. Like you said you only do this once (hopefully) so why not have the wedding of your dreams.

I'm really far out from getting married so I can't accurately say how much I will be spending. FH and I have set a below average budget for this area, but we believe it will be attainable.

I've been to a wedding that cost $70k in an area where the average was $15k-16k (Mississippi); and I've also been to a wedding where the average was about $37k in that area but they spent about $13k (California)

I never thought I wouldn't want a big wedding. When I got engaged we just started planning without a second guess. As we got deeper into planning and more and more sticker shock, I started to second guess everything. I know I want a nice celebration with friends and family, and at the end of the day I'll be happy we went this route but we also bought a house a little over a year ago and have student loans. We still can afford our usual bills, but its hard to think "oh I'd love to re-do the landscaping in the back yard" but we have wedding things to pay for. At the end of the day for us we think it will be worth it, but its hard not to second guess as you're dropping all of this cash at once.

The house will still be there when its all said and done, that's what FH and I keep telling ourselves and after we are married 2019 will be the year we do all of the house projects we want before we start trying to start a family.

I think we've all wondered this at one point or another in our planning. I can say that I was in the same situation as you, my husband could've cared less if we got married at the court house, but I wanted a beautiful wedding. We too, had just bought a place 2 years earlier and probably could've used the money towards something else.

I will say, I do not regret the money that we spent now that the day has come and gone. If I were to do anything different, maybe I would have done a very small and intimate wedding only due to the drama and opinions we dealt with leading up to the wedding, but not because of how the day turned out in the end.

I don't have any spending regrets. We did not hire a videographer, and I thought I'd regret that, but we chose to put more into our budget for an incredible photographer. Going through the pictures, I felt like she just kept clicking and I didn't miss anything that I felt a videographer would have captured.

We went over our budget, probably by about $5,000. I will say that our friends and family were so incredibly generous, that we ended up with about $5,000 worth of gifts over what we had even thought we would get, so it covered where we went over. I know you can't guarantee this or expect it, but it was a nice surprise and made us feel better about going over so we could host our guests properly.

If finances are really stressing you out, the best place to save money is by lowering your guest count. You can still have an overwhelmingly beautiful wedding with 70 guests versus 150. Keep it intimate, and maybe your budget won't feel so constrained. Good luck!

One of the best pieces of advice I was given about worrying about finances for the wedding, thinking it isn’t the “right” time since money is tight, is that it’s similar to having a child. There’s never a “right” time, and you’ll always have something else to spend the money on. But people who really want kids don’t let that stop them, and (most of the time) it all works out!

If even a tiny piece of you thinks you may regret not having a wedding, you should do it. Not necessarily a huge fancy one (because 32k is ridiculous in my opinion) but there is a middle ground between no wedding and a 32k wedding. Can you invite say, 50 people (25 each) and do it on a 10k budget?

The way I see it is you only get one chance to have a wedding (hopefully lol). You can always make more money... money is replaceable. You can’t go back in time and give yourself another wedding.

That being said, if you REALLY don’t care about having one then you shouldn’t waste the time and money, but if even the slightest part of you cares, I think the risk of regretting skipping it is bigger than the risk of spending money.

WE are an older couple and we are spending about $25K, we have 6 kids to put through college, so I can tell you that that money can definitely be spent elsewhere. Unfortunately, in order to have a wedding you must spend the money. All you can do is shop around and try to get the best price for the vendors that you seek to make it a memorable day. That's what we're doing.

From when I was a kid I always wanted a big wedding. A big beautiful dress, in a nice amazing place. All our families, have my children be the flower girl and ring bearer. But it's not in our financials to have a big wedding. We were going to do a courthouse wedding but were told they dont do that no more. I'm super excited for my wedding. Ots super simple only spending like 500$ total. I got a beach dress for 30$ and my son, fiance, and daughter outfits only came to like 60$ total. We are getting married at a public place. Very simple wedding. I'm more excited for this wedding than I was when planning the big wedding we had originally wanted.

I was in the same boat as you, planning a close to 200 person wedding and I started to feel super discouraged and wanted to elope. I just sat down and told my FW how I was feeling about having to spend so much money on a wedding. We ended up coming to an agreement and are now planning a intimate 30 person wedding and we’re both so happy and stress free.
A wedding means something different to everyone. Not everyone can justify spending a ton of money, and some people can. Just take a step back, talk to your FS and see where you’d both like to be at wedding wise

This is what my FH and I have been dealing with. We can afford it but do we want to spend that much money on one day? The struggle is real!

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That's a good point, "the house will still be there"! I'm really glad i'm not the only one who is getting sticker shocked too!

I loved my wedding so so much. It wasn’t the wedding of my dreams because I couldn’t even dream of it before. In the weeks leading up to it I did stress about some wedding planning decisions, like whether we should have gone with different vendors to cut costs, but it was too late. The day after the wedding I was still on a high with how special and memorable everything was that I remember thinking it was worth every penny.

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Right?!? And then when you break it down into price per hour for a 5 hour reception, it can make you sick!

I respect the services that these wedding professionals provide you with, but some of it is insane! Maybe my fiancé and I are being too cheap but we have never gone out to dinner and spent $130 each on a meal. And that is the lowest price caterers have given us unfortunately. (our venue limits our choice in caterer)

We are sticking to our budget, but it's a high budget and we can afford it (thanks to my father, who is paying for most of it). Do you think you can have your "dream wedding' in a more backyard/DIY setting? I think it just depends on the aspects that are most important to you. I've been to the cutest backyard weddings and they didn't feel any less special just because the couple saved money. I've been in 2 weddings, one had a budget of $5,000 and the other $20,000. Both went over by $1,000-$3,000.

We had a small 13k wedding and I absolutely don’t regret it. It is hard to think of all the other things we want NOW, like a house or a newer car, but it really just comes down to prioritizing what you want and need most right now. Is it worth it to you to scale back the wedding plans and have a beautiful wedding in budget, even if it’s not the dream wedding you envisioned? We sacrificed a lot while saving for our big day, and still did not have every little detail or vendor that we would have preferred. But it was still a fabulous day, and it turned out to be a new version of our dream wedding after all. Our families are spread out, so having everyone in one spot was priceless, and then to have a beautiful wedding ceremony and reception with my husband on top of that really made it all worthwhile. But that’s just my experience.

This is such a personal question.

For FH and I, it is absolutely worth it. We have family and friends all over the country who we haven't seen in years. When else will we have all these people together? It's a once-in-a-lifetime event (hopefully) and something that we'll always remember.

The money could always be used for something else. We rent. We have six-figure student loan debt. My travel bucket list is like 20 pages long. But this is 100% worth it to us. We're paying our bills and we're not too set on buying a house since we live in the NYC area and the only way we could afford it would be to move to the suburbs, which we don't want to do. We should have lots of years ahead of us to travel the world.

Also, I had a big sweet 16 (it's a NYC-area thing). Basically like a mini wedding reception with my family and friends in a banquet hall. It was one of the best nights of my life and I still have such happy memories from it. I had serious self esteem issues as a teenager and I can't even describe the love I felt in that room that night. I was on cloud nine afterward.

So yeah, totally worth it to me.

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I think what makes me hesitate to have a backyard wedding (besides my yard would be a tight squeeze and we have zero parking) is that I helped my mother plan her second wedding which was in her backyard. It was honestly one of the most stressful days of my life. My sister and I ended up doing all the cooking and cleaning, set up/breakdown as well as being bridesmaids. While people enjoyed themselves and I know my mother was extremely greatful, I would never put that kind of stress on my family/friends now that I know what is involved! I'm sure with better planning and hiring out for food would make it less stressful, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth with my experience in backyard weddings.

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I think you'd have a really awesome and unique perspective on backyard weddings then! You'd know exactly what to avoid. I'd recommend at least hiring a day of (or month of) coordinator for set up & breakdown. Then a caterer, maybe a restaurant or BBQ so it's more affordable, so they can do all the cooking and you don't have to dirty any dishes. If it's in a friend or family members backyard, that gives you a little more time to start set up and everything. Then you don't have to worry about assigning jobs to guests! My cousin got married on our family ranch a year ago, and it went very well. They hired a caterer, rented a tent & tables & chairs from a company who set everything up then took it down the next day, had a DJ and a florist, and had a coordinator! They worked on setting things up the days prior, but didn't have to work the day of and neither did any guests.

I was just talking to FH about this tonight. I am not regretting anything we have booked but I just wish we went for something smaller. I think I would even prefer it, 40-50 people would be so intimate and so much more fun, really get to spend time with everyone...and a lot less expensive than our 150-170 person wedding. I almost feel irresponsible with how much this wedding is costing even though I feel like I am being budget conscious and not even doing it up as much as I would have liked.

View Quoted Comment Do you mind me asking how much you spent? I’ve been feeling the same way and I feel so anxious about the costs.

View Quoted Comment It’s quite a few years ago so I don’t fully remember but I think it was $60-80k? We landed up having 90 person wedding. My only regret was the videoagrapher. As cheesy as it is, I like the old school videos where you get a recording of your whole wedding, that would be nice for memories- but you spend thousand of dollars for essentially a music video. Disappointing and not much to look back on.