Multi-tiered cakes, elaborate floral displays and choreographed first dances: The traditional white wedding has been long considered a hallmark of American life.
The obsession with lavish weddings grew to a fever pitch in the years following the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, inflation soared — and the average cost of a wedding broke $30,000 for the first time in 2023, according to The Wedding Report, a research company that tracks wedding data.
Now, after two years of elevated inflation eating into consumers’ wealth, for some engaged couples, splurging on a dessert table or extra sprays of flowers, which are the definition of “nice to haves,” has become a much less justifiable decision. That’s bad news for wedding vendors who provide services like videography, photo booths and catering.
Meanwhile, those vendors are facing a more worrisome existential threat: a looming drop in the overall number of weddings.
Good. The only good weddings I’ve ever been to (including my own, which everyone who attended agreed was lots of fun) have been pretty laid-back affairs that were just big parties with a small ceremony at the start.
Here’s how ours went back in 2000: We’re atheists, so there was no religious ceremony, we got married by a lawyer named pro-tem judge in the same place where the reception was, a ballroom on the square downtown in the college town we were from. My wife’s dress was pretty but not expensive. She wore a veil that was her mother’s (her engagement ring was my grandmother’s). My tux was rented. The catering was done by my wife’s aunt. We got a nice but inexpensive cake from a cake maker who worked out of her house. The alcohol was a case of Asti and a keg of Killian’s Irish Red. The “DJ” was a 50-cd CD player on random. This was before smartphones, so we gave all the tables disposable cameras. We got a professional photographer to take just the wedding portraits and no other pictures.
I don’t know if they still say that now, but back then, after it happened, my friends kept telling me that it was the best wedding they had ever been to.
Honestly, the only thing that didn’t go well (other than my dad being his normal overbearing self during the rehearsal) was that my feet were killing me in those tuxedo shoes and I didn’t think to bring a change of shoes.
My wife changed into her Doc Martens, which look awesome with a wedding dress by the way.
Always bring a change of shoes to your wedding.
I had similar vibes to our wedding. It was in an old-barn turned reception hall attached to a strip mall. We had 2 half-kegs and 2 cases of wine bought direct from the winery. The strip mall had a liquor store so folks who wanted to go nuts “snuck over” (as if we cared). People similarly said it was their favorite wedding.
We had a wedding procession where they walked us down to a nearby B&B where we spent our wedding night and then they all went back and got super drunk, which is why our wedding photos include pictures of empty champagne bottles and a circle of feet.
My fiancée and I are planning to do something similar! Just low key and not expensive. Perhaps even multiple smaller parties/barbeques to have a more intimate feel to them. My favorite weddings I’ve been to have been the smaller, less planned ones. And I will definitely bring a pair of comfy shoes to mine :)
Awesome! Good luck, I hope your wedding goes really well!
We just said “fuck it,” booked a vacation home in the hill, got a catering guy to make tacos, invited 30 friends and eloped. Family was pissed, but the guests and us had waaay more fun than a normal wedding.
People could actually talk to each other, no one had to deal with guests that were only there so parents wouldn’t get guilted by their cousins, etc.
That said, we did spend a little money on a stupid cake that made us laugh.
I have to know, why the Sears cake? lol!
For the longest time we really wanted to buy this stupid print by Brandon Bird, but we never had a wall that could fit a 7 foot wide frame.
We decided that, instead of having the art inside of our home we could have it inside of us.
Family was pissed
What, why? You didn’t invite them?
I’ll avoid the details and just say, it was complicated, and we didn’t want family to get in the way of us getting married or making our wedding day miserable.
You didn’t want family to get in the way of making your wedding day miserable?
I’m not going to get into the details. All in all, it was the right thing for us at the time.
My original point was that not everyone needs to follow the same mold for a wedding. Do whatever makes sense for you and your partner, and you don’t need undertake rituals and routines that are not going to provide you joy.
People eloping without family isn’t exactly a new thing. Hell, my wife’s folks did something similar.
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I misread that
Eliminate weddings all together. Why spend money YOU DON’T HAVE on something YOU DON’T NEED.
Once we buy our house and have spare income. “Wife” and I will have a “wedding” for the friends and family that cared over the decades.
Anyone else? Can get bent. I don’t need to host a party and provide you with food to somehow validate our relationship. Thankfully UK honours “living as married” as a valid relationship. So there’s no real need to have even civil marriage anymore.
Funerals, too.
They’re absurdly expensive.
We spent way too much on our wedding, but it is what my wife wanted and her parents were footing the majority of the bill so I was in no position to say no (although I did seriously suggest we take the money and use it as a down payment on a house). I was all for just skipping the wedding altogether and thought it was a waste of money.
But, man, I’m glad we did it. Friends from HS and college all came together, many of whom I hadn’t seen in a while and had not hung out altogether in one place for even longer. Family came in from all over. I got to meet a lot of her family I probably would have never met (because they came from other countries). It was a grand party where everyone had a blast that I got to spend with all the people I’ve loved throughout my life.
You are absolutely right, it was not a practical usage of a lot of money, and I would have been you before my wedding. I certainly think we could have cut a lot of stuff to make it cheaper and I still would have gotten the same enjoyment from it. But foregoing it altogether would have been, in retrospect, a big mistake.
How many years ago was it? But yeah, everyone is different. I have no family and my in-laws would find it hard to visit us. Our friend groups is rather small too. I’m glad you did enjoy it.
More than 12 years ago. And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely understand that everyone is different. I was just offering up someone who shared the same opinion, but in the end had a different experience.
I sincerely hate being invited to one of these huge celebrations, I have to prepare for hours before even starting, wearing clothes that I dislike, at some point I am asked to eat for much longer that usual for nor foreseeable reason. I just eat two small dishes for lunch and 1 and a half for dinner, but I’ve been in parties where the whole lunch was about 8 consecutive dishes. So over the top. And if you don’t eat anything you’re probably sitting in a corner since you’re one of the few, and when you have hundreds of people in an extra lavish wedding, you end up talking to someone who you never even knew but pretend to do so. After keeping you stuck there for a whole day you’re finally home. Am I relaxed? Not really. The last wedding I was invited in we weren’t treated properly, on top of having to gift something expensive, wearing fine clothes just for that day and taking hours. Not to mention how drunk some of these people can get. Was it pleasant? No. It wasn’t. Also I have a will that I’d wish were respected a little bit more, especially if I have to get back home for other reasons.
In the US, weddings are treated as family reunions and people get pissed if they’re not invited. And their spouse, and their children, and of course you better have an open bar so that no one watches said children.
Which is why I had a courthouse marriage and then never told anybody about it.
I honestly don’t understand why it hasn’t died out faster, it’s such a huge waste all around and so much stress for like… some pictures commentating the time you herded cats into the same room and maybe managed to keep them from fighting?
My wife and I were fine with a small wedding, but her parents wanted to invite all their friends to a lavish event. So they booked a very expensive place with the food and told us that was their contribution. We just had to pay for everything else. The photographer, the DJ, the cake, miscellaneous expenses. It all added up. I think we ended up paying around the same as they did, which was approximately double what we had budgeted for our small wedding we wanted. So four times more overall. But we got nice wedding photos and they got their extravagant party with their friends.
Tldr; boomers gonna boom
It depends on who is paying for it.
If parents pay for the wedding, it is generally more extravagant and meant to be a family event. This was generally the case for a lot of people.
Now that the husband and wife are more likely to pay for their own wedding, it has turned more into a party with friends.
Millennials killed multi-tiered cake dancing!!! 😡😡😡😡😤
30k was the new average? Good lord. Thankfully pandemic-era Covid restrictions meant my spouse and I were limited to 12 people in the room and no dancing — cutting a guest list of extended family and friends and vendors with an excuse like that saved a ton of headache and expense without the guilt of “we invited so-and-so, therefore this other person will be butthurt if they’re not invited.”
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Agree with @[email protected] — Good!
I remember looking for venues and caterers and such and it was crazy how expensive everything was — and usually included a lock-in on food/alcohol suppliers — and this was many years ago. Seeing the prices that people are spending for a huge extravagant affair for one day is mind-blowing. If you can afford it, great; but I don’t think that’s the case for most. Starting a marriage with a huge debt is a horrible idea.
The article touched on this, and I agree. The best weddings are the ones that focus on the couple and making it their special day in every way and not how much they paid for the venue or destination or who the DJ is. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to have a special wedding. I’ve been to all kinds of weddings, and I’d always take a courthouse wedding and potluck reception in the backyard with friends over a lavish but impersonal destination wedding at a resort or the huge church wedding with hundreds of people.
Got the courthouse-style wedding and used the savings to buy a house. No regrets. I’m an atheist and could give a shit about religious tradition.
We went one step further than courthouse and that was Las Vegas. About $1,500 USD for everything. Still together and no regrets.
Vegas is great for the all inclusive experience at a bargain. They re-used the flowers for the next couple.
We just went to a Justice of the Peace with a random witness. Got to piggy-back our own honeymoon on a trip to Costa Rica. We don’t need to spend thousands to have a nice time with family, didn’t need the stress, and sure as shit didn’t need to prove our love to anyone else but us.
My wedding was just before the COVID lockdowns.
We had it in our house, invited only close family, and the officiant was the host of a gaming group I see regularly. He got one of those mail-in Universal pastorships (forgot the right terminology) so he could officiate his daughter’s wedding a couple years before.
The only really expensive part besides the ring when I proposed (Moissanite), was the fancy dinner after the wedding. It was perfect. My wife and I were both all for every part of it.
Hey! I’m part of a trend!
Keeping it under 10-12k total. Biggest splurges so far are 1.5k custom tailored three piece suit and 1.6k for photographer to cover the entire day without hour limits. Food will be about half the total cost.
But grocery store flowers, digital invites, thrifted dress, basic rings, picnic area ceremony and restaurant rehearsal. No DJ. No alcohol. No florist.
My parents didn’t even have a party, just paperwork. Just like their parents before them.
Same. My parents went to the courthouse with their besties, then out to dinner after.
My wife and I spent something like 9k total 14 years ago. Most of that was the venue, photography, and catering. Floral arrangements she and her bridesmaids did, DJ was a local guy we knew, and we gave him one of his first jobs. We had people coming up weeks afterward saying it was the most fun we had in a while.
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