Being Rich Makes Wedding Planning Easy
August 4, 2007
Did you know that I consider it my job to read the gossip rags for all of you? Oh, I’m not talking about US Weekly and Star and People. No, I’m talking about the online gossip brought to the Internet by the corporation Gawker Media. One of their newer properties, Jezebel, recently had a guest post from a guy who says: Planning a Wedding is No Big Deal.
Admission: I’ve done no wedding planning whatsoever. Well, that’s a lie. I’ve made a guest list. That counts as planning right? So, even though I’ve done no wedding planning, I have read Wedding Bee. And I do know that having a wedding on a budget is more complicated than just walking into a bunch of ballrooms and choosing the one that you want.
So, why was I so confused by the writer’s easy-breezy approach to wedding planning?
We’ve dealt with the whole thing ourselves, with no hired-gun consultant overseeing it and hardly any logistical input from either set of parents (though they are helping to foot some of the bill, which FYI is coming in just under the national average of $37,000). And we’re not doing some radically scaled-down anti-wedding, either — we’re having a Saturday night party in Washington, D.C., with more than 120 guests, a live band, plenty of flowers, etc.
Oh, that’s why. Yeah, I’d be stress-free too if I were dropping over $30,000 on a party for 120 people. I could freaking hire a band of elephants to carry me down the aisle on their trunks if I had that much money. Way to show us not-so-wealthy people that we’re totally overthinking EVERYTHING.
Topics: A Guy's View |
August 4th, 2007 at 10:52 am
well said! this is the primary reason I can’t read most of those magazines: annoying writers who are ignorant to most of their readerships’ realities, and the annoying editors who publish the schlock anyway.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Also he’s a guy, he says ‘it’s pretty much planned’. I bet he hasn’t thought of half the things that still need to get taken care of.
I recently bought a Cosmo ‘Real Brides’. The average wedding was at least 40 grand, and there was one for $250,000. Ugh!
August 7th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
HAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA…i second the motion!
August 21st, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I’m really tired of the 20K+ weddings. My husband-apparent and I are trying to pull our wedding off for under 7K in the DC metro area, and it’s really freaking difficult. (I don’t mean 7K for just the ceremony and reception. I mean every possible expense associated with the wedding. Girls on weddingbee.com don’t always count their rings and other misc. expenses in their final cost.) Since you read weddingbee.com as well, what is it with these brides and the multiple dress changes and multiple receptions?
August 25th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Reality check - read the WSJ from last week. The national average is MUCH more like $15K. All these articles saying its more use figures that have $5-15K weddings with one $1 million wedding to skew the figures. The mags publish it b/c if you’re likely to read the knot, or the other wedding bananza magazines, you’re more likely to think that you need to spend upwards of $30K for a wedding.
November 20th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
If I had $30,000 to spend on my wedding . . . I wouldn’t have spent more than what I did. I think our wedding ended up being about $5,000. It was in a beautiful Cathedral. We married the week after Easter, so it was still filled with Easter flowers, and the alter was draped in Gold and flowers. We used the church piano player because he was included in the rental fee. I got a stunning dress off-the-rack (for $1500–it was regularly over $8000–that was my big expense). We had a buffet and beer-and-wine only bar (no hard liquor) at a small hotel that used to be the home of the Ambassador of China during the 1920’s, so it was also a stunning home. We walked to the Church, and only had the limo from the church to the reception. It was a nice pleasant wedding, full of meaning. The guy who wrote that article sounds like a dick.
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
yeah….Im lucky to have a fiance that cares when his care is needed.
We are in the so cal and are doing it all for about 7k (Thats with every little detail included)and kinda going a little bigger on the all inclusive honeymoon (THAT WE REALLY NEED AT THIS POINT) , that brings us to about 11k. But its DARN hard to pull off an affordable wedding!
We are in our early 20’s ,work full time ,go to school, and are doing the darn thing 100% on our own. I would go crazy if I did not have his support and help.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:17 am
The magazines have been useless. We’ve managed to plan our wedding for about 12k (not including rings or honeymoon)– and that is cheap! Nothing in those magazines comes close to under 25k. Reality bites.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
My fiance and I are also in the under $7000 range for a wedding, these magazines are nuts! Although I have already torn pages out, and asked if this idea could be done for much less, and 9 times out of 10 it can be. Who needs a dress made specifially by Alfred Angelo? How about just a dress you love, made by a no namer? The money that some people spend on weddings makes me sick! How about not sending the date cards? Do you really need them? save on stamps, send out only as much as you need. 37,000 could be 1/2 of a down payment on a house, screw the wedding!
March 12th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Ok, I hate to say it but it is highly possible to plan an elegant wedding under 5k. I have planned three weddings this year for friends, all of which came under the 5k budget. One wedding, I planned with a $3500k budget and it was gorgeous. I am not a wedding planner but I do have a degree in marketing, PR and fashion merchandising. I took a bunch of classes in college in event planning.
On my site, I have included some of my best tips in saving money without creating a tacky homemade wedding.
For starters, if it says, “Bride” on it.. don’t buy it, it is marked up 200%. Shop for wedding gowns in the Bride’s Maid section or Prom section. Shop for a gown after Prom and Homecoming and you can find some amazing deals. Not just for yourself but also your wedding party.
One of the top expenses is flowers. Try Costco.com or Sam’s Club.com. They sell bulk flowers. Buy your vases at Joanne Fabric.com for a mere $6.99 each. Arrange the flowers yourself.. any idiot can arrange flowers. You can save thousands by creating your bouquets yourself with floral tape and wire. I explain how on my web site.
Need color? I take a vase (cheap one) and tilt it and let acrylic paint ($.99 cents a bottle)dribble into the vase. I add a few colors and then swirl them around. Turn the vase upside down to drain over night. When it is completely dry, put inside a cool oven, heat it to 350 for 30 minutes. Let the vase sit inside the oven as it cools. And Wa-Lah… a custom painted beautiful vase…
My tips are endles..
April 4th, 2008 at 8:59 am
I think this is mostly a regional issue that everyone is getting up in arms about. The fact of the matter is, to have an ‘elegant’ wedding in the NY/NJ metro area, you need to spend more, if not simply in order to feed your guests. I am having a relatively budget wedding in the NY/NJ metro area for a total of about $40K. My fiance and I are paying for it ourselves, and we are comfortably middle class. ‘Rich’ people have million dollar weddings.