Taking out a mortgage against the house, or whatever was done, is just BONKERS to me. I get that it's a sacred day and all. I am fine with spending some money on it, but that is just pure insanity. Maybe, I am just being cheap or something
Bigger and more expensive weddings have been correlated to shorter marriages. So, maybe you just want to stay with your spouse?
That is actually very believable. I know somebody who balled out on a wedding at 25 and was divorced by 28...
My ex spent 250K on his wedding, the marriage lasted 10 months.
They broke up over financial struggles. Lol
How on God's green earth do you even spend 250k on a wedding??? I legitimately cannot comprehend that.
It's shockingly easy with larger head counts and any degree of formality.
The moment you make an event formal, you ratchet up the per-head cost of the event. For a passable formal wedding, it costs about $500/head. For a properly formal wedding, it's closer to $1000.
Formality adds dollars for every single little detail to every single head added. And formality adds A LOT of details.
Anything less than $500/head that tries to be formal is going to be a cheap knockoff of formal. Which is FINE, a lot of folks are absolutely fine with a cheap knockoff of formal, I would say that this is the majority of "formal" weddings, and the majority of people love them. All good, but still eyewateringly expensive just for a facsimile of formality.
When you don't waste your budget on formality, you radically streamline the number of per-head expenses and the per-head expenses you do have, are much, much cheaper.
Think of the cost differential alone on 200 place settings, with upgraded linens, nice flatware/silverware/glassware, which all needs to be rented, set up, taken down and cleaned, flower arrangements, staff to serve food if plated, staff to make cocktails, clear glasses, chefs to cook and plate 200 individual plates, etc, etc, etc
Vs disposable dishes at a cookout, drinks from a giant ice tub. The differential on the staff and supplies to serve a few hundred people is fucking mind blowing when you try and add formality to it.
But that's because our society has a delusional habit of equating formality to specialness, which is just consumerist wealth worship. It's absolutely nonsense to equate the two and to feel like a wedding MUST be formal to be special.
Formality can be fun, and on a small scale, it's often an affordable luxury. But as a society we've gone way, way overboard in fetishizing formality.
As someone who has been part of the rich folks gala circuit, and who owns more ballgowns than I do jeans, it's really not that special, and even the people attending don't think it's that special.
In then ultra wealthy world, these events are about networking, not actually about the importance of the love of the couple getting married. My ex married a lunatic and his parents tried to talk him out of it.
They still paid a quarter million for his wedding (and this was 20 years ago), because it was an important event to demonstrate their connections and influence. They had Cirque du Soleil performers because the founder was a guest. They had food stations at the cocktail hour manned by famous chefs in the city.
When I've gone to galas, it's work, it's not really glamourous, it's just part of the job when your job is to be well connected.
For the people who can really afford this level of formal event, it rarely feels "special" to them, it's just part of the process of being in that world. These aren't "magical" evenings of feeling like a princess, it's usually stress/boredom/political maneuvering...it's work.
No one who needs to mortgage a property to throw a party should be aspiring to that as their standard for "special." Formal is not special just because it's formal.
Which is why SOOOOOOO many weddings are dull-ass boring as fuck. The thing that makes weddings fun is celebrating with loves ones, not the fact that a cater waiter who just snorted a line off the bartender's ass in the bathroom served you a plate of reheated chicken instead of uncle Joe manning the grill and handing you a burger.
Granted, maybe uncle Joe is also into snorting blow off of the bartender's ass, I don't know what people's family dynamics are like...but at least you're not paying a premium for it.
ETA: I *always* give a massive tip to the bar staff at the beginning of any open bar event with the statement of "because these assholes aren't going to tip you enough." Cater staff notoriously hate the guests they serve, which is one of my least favorite parts of formal events, being surrounded by staff who are just dreading the drunken bullshit to come. The seething underneath the treacly thick niceness is so awkward to me.
The tip trick is AMAZING for getting access to the verboten gossip that they're really not.supoosdd to share. I can't tell you how much valuable social capital I've gained from sucking up to cater staff at formal events. Un-fucking-real.
Frequently the best $100 I've ever spent.
So if you ever get sucked into a really formal open bar event and you want to make the evening a heck of lot more interesting, try a massive tip and a bit of shit talking. Works every time.
