U.S. couples spend, or should I say their parents spend, on average, $20,398 for their wedding
Recession or not, our baby daughter Diane is getting married. After two years of being squired around town by young Timothy, who I regarded as a son after the first month, they’re finally talking the giant step. My wife and I are thrilled, and relieved. Adding Tim to the family will be an easy task and he will be a great asset. He may even get to help me in my law practice one of these days. “So where do we begin?” asked my wife after dinner. “Where everything begins these days,” I said. “Online. Type ‘wedding costs, or weddings or wedding preparations’ into Google and see what you get. That should keep you busy for the first month.”
Personal Loans
I’m not sure what my wife will find on the internet. One thing I do know, though, is that a wedding is probably not a subject for a Personal Loan from the Money Store. On the same subject, I suspect that by the time my baby daughter is safely wed, I will have chalked up a long list of loans.
The wedding search
I was right. It is all online. There are sites where you type in your zip code, go through and tick off a list of options, answer a few questions and the computer spits out an estimate for a wedding of your choice after a couple of seconds. Be warned, none of the estimates are cheap and depending on your zip code, it will pay you to tell your daughter to elope or just move out of town with her boyfriend.
The wedding is just the beginning
Some couples end up using all the monetary gifts they get to pay for the wedding, especially where the parents cannot afford the big splurge or are not willing to refinance their mortgage to finance it. Other couples split the costs down the middle and in other cases, the wealthier family foots the bulk of the bill. Whatever the case, we’re talking about major money. The day after the wedding, the money problems start in earnest.
After the ball is over…
We have the photographs and the video of the wedding, we have gone through the list of gifts and we have mailed out thank-you cards. They have another 2 weeks in Tim’s rather crummy apartment and then the lease comes to an end and they have to move. They’d love to move into that super place they saw on Maple Street. It’s still vacant but the rental is sky-high. We need to sit down and help them build a budget.
The newly-wed budget
Why did they get married, they wonder now – the bills are stacking up and it’s starting to look like a financial impossibility. How does everyone manage this? Okay, that Maple Street apartment is expensive. They know that and they know they can’t afford it. But in this budget that we sweated over with them last night, they can’t see that they can afford any apartment at all. It looks like they’ll have to move in with us. If we hadn’t spent $20,398 on their wedding, we could have put a down payment on a house for them.
Depends what you think is important. To us: not luxury or showing off, but loved ones’ company, and a commitment for life. So:
-invitations €200
-rings: €700
-my dress: €300
-jewellery, shoes, bag: €400
-his clothes: €500
-reception (200ppl) + dinner party (90ppl)til 3am: €9,000
SUM TOTAL €11,100 ($15,600)
-flowers, decorations, music, pictures, church use, preacher, pastor, my make-up and hair: all presents from friends
-gifts: contributions to our honeymoon. We received €4000 from the parents and i don’t recall how much from other relatives & friends.
IN THE END WE HAD ABOUT €2000 ($2800) LEFT EVEN AFTER A FANTASTIC 10 DAY HONEYMOON TO NYC!
What I can’t understand is the young couple. Surely in the face of these huge wedding expenses they should day ‘give us the money instead of throwing an expensive wedding and we will save that money towards a house’.
Perhaps finances should have been discussed during their pre-marital counseling. That would have worked out some of the kinks after the marriage.
Tell me about it, Peter Stone! I’m down to my last penny because of the last two wedding parties we had. To add more to that, I’m going to another family wedding this weekend and I’m thinking I might need a quick payday loan to make ends meet. The funny part of this is while I’m trying to fund these weddings (while going broke at the same time) there always seems to be someone trying to borrow money from me. First of all, why in the heck are they trying to finance part of the wedding when they have no money to begin with? I don’t get it. In other words, it’s a fiscal suicide. I’m actually going to stop right there before I lose control of myself. LOL Nonetheless, good article. Thanks for posting!
The irony, perhaps this one writ large, is that the average wedding is supposed to cost about the same as the average divorce! (Divorce isn’t funny, however, and it’s one of the most common precursors to bankruptcy.) Weddings are ridiculously expensive. There is price gouging in wedding related expenses, don’t let anyone tell you anything different, and it’s a racket that makes HUGE amounts of money every year. The rings and the clothing is one of the biggest expenses, but then you have venue, catering, and pictures and video. You can always find a way to cut those costs, you just have to be smart about it. Friends who owe you favors come in handy.