I’m not sure how long the wedding industry has been a giant
scam, but those of us who have gone through the process of getting married
recently know exactly what I mean. Visit a cake baker and say, “It’s for a
wedding,” and watch the prices magically jump 50%. Tell a caterer you’re
getting married and watch them swap out their menus for their “60% more
expensive deluxe version” conveniently serving the exact same shrimp cocktail
you get from their “it’s any other occasion” menu. When Mrs. Stark and I decided
we wanted to get married, we knew we’d have to do it on our own terms. With a
maximum budget of $10,000 we managed to host a wedding for 100 people, four
round-trip plane tickets to the Midwest from Seattle, a honeymoon to Hawaii, a
breakfast reception for our family, the dress, and two wedding rings. This is
how we did it.
The psychology of weddings
There’s a consumerist myth in America surrounding weddings
and love that I like to call, “The happily ever after myth.” I’m not sure if we
have Disney to blame, but the notion that at the end of 90 minutes of courtship
two lovers ride off into the sunset never to have to worry about anything else
so long as they’re together has left millions of kids-who-are-now-adults
believing the hard part is the 90 minutes of courtship and the rest is living
on easy street.
Anyone who has been married for longer than 5 minutes knows that’s total
bullshit.
Courtship and the wedding are actually the easy parts of being married. Being married is the hard part of being
married! It takes work to build a functional, caring, fulfilling relationship
with another human being for all of your lives together and “love” isn’t the
only thing you need. “Love” is more like the candy coating that makes learning
your significant other farts under the covers, isn’t great with money, or
snores like a lumberjack go down a bit easier. So what about weddings?
Weddings are for your guests, the marriage is for you
The false narrative of weddings in the United States is that
they’re supposed to be a giant, smashing affair that proves how much you and
your significant other love each other. The girls who will turn into the women
who get married suffer from this poisonous narrative more than the boys who get
married. It’s not fair, and it sets entirely unrealistic expectations about
what a wedding is, who it’s for, and what you should expect to get out of it.
It also sets the stage for hurt feelings and disappointment as an eight hour
stretch of one single day is built into an impossibly large, must-be-perfect
affair that can almost assuredly do nothing but disappoint in its magnitude (or
lack thereof). As my wife and I settled in to plan what we wanted for our
wedding we came to the following conclusion:
Our wedding was a celebration for our guests; our marriage was a
celebration for us.
Knowing we’d get to celebrate being married every day for the rest of our lives together we knew
we wanted to focus on a wedding that would allow our friends and family to
celebrate us getting married. There
would be no bride- or groomzillas, and the bulk of our expenses from our modest
budget of $10,000 would be focused on our guests’ experience. Functionally we
were designing a big party for our loved ones that featured a one-act play as
the opening entertainment in which the wife and I exchanged vows. We didn’t
want a contrived experience built on decades of brainwashing convincing us if
our day wasn’t absolutely perfect our relationship would be doomed. How were we
going to focus on saving costs and still having a reasonable experience for our
guests?
The venue
Venues can be incredibly expensive, particularly if you’ve
bought into the marketing narrative of what your wedding should look like. We
wanted a venue that met these goals:
- Room for lots of parking
- Reasonable price
- Easy for our Midwest family to get to
- Room for serving food
- Dancing!
With my background growing up in rural Iowa we considered
hosting it on my family’s farm. We thought that would be as cheap as it could
come, but when we started considering the cost of temporary restroom facilities
and cleaning a barn to provide space for dancing we opted to consider other
options. It happened that my wife’s parents had recently moved to a newly
constructed home development that included a community center. The staff at the
center were interested in investigating hosting events like weddings but had
never done it before. That smelled like an opportunity: we could leverage
giving them the chance to try with hosting a wedding in exchange for a lower
cost to us because of their lack of experience. We met with the events
coordinator to discuss things and she proposed a staffed event in which they
would try their best, but which we had no recourse to complain about if things
didn’t go smoothly. Total cost? $150 to cover their personnel expenses. I had
to stop my hand from reflexively grabbing my wallet and signing the check right
there.
We inked the deal, both sides happy. We got the type of
venue we wanted near our loved ones (and very close to the in-laws’ actual
home), plenty of parking, a design that took into account catering, and a dance
floor. They got to do a test run for hosting large events like weddings without
taking the risk of a lawsuit if they weren’t perfect. It’s true for the critics
out there not everyone just happens to have parents who have recently moved
into a community that happens to be looking for an opportunity like the one we
offered with our wedding. That wasn’t what saved us on our venue, however: it
was the willingness to be flexible and keep an eye out for opportunities that
could benefit us. We made our own luck and it paid off big.
Venue
|
$150
|
Total
|
$150
|
The dress
While my wife wasn’t set on some type of extravagantly
expensive Vera Wang type wedding dress she saw in an episode of, “Sex and the
City” as a high schooler, she did want a dress that made her feel beautiful and
confident. Fair enough, but how do you find one that doesn’t cost a million
dollars? She opted to check out vintage style shops focusing on wedding dresses
as well as white evening gowns and cocktail dresses from the 50s and 60s.
As luck would have it, I happened to know of someone who had
an extensive collection of vintage
clothing: my grandmother, who had built a collection over decades with a
touring company that displayed the clothing in shows across the country. An
expensive shopping trip for a wedding dress instead turned into a bonding
experience for my bride-to-be and her future in-laws as my grandmother shared
her collection to see if there was something she might be interested in
wearing. She found a gorgeous 1950s era evening gown that needed no alterations
and fit perfectly. That was a stroke of luck, but even an extravagant amount of
alterations would have led to just $100ish in additional costs for the dress, a
far cry from the thousands that can bankrupt your wedding budget when you buy a
brand new dress (is there a more costly price-to-times-worn ratio in
clothingdom?). As a generous gift my grandmother gave us the dress as her
contribution to our wedding, and though it cost $0 my wife’s wedding dress was
a much more valuable part of the experience representing a shared adventure
between her and her new family.
Again, not everyone happens to have a family member with an
extensive collection of dresses they’re willing to give away. However, if my
wife hadn’t been willing to expand her options when searching for dresses a
vintage formal gown wouldn’t have met her needs to begin with. Expanding your
horizons to consider options outside the boundaries of what the wedding
industry markets to you opens up opportunities to save thousands regardless of
whether you have a clothing hookup or not.
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Total
|
$150
|
The rings
Before we get started on this section, I want to let you in
on a little secret: diamonds are f*cking bullshit. But instead of trying to
convince you with my words, I’m going to let Adam from College Humor do it.
(FYI: Adam curses like me, so put your headphones on).
Still not convinced? Check out this long-form article from The Atlantic that goes into even deeper detail into why diamonds are a
giant marketing scam.
It wasn’t a question that we’d forgo a traditional
way-too-expensive-immoral-blood-rock-marketing-scam on our fingers to signify
our love for one another when we got married. If you can set aside the
marketing scaminess and the incredibly questionable ethics surrounding how
diamonds go from mines in Africa to consumers in North America, there was the
simple fact that wearing a $3,000 piece of jewelry felt too much like “Come
murder me for my things!” highlighter on a casual street walk. No thanks. Plus,
I can’t even get through a tube of lip balm without losing the damn thing; I
didn’t want 3,000 reasons to feel bad for losing a ring off my finger!
Instead the missus and I settled on practical but pretty
rings from stores both online and off. Hers were manufactured diamonds that
cost a pittance compared to the real thing purchased from a web retailer and
mine was a simple stainless steel ring I found at a store in a mall. Save the
sentiment from your rings and put it towards the sentiment in your marriage.
Plus, you can put the money you save towards something more meaningful like a
vacation together. Anything is better than putting it in the pockets of a De
Beers ad executive. Our total wedding and engagement ring cost? $100.
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Total
|
$250
|
The food
With the design of our wedding focusing on being a party for our guests, catering was
one area we couldn’t afford to skimp on. As my future father-in-law pointed
out:
No matter what happens at your wedding, if you have good food and an open
bar everyone will remember having a great time.
We interviewed a number of caterers but got the “wedding
special” run around. When they knew we were planning for a wedding the food
stayed the same (all of it was delicious!) but their prices skyrocketed. We
struggled to find a place that was willing to cater for 100 people without
eating up the bulk of our budget.
However, we were planning early meaning we could cast our
net far and wide. Doing so allowed us to find a catering company that operated
as a side business from a food processing firm that butchered its own meat.
That led to a savings on food costs because they were essentially getting their
food at wholesale prices meaning they could cater to our needs for
approximately $3,000, about half what many of the other caterers had pitched
us. Their food tasted amazing and at a bargain price we were happy to hire
them.
The only food left was our dessert and the wedding cake. We
looked at a number of bakeries to find a great price and got creative with our
solution. Giant wedding cakes were expensive, so we went with a small two-tier
wedding cake that looked nice and could feed the wedding party alongside giant
sheet cakes more plainly decorated for all of our guests. Conveniently it was
the same cake at two different prices. For those guests who didn’t care for
cakes we decided to splurge a little and get a number of assorted desserts as
well in case chocolate covered strawberries or eclairs were preferred over
traditional cake. The splurge cost us a bit more, but the important thing was a
good experience for our guests.
We could have saved on desserts using a trick we learned
from a friend’s wedding: the dessert potluck. Young and freshly out of college
their wedding budget fell short of hiring someone to bake a cake, so instead
they put it to their family and friends. Everyone brought a pie, cake, cookies,
or other baked good and that was the dessert for the day. We didn’t want to go
that far, but I’ll admit one of the fun parts of their wedding was having a lot of different things to try for
dessert!
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Catering
|
$3,000
|
Cake and desserts
|
$350
|
Total
|
$3,600
|
The drinks
You can hire a caterer to provide drinks, but you’re looking
at thousands in extra costs and most of it isn’t going to the actual booze. You
could charge people for drinks, but if you’re building a wedding that’s a party
for your guests that’s not caring enough. After all, they paid to come visit
you, many bring gifts, and they’ve done so much for you to get you to the point
in your life where you’re ready to
commit to spending the rest of it with a new family. The least you can do is
give a little back.
Our solution? A Costco trip and hiring a friend as a
bartender. We had a signature drink always on hand, a bartender who was a
friend of mine and was happy to pick up an extra weekend shift mixing any drink
our guests wanted, plus beer and wine. For non-drinkers we had soda, sparkling
water, a few juices, and bottles of water (a wedding splurge; I abhor drinking
water that doesn’t come from the state-of-the-art public water systems that
exist in the U.S.).
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Catering
|
$3,000
|
Cake and desserts
|
$350
|
Beverages
|
$500
|
Bartender
|
$150
|
Total
|
$4,250
|
(Another benefit to providing your own liquor: you get to
keep the left overs! We couldn’t take any back on the plane with us, so I’m
pretty sure it all ended up in my father-in-law’s bar, which now that I think
of it might have been his plan all along!)
Airfare
Planning a wedding that would take place in the Midwest from
our home in Seattle was a bit tough. It involved flights to do some touring
that might not have been necessary if we had been living closer to home, but we
managed to make the most of it and save a bit at the same time. We needed to
take three trips by plane.
- A trip to check out venues, bakers, and for a small bridal shower
- A trip for the wedding
- A trip for our honeymoon
We paid for the trip back to the Midwest for our bridal shower
by cashing in credit card rewards. I’ll talk about utilizing consumer spending
and a credit card to reduce your travel costs at a later date, but that paid
for the first trip. Our second trip was half price with a free plane ticket I
had managed to get taking a bump from a work trip that had been oversold. Bill
Stark traveling tip: if you book travel with a flexible schedule you can take
advantage of the occasional opportunity to take a bump when they come up. That
can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars in a year, or send you on trips
for free that you hadn’t planned on taking in the first place. Our last set of
flights were for our honeymoon, and those were half price as well, which I’ll
explain in more detail when I dive into how much our honeymoon cost.
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Catering
|
$3,000
|
Cake and desserts
|
$350
|
Beverages
|
$500
|
Bartender
|
$150
|
Airfare
|
$1000
|
Total
|
$5,250
|
Decorations
Matching the bride’s wedding dress, our loose theme for the
wedding was a classic, vintage feel. To that end we knew we wanted flowers but
didn’t want to pay a fortune. My wife settled on paper flowers using a recipe
she had found on Pinterest. Creating your own flowers is much cheaper than
buying them (a second consideration: planting your own in the spring to grow
for the wedding, but we weren’t certain the timing would wind up working). We
made table settings using mason jars and a healthy grouping of the flowers. The
experience of making the flowers with my future in-laws was a blast, and we
were able to afford a lot more decorations than we had anticipated (we built a
small altar, had some running lights, and made our own bouquets for the bridal
party as well).
All told our expenses were $500ish for all of our
decorations and accoutrements for the wedding, and I wouldn’t pass on the
experience we got out of building our flowers and altar between two families.
That helped make the whole event more significant by bonding two families
together.
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Catering
|
$3,000
|
Cake and desserts
|
$350
|
Beverages
|
$500
|
Bartender
|
$150
|
Airfare
|
$1000
|
Decorations
|
$500
|
Total
|
$5,750
|
The photographers
You get what you pay for with a wedding photographer. A good
one can be expensive but the work you get from them can be well worth it. We
weren’t sure what we wanted for our wedding, going on one extreme for $0 and
asking friends/family to take photos and post them to something like Facebook
or Instagram with a specific hashtag to identify them, or pay thousands for a
professional with experience shooting weddings. We settled in the middle,
benefiting again from planning things early: a pair of professional
photographers who didn’t specialize in weddings but wanted to break into the
industry.
What we wound up with were pretty solid photographs from a
pair of photographers who specialized in wildlife photography but wanted to
branch out commercially. We made the same deal with them that we had made with
the venue: they wanted to shoot the wedding for free, but they’d get to use our
photos to start their portfolio. We agreed on that and were overall happy with
the photographs (we threw dinner in because an artist ought to get something for their work). This was the
one expense Mrs. Stark and I disagreed on: she would hire professionals if we did
it over again, while I was satisfied overall with the quality of photos.
Your mileage may vary.
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Catering
|
$3,000
|
Cake and desserts
|
$350
|
Beverages
|
$500
|
Bartender
|
$150
|
Airfare
|
$1000
|
Decorations
|
$500
|
Photographers
|
$0
|
Total
|
$5,750
|
Additional staff
A wedding takes a village and we had a lot of people helping
us with ours. Friends and family were happy to serve as the officiant, making
the ceremony personal and saving us the money it takes to pay a “professional” who
doesn’t know the couple or your families. A friend served as our “fairy
godmother,” whose job was to manage the minutiae of the last-minute happenings
at the wedding. We gave her a list of what we needed taken care of and she
handled it while we focused on spending time with our guests. The only
additional staff member who was a hired gun was our DJ, hired from a friend’s
parent’s company at a discount price of $150 for the evening. If you have a
good friend with a strong personality, ability to do public speaking, and can
rent a PA and microphone you could get by without this expense (though like
with our photographers, your mileage may vary).
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Catering
|
$3,000
|
Cake and desserts
|
$350
|
Beverages
|
$500
|
Bartender
|
$150
|
Airfare
|
$1000
|
Decorations
|
$500
|
Photographers
|
$0
|
Additional Staff
|
$150
|
Total
|
$5,900
|
The morning after
Knowing we wanted to keep the focus of the wedding on our
guests, we decided to host a morning-after reception breakfast at the hotel
most of our friends and family were staying at near the wedding venue. This was
an opportunity to get to spend more time personally with loved ones who had
traveled from far and wide. While we weren’t big on spending money for items
for us (the dress, our rings, etc.) it was important to us that our guests felt
we appreciated that they took the time to come celebrate with us. It’s easy if
you buy into the narrative that your wedding is “all about you” to forget
flying a family across the country to come celebrate with you is no small
expense! A wedding is busy and it’s possible to not even get a chance to say
hello to everyone. The morning after breakfast helped us combat that.
Open to anyone who wanted to come we provided breakfast food
from the local Costco and mingled with everyone before they started heading off
to airports to make the journey home. Nothing like sharing a croissant with a
hungover cousin to welcome the bonds of marriage!
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Catering
|
$3,000
|
Cake and desserts
|
$350
|
Beverages
|
$500
|
Bartender
|
$150
|
Airfare
|
$1000
|
Decorations
|
$500
|
Photographers
|
$0
|
Additional Staff
|
$150
|
The Morning After
|
$300
|
Total
|
$6,200
|
One final reception
Hosting our wedding in the Midwest meant being far away from
our friends who couldn’t make it out in Seattle. So we threw a final reception
in Seattle for those who wanted to visit with us and celebrate the occasion. It
was small, held at a local hotel, and we used party catering at a local
sandwich store. It was not glamorous, but we wanted to acknowledge the presence
of those friends we had made in Seattle who couldn’t quite make the leap to fly
all the way back to the middle of the country to celebrate but still wanted to
join us. All told the whole thing cost $300.
Venue
|
$150
|
Dress
|
$0
|
Rings
|
$100
|
Catering
|
$3,000
|
Cake and desserts
|
$350
|
Beverages
|
$500
|
Bartender
|
$150
|
Airfare
|
$1000
|
Decorations
|
$500
|
Photographers
|
$0
|
Additional Staff
|
$150
|
The Morning After
|
$300
|
Seattle Reception
|
$300
|
Total
|
$6,500
|
The honeymoon
We weren’t sure if we wanted to leave right from our wedding
to head off on a fancy vacation when we were initially planning things. At the
time I was working as a freelance writer covering the game industry and
received an extraordinary opportunity that sealed the deal: the chance to cover
a large gaming event happening in Honolulu, Hawaii. The event was happening
about two months after we got married, so we opted to postpone our honeymoon
and piggyback on my work trip. That meant my plane ticket was covered as well
as a portion of hotel expenses. With $3,500 leftover from our wedding budget we
were able to plan a pretty extraordinary honeymoon to cap off our wedding
festivities. Working hard to manage our expenses for the wedding and focusing
on our guests’ experience meant we could afford to splurge a little on a
tropical getaway, which we did.
And that was our wedding. Final result? A half decade later
and we’re still married (and have upgraded our family size by one!). There’s
not much either of us would have changed about the experience, and I’m happy to
have gone through it.
Planning your day
So how does our experience compare to yours? It’s easy to
roll your eyes at the fortunate circumstances we occasionally found while
planning for our nuptials but then you’re missing the point. Here are the key
factors that contributed to our wedding success both with budgeting and satisfaction with our ceremony.
- Don’t buy the marketing line that a wedding is the key to your happiness; you’ll never meet those expectations. Your marriage, and the work you put into it, is the key to your happiness (or rather, one of the keys).
- Diamonds and expensive rings are bullshit.
- Expand your boundaries to open yourself up to opportunities to lower your costs and experience awesome upsides (a vintage wedding dress, making flowers with your in-laws, etc.).
- A wedding is a party for your closest friends and family; don’t skimp out on the part that’s for them.
- The earlier you prepare, the more “luck” you’ll experience.
- Get creative. It pays off.
- Call in those favors. Friends and family love being involved provided you’re not burdening them. So figure out the roles you need help with and ask the people you think would be capable of helping.
True we got a little lucky to find some of the deals we did,
but by defining what we wanted from our wedding and planning accordingly (and
early) we were able to maximize our chances of getting lucky. Your wedding will
be different than ours, but your attitude is what will determine if it stays on
budget or not.
Epilogue
I had a conversation with a loved one who had a lavish, six
figure wedding. I asked them if they could do it again if they’d have a wedding
that large, or if they’d rather have half the money they spent on their wedding
and have a smaller affair. Their immediate answer? They’d take the money! “We
could have paid off our house with
that money!” Don’t buy into the bullshit wedding narrative pushed on you by the
people from within the industry looking to get their hands on your cash!
:)good
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