Jeff and I got married 15 years ago this month. I’ve been to some excellent weddings since then, with better planning and nicer arrangements for guests than we had. But I also want to encourage people planning weddings to consider if they want something with lower production values.
Your wedding is not your marriage
The quality of your relationship over the rest of your lives is not determined by how this one day goes.
When Jeff’s parents got married, his grandfather was designated to take pictures. But he forgot to remove the lens cap, so there are no photos of the wedding. Disappointing, but it didn’t affect the couple’s life together.
When we were deciding what kind of wedding rings to get, another family member told us how he lost his ring while swimming in the ocean. There was no way to find it, so he bought another one. “Your ring is not your marriage,” he told us.
Weddings are more expensive than they used to be
I’m not familiar with weddings outside the US and Europe, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of this is different for e.g. Indian weddings.
Weddings have gotten more expensive over time. It’s hard to figure out how much more, because wedding industry statistics are based on people who interact with the wedding industry, and the average is pulled up by a few big spenders.
Your parents and grandparents probably had weddings that cost a fraction of a typical wedding now. They were less professionally produced. I’ve heard multiple stories from my parents’ generation about guests making a grocery run for sandwich fixings because the reception ran out of food. But at this point it’s a funny story, not a real problem.
Compared to when we got married, there’s more emphasis on having beautiful pictures to post online. There’s also a whole world of Pinterest to get sucked into. I think this is part of why people now spend a lot more time optimizing a lot of details. If you enjoy that, cool — but try not to get sucked in if you don’t enjoy it.
Fact: people have been complaining about performative weddings at least since 1869, when Little Women depicts the rich aunt “scandalized to see the bride come running to welcome and lead her in, to find the bridegroom fastening up a garland that had fallen down. . . . “I’m not a show, Aunty, and no one is coming to stare at me, to criticize my dress, or count the cost of my luncheon. I’m too happy to care what anyone says or thinks, and I’m going to have my little wedding just as I like it. John, dear, here’s your hammer.””
You don’t have to customize everything
It seems to me that weddings of our parents’ generation and before were more pre-scripted: the clothes, ceremony, and music were likely pretty similar. Now weddings are supposed to be more expressive of the individuals. There’s more planning of custom vows, themes, dance numbers, etc.
It’s good to not be stuck with formulas or traditions you don’t like, but producing an event where every element is supposed to express your personalities is a big job! Maybe that’s fun and meaningful for you, but you don’t have to do it if not.
Stuff I personally didn’t find worth a lot of attention:
- Food. We provided a bunch of lasagnas and asked local guests to bring a potluck dish. We made the cakes two each night for a while and froze them. This was viable because the venue had a kitchen but didn’t require using a certain caterer. Some friends used a venue that would only let you use their caterer, but if you brought your own food the rule didn’t apply. So they had friends pick up big pans of food from an Indian restaurant and bring it to the venue, which didn’t count as catering.
- Alcohol. We didn’t have any, partly because we were cheap and partly because Jeff is opposed to alcohol. This also means you can use venues that don’t allow alcohol.
- Invitations. I handmade ours, and it was totally not worth it. The trend of emails + wedding website rather than paper invitations seems great.
- Writing your own vows, which everyone seems to do these days. We used Quaker vows with the religious parts omitted. I like that they were short enough that we could memorize them — we still know them and repeat them sometimes. Separately, I do think it’s worth privately agreeing on what marriage does and doesn’t mean to the two of you, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be fully captured in the vows at your wedding.
- Rings. We got standard gold bands at a pawn shop for about $75 each. We didn’t do an engagement ring.
- Clothes. I wore a hand-me-down dress from someone we knew from folk dance. It was too short for me, but that has not caused problems in my life. We bought a vest for Jeff.
- A bridal party. Everyone attending is there to support you, so it felt weird to have some people standing in a special place in special expensive outfits to mark that they’re more special than our other friends.
- Toasts / prepared speeches.
- Seating arrangements for guests.
- A gift registry. We asked for donations to our favorite charity.
- Flowers. I tried to force bulbs for our early-spring wedding but it didn’t work. A family member brought some daffodils from their yard.
- Party favors.
- A big honeymoon. We biked to a B&B a few towns away and spent one night.
Stuff I’m happy we paid attention to, or wish we had paid attention to:
- Time for your guests to hang out with you and each other. My favorite weddings have been weekends with lots of informal social time for a day or two around the wedding. One was at a picnic shelter / field in a park, another was at a ranch. I wish we had set up more time and space for friends to hang out together aside from the afternoon / evening of the wedding. A friend said she regretted having so much of her wedding weekend scheduled to spend with her bridal party, rather than mingling more freely.
- We did have a music party the night before at Jeff’s family’s house, which was really good.
- Having a fairly large wedding (~120 people). At the time I was really worried about the carbon impact of people traveling, which is a reason we didn’t invite more people.
- We got a friend to take some pictures, but he didn’t really know what he was doing. We both wish we had paid for a somewhat better photographer.
- A contra dance, because that was important to us and was our main community at the time. A large fraction of what we spent was on hiring a band and caller.
- Delegating: We didn’t have a hired wedding manager, but Jeff’s sister served as “boss lady” with a list of things to delegate on the day of. This worked because we had friends and family who were willing to set up chairs and such.
Related:
Jeff’s post on planning our wedding. Note that we optimized a lot for low cost, and if doing it again I’d spend more money (but not that much more) to save work.