@anxiousmom, Is it too late to move the date, since it is still more than 2 months away? I do not know such a major event would come to such a city. (I only know of a music event which could draw a large crowd to that city.)
It seems to me most weddings demand a lot of hard work, stress and money but we just have to do it with a smile.
If the budget is as reasonable as mentioned here, I think we could manage it when the time comes.
But I hope we do not have to deal with the kind of wedding which was mentioned in:
“My son’s GF is an only DD to affluent parents (but not so affluent that money can just be burned), and she wants the whole enchilada”
DS’s GF is not an only DD, so it may not be the whole enchilada event. But, but, she was mostly on the private school track…Not long ago, when a classmate got married in another country, her parents and she flied to the groom’s and bride’s country to attend their wedding - something we will never do. What would likely happen when their own beloved D will get married?!
I could sense that DS may try hard to sell him to her and also she has been trying hard to sell him to her parents, but still, is there still some unforeseen hurdle in the future?
@anxioiusmom’s dilemma is exactly why D and wedding planner’s first task in late May was to book hotel blocks for next June’s wedding in Nashville. While the wedding date was scheduled to avoid CMA Fest, a weekend hotel room in Nashville at a reasonable price has become a challenge as its popularity surges for conventions, concerts, etc. Good luck to you regarding housing and hope it’s the only challenge on the horizon
Thanks! Yes, too late to change the date as people have already booked flights and some are coming from other countries. I wish they had never built that dang Formula 1 track!!!
Anxiousmom,
I feel your pain!! DH and his wife (I love the sound of that!) moved their wedding date a few weeks, not realizing that the weekend they then chose was the same weekend as the college graduation of the big university nearby. The location of both the university and their wedding venue were off the beaten tracks, as they say, so the one hotel nearest both sites jacked its rates up 300% with a 2 night minimum!
@anxiousmom how many out of town guests are you trying to find rooms for? Is it possible to group them all in one hotel further out of town and then offer some kind of shuttle to the wedding? Or a non-traditional place like a retreat center might be willing to rent rooms for a wedding group. Churches sometimes own a small retreat place that they wouldn’t want to rent out to race car folks, but for a wedding group might make a special exception. Maybe a short term condo rental would work for an extended family? Do you have really good friends who would take in a guest or two? Do you or any of your friends/acquaintances own a lake house that could be put to use?
Have you checked with your out of town guests yet? If they aren’t aware of the hotel shortage, they need to be informed, even if you are not trying to actually find rooms on their behalf. And maybe some of them were on the ball and reserved rooms way in advance. Might be good to know who has rooms and who doesn’t, so you know what number of rooms you are really looking for.
So sorry you are having to deal with this. I will try to make you feel better…when I got married in my hometown church (which no one in my family attended anymore) I reserved a date but the church didn’t bother to tell me that there would be major construction during that time. Guests could not go in/out of the front entrance because the front steps of the church were completely gone. Not sure what the big picture plan was for replacing the steps, but it sure disrupted the flow for my wedding. The bride’s room that I had grown up sneaking into and dreaming of being a bride, well, it was completely stripped down. Not even any curtains in the room. Had to get someone to bring bed sheets to drape over the windows so we could change into our wedding outfits. I am thankful for everyone who helped to shield me from the truth that weekend. I didn’t understand the bride’s room being in such disrepair, but I had no clue how bad the situation really was. I had dreamed of waltzing out the front doors and down the church steps for many years, but the photographer dragged me to a side door instead. I didn’t understand but thank goodness just obeyed his directions. But that was over thirty years ago, and the marriage is still going strong. You and your guests will survive, and you will have a good story to tell in coming years.
LOL, powercropper- My s did the shuttle thing, which was a logistical challenge, and they failed to show up to bring the guests to the Sunday brunch! Was a challenge.
Thanks for the ideas! DD is sending out the actual invite today, and will include info about the hotel situation so folks will know what’s going on. :eek:
S and FDIL planned their wedding for the same weekend as the state fair and college move-in. They were able to block hotel rooms, but the rates for those rooms were higher than we expected. Fewer people are attending the wedding than they expected, some for varying reasons, but some because of the expense. We had warned them before they made final decisions on the date that they might want to consider a different weekend, but they went ahead with their original date.
I went to a wedding many years ago where the family had booked most of a plain but comfortable motel. They provided a school bus (or maybe two) to take us from there to the church, and from thence to the reception site, and eventually back to the motel again. It was loads of fun, and it was nice not to have to worry about driving anywhere, especially in a strange place after dark. The motel, church, and historic gentlemen’s club where the reception was held were in different towns.
“DS’s GF is not an only DD, so it may not be the whole enchilada event. But, but, she was mostly on the private school track…Not long ago, when a classmate got married in another country, her parents and she flied to the groom’s and bride’s country to attend their wedding - something we will never do. What would likely happen when their own beloved D will get married?!”
Could you stop with this already, mcat? When it comes to what YOU are going to fund, YOU are going to decide. Not some other family. If you don’t have the money to spend on a fancy wedding, then you don’t have it, and that’s that, and the other family will just have to live with that. Stop acting as though this other family has any power to force you to spend money you can’t. You’ll review your finances, figure out what you are willing and able to afford, and that’s the number. Their expectations are totally irrelevant. You don’t “owe” them your retirement funds.
@pizzagirl, of course no one can be forced to spend $$ on a wedding, but honestly I don’t think it is unreasonable for people to feel uncomfortable about a potential enormous mismatch of expectations.
D2’s hs BF was from a family that not only had a ton of money, (funded a hospital wing and had it named after them,) but the mother was a showy sort and into monumental events. Yes, I worried. (It was hs, sure, but they thought they would last forever.) This isn’t always about setting our own limits but the tussle we might predict just to get to some compromises. Just saying.
@Consolation thanks for the redirect to a more proper setting for a wedding reception!
I think it is a normal, human reaction to be unsettled about the socio-economic mismatch between a bride and groom’s families. A dear friend was able to swallow her pride and allow the groom’s family to pay for the entire wedding for her only D. Unfortunately, the MIL pretty much took that to mean she had complete control over every decision since she was footing the entire bill. I attended the fancy event at a downtown hotel, and it was very nice. But I knew the bride and her family well, and felt the event didn’t have any touches that embodied the bride’s personality or bride’s family.
For D2’s wedding (in the initial planning phase), I didn’t even discuss it with the groom’s parents (though wrote them of my happiness of the engagement, etc.). My daughter did not ask me for any funding for their wedding, as she knows this is going to be a financial challenge for me, but when I saw her and her fiancé, I offered them a set amount of money for their wedding, though they had no expectations. They told me that the groom’s parents also offered them a set amount of money, to which I was surprised and grateful (likely because I’m from the era whereby the bride’s parents paid for a wedding, which I realize is now changing, thankfully). D’s fiancé told me his parents offered to give them the amount they had paid for their sister’s wedding,and actually more to account for inflation. Now, the two are trying to work up a budget and are getting estimates and trying to pick a venue. They will be married where they reside, NYC (neither grew up there). D1 JUST got engaged and so now I will surely want to do the same for her, though not sure how, but I will! I have no clue if any help for the wedding will forthcoming from her partner’s family.
Money has always been an issue with weddings, and I think it always will be.
When my parents got married, in the 1950s, the expectation was that the bride’s family would pay for the wedding. But my mother’s mother was a widow on a small fixed income, and my father came from a large family. My mother’s mother could not possibly have hosted an event involving that many people (it was probably about 20 people, but even that was beyond her means).
So my parents eloped. It was the only solution. And my father’s family deeply resented the fact that they didn’t get to see him get married. It was the start of bad feelings between the two families that never went away.
Today, the expectations of who will pay are different (and much more confusing). But people still face difficult financial issues surrounding weddings.
“Of course no one can be forced to spend $$ on a wedding, but honestly I don’t think it is unreasonable for people to feel uncomfortable about a potential enormous mismatch of expectations.”
Right, but there’s a lot of mental energy expended on this when it may very well be a bridge that is never crossed. Mcat has no idea whether this girl is even “the one,” or whether her family will even have any expectations of their contribution. Maybe the girl’s family wants or plans to pay for it all. Maybe they’ll be all - “Ok, that’s all you can afford, cool, we’ll cover the rest.” Maybe the couple will decide they don’t want the big weddings of their culture and want to have 20 friends at a restaurant. Who knows? Why fret until there is something to fret about?
My DD’s room-mates are younger sisters of a brother that got married after both he and his GF flunked out of first year of college (brother wasn’t mature enough and the GF sounds like she was ill prepared but was willing to venture out). - bride and groom were both 19; they lived separately after college and decided they wanted to be married and got married the following Nov. She was from lower socio-econ, with step family situations and all their family living around a small town. Her family had no money, so groom’s parents paid for the modest wedding, reception, and honeymoon. Wedding was at the bride’s hometown church - had about two months notice from the couple. Only bride’s grandma was friendly to groom’s family. It may be that the mom and other family members were very closed to outsiders and also didn’t talk much because they had no idea what to talk about with the groom’s family. Bride and groom worked low paying jobs and then decided if he went into the Army, perhaps they would do financially better. Now have a son, but wife is totally miserable and believes that living near her home town is the only way she will be happy. Guy will be out of military soon. Groom’s mom and sister went to baby shower and only grandmother talked to them there too. I believe the grandparents/son’s parents are worried about their grandson.
This is a developing scenario, but it just is best to try to handle a wedding as friendly as possible.
Some people do need to get reined in. Sometimes the money has a higher ‘cost’ than one is willing to ‘pay’.
Bride and family in my scenario had full decision-making, and bride got the money from the groom’s family.
Sometimes you can do everything you can to make everyone feel comfortable and there still is a bit of tension.
