<p>When we were in Jordan we had an interesting conversation about weddings in Jordan. The groom pays for everything and since practically the entire clan/tribe is invited (yes on the order of 2000 guests), it takes years to save up enough money for these shindigs. </p>
<p>I am really hoping that my boys either marry brides who want small modest weddings. </p>
<p>D & her H are asking for no presents. Not that they are so flush, but their apt is smallish and they have been living together for several years and don’t have room for any more.</p>
<p>We gave her double the amount that we spent on our own wedding, inc rings & hotel. Thirty three years ago. 
We are also going in with her sister to give them a short stay at a mt lodge. That may pass as their honeymoon.</p>
<p>@bookmama22, what are shetels? I googled it but couldn’t find a definition other than shtetl, which I presume is <em>not</em> what you are talking about! :)</p>
<p>Probably meant shekels.</p>
<p>I think she meant scheitels; Yiddish word for wigs worn by married Orthodox Jewish women.</p>
<p>I think she meant shekels (coins) for good luck. Why would you buy two wigs?</p>
<p>Some Orthodox women shave their heads when they get married. This practice started in Poland, I believe, where the local Prince could claim first night rights. The shaved head was to make the woman unattractive to anyone but the husband.</p>
<p>I got married right out of law school and had no job and little savings. DH had been working awhile, and we had been living together for awhile. My folks thought they were doing us a big favor by attending. I don’t recall getting anything from them or from his parents. We and are guests all fit on the chancel; there were probably a dozen altogether. For DD’s eventual wedding (no BF yet!), I doubt that we will get off so easily. But these expenses are jaw-droppingly horrifying! I don’t see that going into debt for a wedding will make the marriage last any longer.</p>
<p>Nope.
H and I will be celebrating our 33rd anniv next month.
His sisters who had considerably larger weddings, have been divorced for years.
We spent $1000 approx, including dress, rings & hotel.</p>
<p>Our wedding gift from my parents was the wedding. They also bought a wastepaper basket that we’d registered for for Easter and filled it with some of the tiny goodies we’d registered for-- potato masher, cookie scoop, etc just for fun which was really cool-- an “Easter basket.” We hosted Easter at our house a few weeks before the wedding. They also woke up at 2am to drive us to the airport for our honeymoon and are picking us up at midnight on Tuesday… I think I owe them a gift! My in-laws just got stuff from the registry, which was appreciated but I also just had the most fun hanging out with them from Thursday until Sunday night… they were in hotels all that time so they could be with us and we had a blast.</p>
<p>One of the groomsmen mentioned his cousin’s wedding was over a million dollars (!!!) and our (MUCH CHEAPER) wedding was better. My dad loved that! We got a lot of bang for our buck. Everyone had so much fun and it turned out beautifully. It was not inexpensive, but it was wonderful and not taken for granted-- nor was the commitment we made that day. I get the sentiment but I had a lot of “friends” giving me crap during my wedding planning about how I basically shouldn’t be taking wedding things so seriously because marriages usually fail anyway… comparing cost of weddings to longevity of the marriage just smacks of that to me. Having a cheap wedding doesn’t make the marriage last longer any more than having an expensive one does, that goes both ways, especially when one can afford the more expensive wedding which nobody knows but the person paying. In the end our wedding had very little to do with our marriage, the two were separate things-- one is a lifelong commitment and promise, the other is just a party. We just threw a REALLY great party! And the way we did it was certainly not the only way to do it. </p>
<p>I do love all the websites and resources out these days for brides to see different ways of doing things, especially less expensively. That was the hardest thing for me budgetwise was that I had been to so few weddings, and my family all had really rigid ideas of how a wedding should be done-- it can be hard to know what else is out there and that just because grandma or mom says something MUST be done a certain way, doesn’t make it so. I wanted to do primarily candle centerpieces with just touches of floral to cut costs and even something as simple that blew mom’s mind, she’d never heard of such a thing. Of course, if only more of these resources were more practical… for every great cost-saving idea I found on pinterest I found 10 more “craft projects” that would have cost much more than they saved. Brides cant fall into the trap of thinking that mega-detailed “personal,” “rustic,” “DIY” wedding is so much cheaper, because it isn’t if you don’t do it right.</p>
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<p>What are doing on CC when you are on your honeymoon!?
;)</p>
<p>That’s what I was wondering, too.</p>
<p>LOL we are family :)</p>
<p>Sorry all… I am back and did not mean to confuse anyone. I meant sheitels, the traditional wigs worn by religious women. Not all religious women cover their heads upon getting married. My niece in Israel does, along with her daughter’s and one daughter-in-laws. My two nephews who live in NY are married to women who do not.</p>
<p>If you do cover your head, most only wear sheitels for dressier occasions and simply wear head scarves or some types of hat but you do need multiple sheitels and of course you cannot wear your regular one during Passover, so the reason for multiple and they are very costly as only certain kinds are considered Kosher and acceptable.</p>
<p>I came from a totally non-observant family so over the course of the past 35 years,…it has been a continuing education to a world that I did not really know about…</p>