Ooops, I guess I will get bombarded again calling 10% is not helping much. If I have a friend who calls 10% isn’t helping much, the friend can expect not to hear from me…
@mom60,
If I had a daughter and the wedding were in our locale instead of on the other coast, we would not have had the large engagement party that cost $$, so that $ would have gone towards a wedding. When I calculate what we spent in total, I also include the wedding gift in that amount, as well as our engagement party and what we contributed in part towards the honeymoon (separate story, but we did cover a little of the cost of a few days). So the total we spent for everything we would have also spent if we had a daughter. Have no idea what it would have cost to have the whole wedding, and the spouses’s family would have contributed as well I would expect. As I think about it, if I consider the engagement party as almost equivalent to the wedding, we didn’t have the cost of a dress or hospitality bags or transportation. We had one musician (guitarist) , a friend took photos (but I did give her a gift card as a thank you) and we had only a small cake but did have a full buffet with dessert. If things were reversed, the other family I assume would have hosted the Friday night/rehearsal dinner. So as I ramble and think about the cost of our engagement party, the rehearsal (Fri night) dinner and flowers, that total that we paid for DS would have covered a nice wedding if we had a daughter, I believe.
D1’s good friend is getting married in NJ next year for 100 people because the venue couldn’t have more than that. D1 is going to be a bridesmaid. She said the cost will be around 100K. At first I was a bit surprised, but my nephew recently got married, and the bride’s family also paid around that amount. My sister paid for the rehearsal dinner, which included everyone, photographer and transportation to and from the wedding to the hotel. I think it was 35K+.
im quite sure there are many weddings that cost $100,000…and many that cost less than $5000.
Someone upstream mentioned considering what is customary in the “social circle”. I can tell you up front…that will not be a consideration at all when we do wedding planning.
@Consolation wrote
I know people who make this much. They are VERY frugal. I don’t think you can tie how much they should be expected to spend to how much they make-it’s just two different beasts.
I think the only answer to this is “whatever they feel comfortable contributing.”
@nottelling I have a slightly off-topic question: why did you move away from the beach? I have a pretty serious dream of living right on the sand (and we are working hard to get there). I always worry that there’s something not so good about living beachfront that I won’t know about until we do it, and I don’t meet a lot of people who did live beachfront and then moved away…
I don’t want to share numbers, because we did not share most of those numbers with our son or the bride’s family. Neither do we know what the bride’s family spent on the wedding (a very nice event, but not over the top).
But H and I, as parents of the groom for our son’s recent wedding, covered a very nice rehearsal dinner, with outdoor cocktail hour followed by seated dinner at an historic inne, for 45 people. (Wedding guest number was around 125.)
For the wedding, we had told bride’s family we were happy to help in any way, and to let us know what we could do. When they did not suggest anything specific, we offered to cover the photographer contract (2 photographers), along with engagement photo shoot, and all flowers – for church, reception, attendants and immediate family. I also took care of printing and calligraphy for the table and place cards, as much to take it off the MOB’s list of “to dos” as to save them some money, since the cards were a relatively minor item.
We also gifted the couple a significant check that we suggested they use for a long term “buffer”/security fund.
Things worked out well – we gained not only a daughter, but her lovely parents as well. While the couple are on their honeymoon, we are getting together with bride’s parents for dinner to celebrate the successful launching.
I was married three years ago and searched for many months for a reasonable reception location for 50 people. It was a second marriage for both of us in our middle age and we wanted to have a nice ceremony/reception without breaking the bank. What I did find was that Fridays and Sundays in the off-season can be as much as half price at many of the venues. In the end we spent $4000 ± all in, dress, flowers, cake, JP, dresses for our two daughters, Tommy Bahama shirts for our two sons, outfit for my husband, single guitar player, favors, open beer and wine bar (cash mixed drinks), raw bar (oysters, clams shrimp ~ the venue is famous for their raw menu), full four course sit down dinner, cupcakes (my daughter made these) and coffee, held at a fairly upscale restaurant. We also had an after-reception party at my sister’s home down the street with food and drinks. In order to get that bargain we were married on a Friday afternoon in March, had the restaurant for the private party for four hours (2-6) and then they opened to the public.
I’ve pretty much told both my kids that they can expect me to contribute a bit more than what it cost me but that I wouldn’t finance any over-the-top weddings. My niece got married this past weekend and had 250 present. When my D found out how much the celebration cost, she told me was she eloping lol. My S and his soon-to-be fiancé started talking about a HI destination wedding and I straight out told them I was not spending what I approximate will cost $5000 for myself, husband and D to attend a wedding 18 hours flight away and require a weeks vacation time at least. Not sure what they’ll do with that information.
“know people who make this much. They are VERY frugal. I don’t think you can tie how much they should be expected to spend to how much they make-it’s just two different beasts.”
Agree completely. Good point. I think of cars as a good example here. No matter how much money I make or have saved, I’m going to buy Priuses from here on out even if I can afford a Bentley.
So happy for you and for your son and new DIL, @JEM! Woo Hoo!
D1 just got back from her honeymoon. They just invited me over their place this Sunday to hear all about the trip and see the photos! Actually I assume they meant the honeymoon photos, but the message was just “photos.” Maybe they got the wedding photos? But I saw them last night and they hadn’t yet.
I’m getting together with D2’s future in-laws in a couple of weeks and really looking forward to that. D2’s September wedding is about the size of your son’s wedding.
While H and I have determined an amount we would contribute, it’s not a lump sum sort of thing … it’s more a ceiling on what we would be willing to pay (actually, it’s the amount of money my dad left me … he loved helping me pay for my wedding, so I figure it’s fitting to spend his money for D’s wedding). I am pretty sure D & her BF expect to pay for their wedding - they make good money & have been saving - so our contribution will be icing on the cake for them, so to speak. Both are conservative spenders, and they have openly discussed wanting a nice wedding but not wanting to spend a ridiculous amount on it. A cousin had a wedding a couple years ago that was $150/plate … D told me she thought a much less expensive reception she had recently attended was a lot more fun. So we are hoping we might not end up spending our expected amount, after all. 
S and his GF have no interest in ever getting married. That could change, of course, but if S does get married, he will NOT want a big wedding. He does not like being the center of attention at parties, and I can’t imagine him wanting to marry anyone who likes that sort of thing. We just helped him buy a newer model used vehicle because we figure we won’t have wedding costs for him in the future!
Had to sell the house as part of a divorce, unfortunately. Couldn’t afford to buy my ex-husband out. I’m now 100 feet from the sand, but it is a completely different thing.
I’m with gosmom, in that I had zero interest in planning a wedding. My D was married last weekend, they planned it all themselves. I told her up front that I would give her a generous amount ($20,000) for the reception, and the rest was on them. There is no way I would be supervising how they spent it. I think the groom’s family only covered the rehearsal dinner. I believe I said earlier in this thread that we had not paid for her college and the money is not a hardship for us. My D’s taste is different than mine, she paid $4 per chair extra to have nicer chairs for the dinner, but she kept within the amount I had given her. In the end I think my contribution paid for the venue rental ($6000 alone) the caterer, alcohol, and cake. I personally am not a fan of this type of wedding, but it was a very elegant affair in keeping with what she wanted.
My thoughts about supervising the money run along the lines of if I thought I had to supervise their spending, they probably aren’t mature enough to be getting married in the first place.
@nottelling thank you for sharing that with me-I’m sorry you aren’t beachfront anymore-it sounds wonderful. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to afford direct beachfront, but I can dream big…
An interesting exercise is to price out the cost of your own wedding in today’s dollars. I did this when we were considering how much to give our oldest d toward her wedding in 2011. Of course, she didn’t necessarily want the same kind of wedding, invite the same number of guests, have the same kind of flowers, etc. But it helped my husband to picture what our wedding had been like with today’s dollar’s attached to that mental image.
Somehow our reception venue was still in existence. I don’t remember the exact dollar amounts, but a reception that had cost maybe $2500 for 150 guests in 1978 (for nothing crazy in the minds of my frugal parents - an open bar, nice dinner and pretty location) was up to around $19K in 2011.
Sounds like a bargain, when you compare $2500 in 1978 college tuition dollars to today’s college tuition.
I used one of those inflation calculators. My wedding in 1986 would have cost ~ $100,000 today. Fanciest hotel in the city, white gloved waiters, Dom Perignon, best band in the city, filet mignon for 200 people, a whole weekend with various parties, brunches, etc. It was lovely but I can’t say it was a “dream” of mine necessarily. It was just what my parents’ circles did. We would entertain much smaller as we are more introverted and have small circles.
My husband and I were married in 1977 at a sweet little inn in Bucks County, PA. The timing was such that the meal was a late lunch/early dinner. We had 65 people. I paid $49.95 for a white eyelet prom dress that I loved. The Justice of the Peace married us in the inn’s garden for $50. My father paid him in cash and I remember him being delighted. We were very young and the owners of the inn were so taken with us as a couple they took care of the flowers at each table…they upgraded their usual one or two sprigs in a little vase. I don’t recall specifically what dinner cost but I remember the food being wonderful. The bill, including an open bar but no cocktail hour, came in a little over $2000. We did not have a wedding cake. It was peach season so we had peach melba. It was a lovely day and we had a lot of fun. My husband’s college roommate was a Cornell Hotel School grad working for The Waldorf and he was able to comp us a suite for our wedding night.
In today’s dollars it would run in the $20,000 range I would think, excluding the current cost of the suite…still pretty reasonable considering the $100,000 my brother spent recently on my niece’s wedding.
Sorry to take this somewhat off topic. Still - it was fun to think about.
Peach Melba? Nuff said. Sounds like a fantastic wedding.
Cherries jubilee - with the flames and all! Can we say mid 80s?
According to an inflation caculator my wedding (for 100) would be $7000 in today’s dollars. That might not include the open bar which my Dad considered a necessity. We had a buffet and we married on a Friday evening which was cheaper than Saturday by about 30% IIRC. The most amazing bargain was that Caltech set up chairs and gave us the use of one of their enclosed olive groves for the wedding itself for $50 because dh was a student.
I remember being incredibly frustrated because my parents offered to pay for the wedding costs, but wouldn’t give me a budget. I’m naturally not a spender and I would have liked some sort of ballpark figure. My family lived fairly modestly and I had no idea what was reasonable to do. As it happens I learned much later they had a lot more money than I had ever realized and that they could easily have afforded more than I spent, but I wouldn’t change a thing about the wedding except the band. (And that was not a cost issue.)