Wedding stuff...

[bowdog]

Thanks man! We are already set up at New Albany golf club, just cant believe what all goes into these things. What really blew my mind was the price of photographers and flowers.

[madcat6183]

Gotcha brother, good stuff!

[Cdubyah]

I got married last October. Best thing I ever did. We set a budget, and managed to stay under it.

From my experience, stay small. Stand your ground with your soon to be inlaws. Because they are going to want to invite every effing person from their big ass family your soon to be spouse hasn't seen since she was 10.

 

My wife and I saved for 2 years. We paid for everything out of our own pockets. Had the wedding we wanted, came out in the black on the budget. It's not hard, but you have to stand your ground. I had many a arguement with my MIL.

 

The most expensive bits.

Photographer - paid the most for, disappointed the most in.

Caterer - Most places in columbus are around $23/plate. We found a hometown caterer, better food and half the cost.

Booze - can't save a whole lot, unless you buy dirty cheap

 

Stay away from Metro areas when planning. One place in Columbus wanted $13k to have the ceremony, 4 hrs of reception time, and beer and wine. That did not include food, decorations, invites, cake, dress, tux. My advice is to stay close to your hometown roots. It's soo much cheaper.

 

Destination weddings can be cheap, or expensive. My wifes cousin did a destination wedding to the Florida keys and spent more money than we did having a traditional wedding.

 

As far as churches go. Find churches that you like. Then call them to see if you would be able to have your wedding at there location. Most of them will charge you a fee. Or require you to use their pastor. Or your pastor talks to their pastor to make sure you won't be sacraficing any goats at the alter. We are weslyan, and were married in a methodist church.

 

Do what you want, and spend what you want. Don't let anyone else tell you what you need to spend, or where you need to spend it.

[madcat6183]

I got married last October. Best thing I ever did. We set a budget, and managed to stay under it.

From my experience, stay small. Stand your ground with your soon to be inlaws. Because they are going to want to invite every effing person from their big ass family your soon to be spouse hasn't seen since she was 10.

 

My wife and I saved for 2 years. We paid for everything out of our own pockets. Had the wedding we wanted, came out in the black on the budget. It's not hard, but you have to stand your ground. I had many a arguement with my MIL.

 

The most expensive bits.

Photographer - paid the most for, disappointed the most in.

Caterer - Most places in columbus are around $23/plate. We found a hometown caterer, better food and half the cost.

Booze - can't save a whole lot, unless you buy dirty cheap

 

Stay away from Metro areas when planning. One place in Columbus wanted $13k to have the ceremony, 4 hrs of reception time, and beer and wine. That did not include food, decorations, invites, cake, dress, tux. My advice is to stay close to your hometown roots. It's soo much cheaper.

 

Destination weddings can be cheap, or expensive. My wifes cousin did a destination wedding to the Florida keys and spent more money than we did having a traditional wedding.

 

As far as churches go. Find churches that you like. Then call them to see if you would be able to have your wedding at there location. Most of them will charge you a fee. Or require you to use their pastor. Or your pastor talks to their pastor to make sure you won't be sacraficing any goats at the alter. We are weslyan, and were married in a methodist church.

 

Do what you want, and spend what you want. Don't let anyone else tell you what you need to spend, or where you need to spend it.

Probably the best line in the thread is his last one.  So true.  We stayed about 5K below our budget and that was losing our free DJ the week before our wedding and having to pay our photographers company to supply one. 

[zx3vfr]

Also if you must have in a church, 99% chance you need to plan on 6-8 weeks of pre-marital counsling. It sucks and is boring but can be helpful at the same time. It was super boring for us becuase we had both lived on our own for a long time and lived together for sometime, so we already had the financial shit figured out so that saved some serious time.

[redkow97]

I'm not trying to bag on anyone who wants to get married in the church, but I would urge anyone to question the hoops they make you jump through to do so.  My wife and I didn't have a church wedding because neither of us were willing to lie our way through their stupid classes.  I told my mother (who badly wanted me to have a Catholic wedding ceremony) that I'd happily sit down with a priest and explain why we wanted to get married, how we currently lived, etc. - but I was going to be completely honest with him about living together, having premarital sex, not believing in church "miracles," etc.    If the church was still willing to perform the ceremony knowing that neither of us felt it was religiously significant, we would have done it for our parents' sake.

 

To the best of my knowledge, more and more Americans are abandoning churches.  That's not to say that they don't still refer to themselves as Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, etc., but fewer people are "walking the walk" than ever before.  It seems extremely counterintuitive to me (although mildly admirable) that they're sticking to their guns and shrinking, rather than loosening the requirements and maintaining, or even growing.

 

I think the churches that host mass in the movie theaters and encourage people to show up in t-shirts have the right idea:   The point of religion is to live a life that whatever god you believe in would be pleased with.  All the preaching and singing is less important than the lesson. 

[KZ Kari]

I just got married a couple weeks ago. I wanted to elope, but my husband actually wanted the ceremony/reception. I really dislike being the center of attention; he loves it. In the end, I'm glad we had the wedding/reception. It turned out being a lot of fun. Anyhow, we spent about 5k and invited about 100 guests. We can't understand the logic of starting a marriage with debt created by a wedding.

One of the big cost savers was finding a venue that allows you to bring your own alcohol in. That was also important because we brewed our own batch of beer just for the wedding. Have a afternoon wedding instead of an evening one will save money as well.

[Gixxus Christ!]

I'm not trying to bag on anyone who wants to get married in the church, but I would urge anyone to question the hoops they make you jump through to do so. My wife and I didn't have a church wedding because neither of us were willing to lie our way through their stupid classes. I told my mother (who badly wanted me to have a Catholic wedding ceremony) that I'd happily sit down with a priest and explain why we wanted to get married, how we currently lived, etc. - but I was going to be completely honest with him about living together, having premarital sex, not believing in church "miracles," etc. If the church was still willing to perform the ceremony knowing that neither of us felt it was religiously significant, we would have done it for our parents' sake.

To the best of my knowledge, more and more Americans are abandoning churches. That's not to say that they don't still refer to themselves as Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, etc., but fewer people are "walking the walk" than ever before. It seems extremely counterintuitive to me (although mildly admirable) that they're sticking to their guns and shrinking, rather than loosening the requirements and maintaining, or even growing.

I think the churches that host mass in the movie theaters and encourage people to show up in t-shirts have the right idea: The point of religion is to live a life that whatever god you believe in would be pleased with. All the preaching and singing is less important than the lesson.

Have a close friend or family member get ordained by the online church of phony baloney. My fiancé s sister did and she will be officiating the service...which is in the same place as the reception....which is essentially a bar....because we are fucking classy as fuck.

[madcat6183]

Have a close friend or family member get ordained by the online church of phony baloney. My fiancé s sister did and she will be officiating the service...which is in the same place as the reception....which is essentially a bar....because we are fucking classy as fuck.

Exactly what my latest friend to get married did, except it was a bar, and it was actually very classy and one of the best ceremonies and receptions I've been to, ever.  See it is classy!

[bloodninja420]

You know the brides parents are supposed to pay for the wedding festivities, right?

If that money is not materializing in your case, I'd encourage you to be quite upfront with both them and your wife that the inlaws will have exact zero input into wedding plans.

[madcat6183]

You know the brides parents are supposed to pay for the wedding festivities, right?

If that money is not materializing in your case, I'd encourage you to be quite upfront with both them and your wife that the inlaws will have exact zero input into wedding plans.

Haha, and good luck with that.  I won't go into details but my parents spent easily over 10X as much as her's did on our wedding, which was about 20% of the wedding, the rest we paid for.  If you want to chance starting a war by bringing that up, enjoy.  If I had discussed that, we would not have gotten married.  Her family and her are very close and it wasn't about the money, my parents have way more than hers, and we both knew that going into it, and had/have accepted it. 

 

But for the record, he is right. 

Edited October 15, 2014 by madcat6183

[Gixxus Christ!]

We refused help from either side...it would be different if we were in our early 20's or something but we're 34 and 35 and are pretty well-established. No need for our parents to float the bill.

[gsxkat1100]

CSC, a bar? Not close to me, is it?

 

 

Back on topic, I paid for my whole wedding excluding the DJ as previously noted, and the wife's dress, which her parents picked up. Close friends or relatives with the correct paperwork helps too. Our officiator, who I have known for most of my years, performed our ceremony for a hot cup of black coffee and a slice of our cake. 

[redkow97]

my boss is 53.  He and his 34 yr old bride (well-played...) had a small ceremony for immediate family, then went to Hawaii for 2 weeks, came back, and threw a huge party (casual) in a private room at a local bar.  I'm sure that party cost them $2500 or so, but that's waaaaaaaay less than a reception, and it was still an open bar with good food.  Wasn't a sit-down meal, but it was totally fun.

[2talltim]

Seems like most of the consensus is.....

Big weddings are overrated

[Gixxus Christ!]

Nick, no not in massillon. The old 97 cafe in kenmore...pretty nice place.

[madcat6183]

I remember the 1 thing I actually cared about during the ceremony portion was the pipe organ, yeah I am serious.  We had the church lined up knowing it had the biggest organ in town and would hold enough people for us, and had ties with our pastor to hold bigger weddings there so we were good..... Until the week of the wedding.  Got an email Monday before our Saturday wedding that the pipe organ was not going to be working as it was late being rebuilt by over a month and we would just have the electronic keyboard which "sounded exactly the same", but that was NOT what was in the contract.

 

I went groomzilla on that one.  I flipped my lid and almost cancelled with the church on the spot and just told our church we were moving back to there place and we would broadcast on the big screen in the undercroft for overflow.  Priest was fine with that, but then the other church offered 1/2 our money back and I got over it pretty fast HAHAHAHAHA

[zx3vfr]

I'm not trying to bag on anyone who wants to get married in the church, but I would urge anyone to question the hoops they make you jump through to do so. My wife and I didn't have a church wedding because neither of us were willing to lie our way through their stupid classes. I told my mother (who badly wanted me to have a Catholic wedding ceremony) that I'd happily sit down with a priest and explain why we wanted to get married, how we currently lived, etc. - but I was going to be completely honest with him about living together, having premarital sex, not believing in church "miracles," etc. If the church was still willing to perform the ceremony knowing that neither of us felt it was religiously significant, we would have done it for our parents' sake.

To the best of my knowledge, more and more Americans are abandoning churches. That's not to say that they don't still refer to themselves as Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, etc., but fewer people are "walking the walk" than ever before. It seems extremely counterintuitive to me (although mildly admirable) that they're sticking to their guns and shrinking, rather than loosening the requirements and maintaining, or even growing.

I think the churches that host mass in the movie theaters and encourage people to show up in t-shirts have the right idea: The point of religion is to live a life that whatever god you believe in would be pleased with. All the preaching and singing is less important than the lesson.

IMO because you have mega churches that play abnoxusly loud musak and preach fire and brime stone, small churches that teach fire and brim stone and small churches that teach love and peace but refuse to come out as liberal and that leaves socially liberal people no place to feel comfortable because in my experience the love and peace churches are a lot of old people and can be very close knitted and offer an unwelcoming vibe. I think UCCs offer a fairly liberal experience but they also have a lot of war vets that can scare people off.

I like the church I go to minus the old people who can be quite unfriendly and I really wish the pastor would open up her personal beliefs instead of pushing them aside for the greater good of the methodist church.

And yes I am talking about gay marroage and not sending gays to straight camps or thinking they are sinful. Also the fact in many churches it is pure taboo to live together before you get married. Divorce rate is falling quickly because people are waiting to get married and learning to live with each others flaws rather than talking hypothetical situations in premarital counseling

[Helmutt]

Firstly, congrats again on the wedlock plans AJ!

When the wife and I married, we held both the ceremony and reception at the same venue ( which was very graciously gifted to us by her aunt who managed the finance dept at Meadowbrook back then ) which was convenient for both the wedding party AND the guests. Pricey, but fairly exquisite if you're interested in checking it out...

http://www.daytonmeadowbrook.com/

I hate golf. Firm believer it's nothing more than an elaborate waste of good ground....but it's a stellar locale for wedding photog.

Wife had her minister perform the marriage, but to do so meant we had to attend counseling sessions with her to ascertain whether or not we were right/ready to be married. Not a deal breaker in my book since I already knew this would be my first and last wedding. Agreed that the premarital counseling wasn't a bad idea since some experienced insight might do us some good, and apparently isn't as uncommon as it sounds.

Aside from the free venue ( this included seating for over 100 outside for the ceremony, and inside the reception hall, rental of tables & cloths/cloth napkins/place settings, decoration and signage, free realm of virtually the entire building, outdoor decor setup and wedding arbor, and full cleaning services afterwards - remembering that totalled around $2500 over 10 years ago ) we still invested almost $5k in the wife's dress, ring set, some of the wedding party's outfits ( renaissance themed wedding, but my Mom ate some of that cost as her gift to us ), a monster 3 tier cake, a large catered spread of food/drink, open bar for wedding party only - all guests bought their own booze, a hefty donation to the minister, DJ ( bandmate of mine who's a pro, but chopped his fees ), and photography.

That likely equates to 3x what we actually spent out of pocket had there not been financial help and freebies. If we had to do it today, all by ourselves, I completely agree with the $20k budget. Unreal what some of this shit costs and how bad the inflation has become.

[claine650]

Whatever you do... get the wedding singer from the movie Old School, way better than a DJ.