marraige? a beautiful thing, or a waste of money?

[jenna321]

My wedding 11 yrs ago was funded by myself and hubby we paid for everything and it was lovely and no credit cards or loans or asking parents for $ for involved. A beautiful wedding in a heritage church and reception right on the Fraser River for about 60 people we wantd a small gathering!

[Sally888]

I think one can have a lovely wedding and not spend an arm and a leg.

I couldn't imagine Chad and I not being married... weve been married for 3 years August 20th, and have been together going on 7 years.

I guess marriage isn't for everyone, but it was for us and it was a great experience and time

[harkatsmom]

how do you feel about the huge ceremony we call a "wedding"..
why do we need a huge costly thing to proove our love and commitment?
is it just a show to feel important?
do you think some people go overboard?

(i have mixed opinions .. i think its beautiful, but sometimes, a bit flakey)

ive heard different opinions on this and would love to hear yours!

I think that weddings are just one more thing that is too commercialized and have lost the meaning...

I think that many people go way overboard for their wedding day, even when they can't afford to.

So many people put so much stress on themselves, friends and family for this one day, that is supposed to be about committing your love and loyalty to one person.

Hubby and I got married at Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver by a marriage commissioner and it was beautiful.
My baby brother was my witness, and the black dog that you see in my avatar sometimes, was with us as well.

Hubby wore white shorts and a white dress shirt, and I wore a buck skin mini dress.

Our wedding was far from traditional but the love that we shared on that day I will never forget.

We both had tears in our eyes, and I will never forget all of the strangers that stood around us and applauded when we exchanged our vows and kissed.

For me, this was perfect

PS

Who wants to start a marriage full of debt....That comes with the house and kids

[anisa]

in the title of your thread you ask if marriage is a waste of money!!!

then you proceed to talk about weddings.

bud, which of the 2 do you mean *suspiciously raised eyebrow*

I think there's some underlying issue you're not addressing face-on *hmmm*

seriously tho...

The bride and groom deserve to make their wedding a fun and celebratory occasion. It's sometimes about pleasing family too, and if you're cool with allowing your parents to influence the day a little (if that's how your family works) then that's ok.

I only had immediate relatives and a few super close friends at my wedding (a few of my parents super close friends as well) and it was a pretty wedding with all the typical details addressed. But it was a fun relaxed atmosphere, and that is what made the day extra special for me. It was worth what was spent on it, which wasn't much at all.

Some people's idea of reasonable cost is more than other people's, I think it's more about how responsibly and maturely you handle the situation/occasion.

[vibrantflame]

I think weddings in general have become too excessive and too much about putting on a fancy show for and pleasing everyone. We have all heard of the couple that "has to" have a big fancy wedding and then ends up in debt for years to come. There is nothing wrong with wanting a beautiful wedding, but I think you are smart to keep within a budget and not go all out.

As an example, my sister has a friend that got married in June. She stressed out SO much about her wedding because everything just had to be "perfect". On top of that, all of her relatives were giving her money as gifts but instead of letting her use it for something like a down payment on a house etc., they expected her to use it on having a huge fancy wedding (i.e. a huge fancy party for them). To each his own, and I don't judge, but there is no way that I could deal with something like that.

I will have been married for three years this September. When I got married, we had a ceremony at the City Hall and had a small reception in a rented room where my apartment was. I would have liked to have a nicer reception but unfortunately I made the mistake of delegating that to my in-laws (who are extreme last minute people), and I ended up having to find a place last minute anyways! We just figured that we would rather be married sooner and have a simple, inexpensive ceremony then wait several months to get married so we could have a fancier ceremony.

[swouper2]

Well first off - I agree with Anisa that weddings and marriages are two very different things.

It's interesting that I saw this thread today, because I've been talking about this wedding thing lately with my DH.

My wedding was not traditional, but was exactly what I wanted, and I plan on it being a once in a lifetime event. It was expensive, but it really meant something to me, and that was how we wanted it. My marriage is not better or worse because of the wedding - the wedding was a beautiful day, the marriage is EVERY day, so I can't really put the two in the same realm.

But now, years later, our db is getting married, and suddenly it bugs my dh that they are "constantly" talking about the wedding. Which they aren't but since he's standing in it, and our dd is a flower girl, we have had quite a few calls regarding getting the dress altered and the tux. Besides, if he had gotten off his butt and gotten fitted the first time db called, he wouldn't have had to listen to five phone calls about it

Anyway, dh seems to think that it's so terible that they are all excited about their day, and that they expect everyone else to schedule things around it, even if it costs us money. (Which they offered to give us if it would be a hardship, which it's not)

My beef is that his memory is a bit short... When it was our turn, we spent months and months planning it, and we enjoyed the planning, and it was important to us, and I'm certain that people rolled their eyes at us, but we didn't care, it was OUR wedding. We made half the people fly accross the country to be with us, and pay for their flights and cabins at the resort we were at. (really pretty, near Jasper) Nobody complained (at least to us) and they let us have our special day the way we wanted it.

If people want to have their wedding their own way, I think they should. If it's important to you, do what you want. It was important to me, and I can respect that other people will also get all wedding happy (...crazy) and be a bit focused on it during their engagement. I had my turn, and I don't think I can take that away from anyone else.

Of course, if you want to do it quick and simple, and save your money for something else, then you're just smarter than I was - and good for you!

But by all means - if your wedding is important to you - do it your way, and let us all leave you to it. - Send pics though, and I'd love to pop by your jazz club wedding - that sounds like a blast!

[matrix82]

Honestly, I think that its the marriage that counts, the wedding is only a day. Go with what you can afford. I've had friends who have taken out bank loans to get married, while we saved for almost four years for our wedding. We put a couple bucks here and there when we could, we didn't have an expensive wedding, all said and done, I think it cost about $5000, including a sitdown meal for 170 people (turkey dinner with pie as dessert). I did a lot of online shopping, and found great favors for cheap and used discounts whenever possible for invitations and thank-you notes. I even bought the stamps on sale for 10% off at shoppers.

With the gifts/money we received we broke even and had money and gifts to spare. It worked out well. As people asked, how did the wedding go, I say good, we are married.

In the end, the only thing that mattered to me was that we were married and able to celebrate with family and friends. We didn't do the whole honeymoon, unless you count the 8 hrs we spent at a hotel after the wedding. Not sure if that qualifies as a honeymoon, as we basically crashed, we got back to the hotel at 2 or 3am after the reception (yes we stayed for the whole thing, I thought it would be rude not to stay while there were still guests there, after all they came to celebrate with us), and check-out time was at 10am, so we needed to get packed up and have everything in our friends car by 10am.

We don't have a car so we had different friends drive us around all night, no one seemed to mind, or at least they said they didn't mind. I hope they didn't. If worse came to worse, I would have showed up in a taxi meh, that would have been funny.

Anyways, with it all said and done, we are married, and not in debt because of the wedding. A wedding is one day, a marriage a lifetime.

[SCRawl]

Weddings? They're basically a party that you throw for your friends and relatives. My first choice was to not have one, but for my wife that wasn't a serious option. The actual ceremony is superfluous, at least for me: as an atheist the vows mean nothing, beyond the commitment we have anyways. Re-affirming them in front of witnesses was pointless. The reception was fun, I suppose, but we did it on the (relatively) cheap, with a pared-down guest list of about 60.

[haunish]

when I was getting married, it turned into such a fight between our inlaws as to where(they each wanted it ina different church) and we were told we were olny allowed to have for friends the ones in our wedding party and the rest would be family.
So we borrowed a friends back yard, his mom made us a regular cake, we got the justice of the peace, my dh wore jeans and a tshirt, with a suit jacket and I wore a white sleeveless summer dress my friends bought at bootlegger for me, as they didnt want me to wear black..lol
Cost $50 and we had a party at the river, byob, played a song when walked down lawn for ceremony and one went got to river and when the party was over we camped there for the night. we didnt even have wedding rings or anything.
I hated the idea of going into debt for a wedding. And I am not a girly girl so I didnt want a huge dress I wouldnt want to wear anyways.
Was fun and wouldnt have done it any different.

[elliott_gyal]

very interested opinions everyone, i just read through them all...

eventually i will plan to marry, and its interesting to hear your opinions on the concept as well as your own experiences!