My fiancee's sister "required" that all 5 of her bridesmaids, most of whom were poor or lower middle class, come for 5 days, stay in hotels around the area, and all get matching dresses, as well as go out to eat multiple times throughout that period. She even tried to get me to change my dress because apparently it was too similar to the color the bridesmaids were wearing, despite never putting prohibited colors on the wedding invite, and me only finding out when I had already flown out there (mine was deep red, and the bachelorette party was maroon). All I could think when I found this out was that she needed a reality check into others' finances, and the fact that not everyone can easily take 5 days off willy nilly. We used that experience to reduce the expenditures for our wedding party as much as possible. All four of our friends who are going to be the two bridesmaids and two maids of honors respectively, were instructed to come out one day before for a very cheap bachelorette party (literally a nice restaurant and a hike), and told this is the general color we'd like your dress to be. Let us know if you have any issues finding one in your budget and size and we're happy to help.

Then we should stop normalizing absolute idiots racking up student debt. In almost all situations there are far cheaper ways to get a degree.

My wedding didn't have a wedding party. Just my husband and me. It was so much easier that way.

I disagree about cash bars. It is not fair for people who choose not to drink or don’t drink to pay for someone else to have 5 drinks. open bars encourage people to get drunk and be sloppy and then ruin the wedding. any party I have will be a cash bar but food should always be included.

@Neon Rose guests don't pay to attend a wedding though so non-drinkers wouldn't be finding the open bar.

I wish I could have afforded a bit of catering for mine so I could hang with my mom and her husband more. Bless them, they took command of the food table to help out.

I regret not inviting some family in the interest of costs

Yeah, I regret not getting to spend more money on food. Also my dress and hair, I'd redo my dress and hair completely and spend more money bc I really tried to save money but I just didn't feel beautiful. Everyone should get to feel beautiful on their wedding day.

It sounds like you had almost exactly my wedding. I'm sorry you regretted that decision. I just wanted to say that no matter how much I loved my wedding, the time since has been better. I've spent much more time with all the people that were there, and while it was very interesting to see my super religious aunt and my militantly communist old roommate having conversations about my cats, I'm glad to be past the requirement to put them in a room together. Weddings are a fun party, but you can throw more parties with a lot fewer social requirements around them now that you're married. I probably made a lot of mistakes with my wedding, but it was just one of many parties I've had with my wife. So I guess what I'm suggesting is: Invite your dad and brother and some other people they'd like out, and you cook this time.

The trick is to keep the amount of people small I had only 50 people at ours. We went to a water front hotel and the food was great in all it was just shy of 6,000 for everything including my dress and flowers everything.

Omg same!! It’s so frustrating!

Same. I sent messages to 20+ shops specifically stating my budget for a dress, found one that assured me they would have options only to get there and be told to only try on the clearance (all of which were still 200 over my budget) and they could maybe "work something out" with the price. So I tried on whatever I wanted and took pictures to compare when I shop elsewhere

I remember when I was researching photographers I would immediately cross them off the list if they didn't at least have a "Wedding packages start at $x" note on their website. Like, no, I'm not going to waste my time with a "Please contact me for pricing information" photographer ✌

My parents started preaching these kind of things to us at extremely young ages. I am super thankful I got so much money education from them (and mountains more, just excellent parents) but on the flip its really hard as a result to relate and have enough empathy for the absolute stupid things so many do with money. I struggle with that on this channel for example the ‘past’ she talks about I just have zero relatability to and don’t understand why so many parents apparently fail so bad at teaching just the basics of money management.

@@lijohnyoutube101 It is also not parents fault always. My parents definitely did teach me, and I still went a few thousand dollars into debt on my first credit card with untreated and undiagnosed ADHD, severe depression, grad student that had been used to working full-time prior to that, etc.

Yes indeed😊

Throw yourself a big birthday party next year! Plus start buying yourself stuff you like now!

Wow, I never thought of it that way, but it's true. Well, I guess I'm in the generation that gets married later so we already come with our own things, but registries are still expected. I told my cousin to have a homewarming party because she just bought her own house as a single woman and needed things for her child, but she's not the type to ask others. I myself will probably never get married, and I realized now, when it's Christmas or something and I'm buying presents (I don't buy for a lot of people 🙃), if I like it, and might buy one for myself .

Have a housewarming or birthday party for yourself

i guess i always believed the wedding gift is close to per head cost in culture. so a single person may gift 100, couple gifts 200 lets say. this is more applicable i guess here in aussie where we dont do registries its more wishing well not gifts. most poeple have their home and stuff already so cash is king. i also am paying for fair bit of my bridal party expenses tbh

IGo get massage then take yourself out to eat then watch a good movie at home. It's not right everyone just forgot about you. Luckily there's still time to think about yourself!

Guaranteed, after the wedding, you will never see this friend again.

As a European, I find this absolutely insane 😱

@@perthfanny3017 It truly is!

More people should confront this so it stops the idea that it’s the norm.

Just to sort of add a flip view, everyone grows up so extremely different that on the receiving end it can feel like entitlement (and yes that is true) but on a deeper level its really more of a disconnect with different realities. I grew up in an area where vacations /trips etc were totally commonplace. Not only was it very much the norm for the vast majority of the kids but to the degree that even international trips was very common. International trips were not the majority but certainly far from atypical. My husband grew up in dysfunctional poverty. As a young professional with two degrees and my own house by my early 30’s pre-marriage it took me a long time to understand why my of course you take like 2-6 small vacations/ long weekend type trips a yr and 1-2 bigger trips and like every 3-6 yrs roughly a big big trip, was such a shock to him. It just was not his normal. Also taking a 2-3k trip in my mid 20’s wouldn’t have been atypical in my yearly vacation budget and beyond that I was immature enough I really wouldn’t have understood that was atypical for many. I was working a full time and a part time job then while in school full time and just didn’t have the insights of later adulthood that not everyone had a normal of work damm hard, then play!

We got married in the pandemic year 2021 with just 25 guests in a restaurant on the edge of Berlin, where we live. We had a big room to ourselves and plenty of space at the veranda. No band, just a playlist made by our friends. No special programme, just us and our friends. Best decision ever. The food was really nice. No bridesmaids, no church ceremony (no way they would have any of my money!), we danced and ate and drank all day. Best day in our memory. Oh, and I didn't buy a big white dress but vintage pale lavender number, which I love so much now. The whole bridal aesthetic never fit me once I hit 20, anyway (I was 30 when I married).

That’s when you don’t travel to the wedding and send a smaller gift

Ha! I would have sent them Monopoly game money to really send the message and save my rl money.

When my husband and I moved into a house we had a housewarming, an English friend had introduced us to the concept of “your presence, not your presents” and we we used it in our invitations to our housewarming. We are so glad we did. We were just wanting our friends to admire our home and have a couple drinks with us.

That happened to a friend of mine! AND she took pics as a photog and the bridezilla STILL expected a GIFT as if the global flight and her prof photog skills weren't enough! Gross!

Good for you. You and your husband made a great decision.

My husband and I got married at the courthouse with a Judge and just our parents and siblings as witnesses. Then we had a backyard BBQ with our friends and extended family who could be there. It was fabulous and we saved so much money that we put towards our first home. That was 25 years ago.

@@rokzane Good for you and your husband for having common sense.

@@rokzane amazing! My parents got married after one concert, with only few friends witnessed. That would be equivalent to marrying someone in Vegas. And they are married for 36 years. So I would say, not having a big wedding is becoming a family tradition of ours 😂😂

Omg we did the same thing and are so happy we did every time we attend a big wedding! It often feels forced and stressful. We always say we will have a big an anniversary party for one of the big ones and we get to celebrate then with a real accomplishment and all of our kids!

Same. I stopped spending my money on nice gifts for friends that never cared to celebrate me. I’m childfree and don’t want to ever get married so I’m focusing on saving my money for further travels and my dogs. I have been celebrating myself and it feels great. We need to normalize celebrating everyone - not just those types of life changes. Cheers!

But if you wanted to get married, wouldn’t you expect the same from them? This sounds kinda stingy tbh. Like “I don’t have a dog so fuck your dog”. Why it gotta be all that? 😂

Have a big damn birthday party and register for gifts. Let all the married baby makers know about it. Your real friends will get it. I did that for 50 and it was great!!

I understand. That would annoy me, too. In my country, we don't have all that. Attending a wedding costs a gift of maybe 50€, formal clothing that you can reuse for every formal event and maybe a hotel room if it's in another city. My wedding was at my parent's farm house. We had a caterer for food. A few hotel rooms for guests who had a long way to go. We didn't spent anything on music, decoration, clothing, cake, fun and games. The cake was a gift by sometime who could bake. Pictures were taken by two people who had that as a hobby. It was a gift. My mother decorated with wild flowers in little glasses.

Also, once you are officially invited, you are expected to pay your share of the seat, even if you cannot make it. Often there is a discussion beforehand so the invitation itself does not come as a surprise. It helps to lessen the financial burden of the wedding but hotels be making a killing on this tradition.

Thank you!!! I was looking for this comment! 😂

And no mention of how few of the weddings one attends lead to successful marriages and/or how few of the individuals you remain friends with. Easily half of them I am no longer in touch with, including the only wedding that I have ever been in and had to fly to Europe for.

Same! I have friends and am def not a recluse, but I have been to like 2 weddings in the last 10 years. I think it's not as normal as they make it seem on this podcast for people to be so focused on marriage and constant huge parties. I agree with them that weddings are ridiculous, but I know a lot of people, even close friends, who just opt for a simple gathering of their parents and siblings and drinks at home or a restaurant and nobody feels weird about it.

Or they're just not getting married at all 'cause who really needs that either.

I have been to like approximately 1 every 2-3 yrs in middle age mostly family. In my mid 20’s to mid 30’s mostly friends but some family I went to 1-4 each yr. I think there is a phase of life where people are finishing their first or second degree and ready for next life phase just like ages approx 28-38 were a lot of baby showers. Now its one like every approx 3-6 yrs, all family Once you are sort of out of those typically planned life steps its not a routine life phase anymore.

I was one twice, and they were both horrible experiences.

​@@94onyx94why so? If i can ask

I was a maid of honor & it wasn’t a headache nor a bad experience but this was about 5 years ago and my friend is already divorced, so yea. Waste of time & $$

GREAT IDEA!!

Here it's always a suburban Italian guy who sounds like a sopranos side character and it's always so cringe lmao

😊O

A graduation party sounds WAY more useful in life than a giant wedding party. And more inclusive too

Meh I had one when I graduated high school a while back and honestly I regret having it. Really wasn’t my choice though and only a few people from my school came. If I’m being honest growing up in a middle class family where everyone passed that mark of a milestone I feel like these type of “celebrations” are kinda overrated and has lost that significance.

People can also get a little caught up in not wanting anyone to feel left out. You start to feel like, "Well if we invite this person, we know this other person almost just as well or from the same social circle or whatever, so we have to invite them too," and it just sort of spirals from there. But I personally feel no qualms about not attending a wedding I'm invited to if I don't really know the people getting married. They're not going to miss me.

Aww (:

I got to spend my wedding with my whole family. My wife's family and mine aren't huge, but we had ~80-90 people at our reception (way fewer at the wedding because we wanted it to be super small). But our reception was just a party at a park. I spent ~1500 dollars on food and paper plates at the grocery store, and ~1000 dollars on alcohol. Called up a bunch of friends and asked them to forgo presents and just bring their grills and be willing to take a shift at cooking and that I'd have everything set up when they got there. I think I may have spent another 500 bucks on charcoal and propane, my family and I spent the day before the wedding doing food prep. Friends showed up with a bunch of grills and smokers, and mostly we just winged it. So my point being, you can have a huge party and not completely break the bank. I ended up spending I think grand total 3200 dollars on my wedding, which is still a lot, but at the end of the day that came out to 40 bucks a person total, and we had leftover food and alcohol for days. Actually I think I still have a gallon handle of cheap vodka my brother insisted on buying that no one drank nearly 8 years out.

Totally agree with @tristfall - if your #1 goal and dream is to get your whole family together and you are willing to be flexible on everything else about the wedding, it can be doable even on a small budget, but it may require some creativity and a long planning time. Public venues like local parks, state parks, rotary clubs, etc. can all be cheap venues that require little or no up front costs and may even include chairs/tables for guests. A dry wedding (or BYOB wedding) has no alcohol costs. Potlucks can be fun if your families are into it, and it helps with buffet costs. Dresses can be either already existing / repurposed, purchased at a thrift shop or rented. Having a friend volunteer to be ordained and officiate removes that cost. Planning the wedding yourself removes the cost for a wedding planner. Have crafting sessions to help craft decorations and crafting them out of cheap or reused materials helps with the decorations cost. If you keep your expectations in check, e.g. instead of "Perfect White Wedding", it's a "Fun Family Reunion Gathering with the Whole Family in which I also get married", I think that helps when you are dealing with a limited budget.

If the U.S. didn't tie so many financial benefits to marriage, a lot of us wouldn't likely care, either. Some are driven to marry because of things like insurance, and it's awful.

You get a lot of benefits in the US for being married... that's probably why it's still so big

Good for you!

do people use plastic cutlery and plates in weddings?!

@@liviaclaireyes

​@@victoriam9242 Well then I am yet to attend such a wedding. Single use plastic is bad for the environment and it also does not seem appropriate for a formal event, such as a wedding.

I would just run if somebody asks me and sees me as a cash machine for their overspending crap

How many of those marriages ended in divorce now that people are in their 30s?

Yea

​@@1MegArboand how many of those "friends" you keep ik tpuch with

Hear! Hear!

It was my two oldest sister's failed marriages, and the failed marriages of two close friends, that made me choose to spend as little as possible on my wedding. Why go $10,000 in debt when there's a chance the entire thing will blow up in under two years? So my husband and I did a justice of the peace wedding, with a "reception" at a private room at our favorite Italian restaurant close to the court house. My wedding dress was actually an Easter dress - it was still white with little rhinestones, but since it wasn't marketed as a wedding dress, it didn't have associated mark ups, and it was on the clearance rack at the department store for $60 in June. We skipped wedding rings because neither of us liked wearing rings anyway. All the money that we didn't spend - $20,000 or so in our combined savings - went to a down payment on a house instead. We're still in that house, almost 14 years later.

There are some people who said they lied and told the venue it was a birthday party or something else and then magically the price would be slashed in half. Weddings are just an easy money grab so it’s easy to overcharge people for them.

Its somewhat common in the midwest for non profit locations to host weddings on the side. Its often cheaper weddings or a ‘rustic’ style wedding, for example girl scout camp here frequently is used or the trail and nature museum. It still has a somewhat hefty cost for renting, event insurance, staff support costs etc but it ends up typically still a chunk of change cheaper than more ‘traditional’ venues.

That sounds nice, was the photographer $1,000 for the at home session?? Even that sounds like too much too me considering it was only one location!

@@Claudia-lv2pm no she was $500. We also got a small cake and some goodie bags for family members and such, and bought some fancy wines ☺️

@@ellenmontague8425 ah ok thanks for answering!

It is absurd for anyone to expect any gift of any kind for their shower or weddings, etc. most adults don’t bring a bday gift to birthday dinners for their friends, in my experience...why should weddings/showers be any different? I don’t receive or expect any gifts from my friends on my birthdays or for anything ever. Good for you.

Yeah I felt the comments on cash bar here were the biggest miss of the episode. Most people I’ve seen do cash bar still did table wine and champagne or a couple drinks like you said. Limiting alcohol consumption, but allowing people to still drink keeps the party going without enabling people to get sloppy at your wedding. Knowing your guests this can definitely be the best option.

Lol wait whaaat how did they make this error

Hilarious!

They probably loved her more than you

Thats absolutely crazy! For more than one person to do that I would think it was on purpose and I would have to seek revenge... it would probably turn into one more reason why they preferred the ex to me anyways

Same experience going to medical school. The whole test-prep industry designed around medical and law school admission was also eye-opening, and highly favors the wealthy.

Many ppl who go into careers such as law and medicine have parents in those very same professions. So your coworkers’ parents are likely lawyers/profs/consultants/lobbyists and they’re following in their footsteps.

@@rocklock11 it's actually insane how hard they make it for poor ppl to apply. I spent $250.00 on the LSAT. That's half my weekly check. Lmao

@@Etniesgirl56 yeah its brutal. MCAT is ~$300. Many people do test prep, ~$1500-2500. Then there are school application fees (primary and secondary in some cases), cost of traveling for interviews, etc. Total can easily be $10,000+ just to apply. Thankfully, the ROI and job security was worth it in the end (for me). Best of luck on your journey Astrotuna.

My husband will have student debt for the rest of our lives due to one year of law school. It is a rich man's game. He ended up having to switch to paralegal because more debt just couldn't happen

Yep, spent $2k being in my best friend's wedding and her bachelorette trip to Las Vegas. I hated the guy and she complained that he was threatening divorce left and right after they got married. I asked her to please not tell me anything negative about him or their relationship, since I spent the last 8 years telling her to dump him and just spent $2k for her to not dump him. As a single person, I'm actually disgusted.

PREACH

I was obsessed with that show, until the day I got married hahaha.

I love that show, it was so interesting to see how other people thought about weddings.

🤣 I love that show but never plan on getting married. It's bizarre how people will justify spending that kind of money on a dress they wear once 🤷‍♀️