Initial thoughts on the cost of a wedding

18 Jan 2018

Initial thoughts on the cost of a wedding

Whilst I’ve always known I wanted to get married and have a wedding, I’ve never been particularly fussed about many of the traditions associated with a wedding day. Whilst I have nothing against them, the thought of having things like seating plans and white tablecloths and walking down an aisle on my dad’s arm either engulf me in boredom or make me want to vom a lil bit in my mouth.

Not that there’s anything wrong with these thing – I happen to bloody LOVE a wedding in all its glory – it’s just that a lot of the traditions don’t feel very me.

So, it’s fair to say, when G and I got engaged at the beginning of the month, I already had a pretty solid idea of the kind of wedding I wanted. And because of the chilled, simple vibe I had in my head, I oh-so-bloody-naively thought this meant that our wedding day could be done on a decent budget and not cost an obscene amount of money.

HA FUCKING HA.

Oh sweet, innocent Kate of New Year’s Day, you’ve been on a steep learning curve the past few weeks eh?!

Every day, there’s been the discovery that something else costs at least double what we’d envisioned and we’ve been faced with the slap-in-the-face-reality that our simple, chilled wedding could quite easily cost us fifteen grand.

Okay maybe not exactly that much but definitely in that ballpark, and it wouldn’t be remotely hard to spend more.

AND THAT’S CONSIDERED CHEAP FOR THE WEDDING INDUSTRY.

The result of this is potentially being placed in the rather uncomfortable position of going against one’s own morals.

It’s entirely each to their own, but I’ve always shuddered at the thought of spending house-deposit kind of money on just one day. That money could be spent on, well, a house deposit. Or several holidays. Or one FUCK OFF EPIC holiday. Or a million and three chocolate oranges (let’s just all pause for a mo to enjoy that mental image).

We could avoid it all by just popping over to the registry office, do the thing and then head out for a meal with the rents and done. Easy peasy. Simple. Perfectly nice. Cheap.

But I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want hotels or top tables or fancy cars but, heck, I do want a party. I do want all my favourite people in one room eating good food and drinking a lot of prosecco and dancing to good tunes.

And that, whether I like it or not, costs.

And it costs even more then I could have possibly predicted because attach the word ‘wedding’ to anything and people double the price just for shits and giggles.

(And it’s kinda hard to lie. Like, yeah, I just want to hire this venue for a party… I’ll be wearing a fancy dress and we’ll say a few vows beforehand but, er, yeah it’s just a party for Sharon’s birthday for sure…)

There’s no way around it. Either we do what we want, cutting costs on what we can (good job I’m marrying a man who works with spreadsheets for a living eh?) and accept large sums of cash are going to be spent or we don’t do it at all.

The whole thing is ridiculous. Yet… we all know I’m going to do it. Because I’m privileged enough to be able to and selfish enough to want to.

But if you EVER hear me mention I’m feeling stressed about planning a wedding, punch me in the face. If I’m lucky enough to be able to spend that kind of money on one day’s celebration, I have no right to chuffing moan about it.

Comments

  1. We were able to manage our wedding on around 5k but we had to put so much work into it ourselves. (It also helps that my husband is a wedding photographer so there were some industry contacts and friends that helped us out!) xx

    rhymeandribbons.com

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    Replies
    1. Your wedding looked lovely (I really loved the idea of giving books as wedding favours)! I think that's definitely how we're going to attempt to keep costs down where we can - time to get DIY-ing! xx

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