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> If I can prevent a single reader from needlessly dropping $6,000-10,000+ on a diamond engagement ring, this site will be a success. Financial worries are the

> If I can prevent a single reader from needlessly dropping $6,000-10,000+ on a diamond engagement ring, this site will be a success. Financial worries are the #1 cause of stress in a married relationship - there is absolutely NO excuse to start your married life by taking on that level of debt. Average U.S. wedding cost $30k in 2014, while the average engagement ring was $5600, or 19% of the cost [0] https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-cost-of-wedding https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-cost-of-wedding While reducing/eliminating the cost of the ring is a big saving, the entire wedding industry is a shocking way to start your marriage (especially given about half will end in divorce)

charlesdm 8y ago
Not everything is about money though. Want to have an extravagant wedding? Fine. Want something basic? Also fine. Yes: diamonds, jewellery, mechanical watches etc are all bad value for money. People don't buy them because they're bad value. They buy them because they like wearing them, and women buy jewellery because it makes them feel pretty. That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime.
- darkcha0s 8y ago
  >mechanical watches [...] are all bad value for money Citation needed. Seriously, mechanical watches can be a great investment if you know what you are buying.
  - tgb 8y ago
    I think the meaning was in terms of a time keeping device not as a value store. The cheapest Walmart watch keeps time significantly better than the most expensive mechanic watch and many will last years of use.
- koolba 8y ago
  > That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime. Sure if you have the money. The problem is that most people don’t and spend what would be a down payment on a house on complete bullshit. It’s a terrible way to start a marriage and likely leads to higher rates of divorce.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    That strikes me as a problem with fiscal irresponsibility, not a problem with the object of the irresponsibility.
    - koolba 8y ago
      It's by far the biggest example of fiscal irresponsibility. What's particularly egregious is when the families of the bride (_cough_ her mother _cough_) or groom push them towards spending they can't afford. The wedding industry preys on those weak emotions knowing that many couples won't push back on the non-sense.
      - cf498 8y ago
        Weddings are a good example of horrible vicious social pressure depending on where you live. Too much of this is similar to "The child of a proper family marries at a certain age and gets a proper wedding".
        koolba 8y ago
        > Weddings are a good example of horrible vicious social pressure depending on where you live. Fight the power! Be the change! > Too much of this is similar to "The child of a proper family marries at a certain age and gets a proper wedding". Getting married "at a certain age" (i.e. young) isn't necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, I'd argue that being a parent (or grandparent!) while you're still young, active, and in good health is a wonderful thing. It's blindly succumbing to social pressure to make financially disastrous decisions that must be avoided. Go ahead an have a wedding party too, but do it on your terms.
        cf498 8y ago
        The emphasis is on "proper", i.e. the pressure to do that at the socially required age in the expected fashion to proof your worth, which you find in different versions throughout large parts of the world. Be it most blatantly the shaming of older unmarried women in Chinese society or more practically arranged marriages of young girls in rural middle eastern areas. Honor killings are just the crassest and most publicized method to uphold the second tradition, but if you read reports of women who went through this, the first part is always brutal social pressure by the direct family including "asking" and begging by their own mothers. Never underestimate the viciousness of parents who think they are pushing their children to do the "right" thing and are not above making this their first priority. If I caught someone in my family pulling crap like continually pressuring spouses to spend above their means and force them into debt with that line of argument they will likely have to reevaluate whether they might be better off without me in their life. A lot of people sadly only realize this after they see family members trying to do the same thing to the next generation. Differently put, depending on how much grandma doesnt understand the word "no stop it" she wont be coming over for the holidays anymore.
- Antimachides 8y ago
  Not fine with me. If a girl wanted a diamond ring and/or and extravagant wedding I'd dump her. Materialistic, low IQ and shallow. Though that's what most people are, I suppose.
  - charlesdm 8y ago
    You must be a catch. Depends what you're looking for in life, I guess. There's a difference between shopping until you drop, and giving the woman you love the occasional gift to show that you love and appreciate her. Yes, it's not required, you don't _NEED_ expensive jewellery or fancy weddings, but if you have excess money that you are not investing, why not? On the flipside, I also like getting nice gifts. Don't you?
    - Antimachides 8y ago
      Give her a blood diamond to show my affection? No thanks. I'm not brainwashed to think love is suitably communicated through the purchase of goods and services. Excess money not being invested? By golly I better not use it for any form of good; it must obviously go to De Beers! Just tell someone you love them and do nice things for them and be there for them. It's free.
      - charlesdm 8y ago
        It's not, and it doesn't need to be a diamond -- it could be flowers, a nice dinner, a exciting getaway together to some obscure place, etc. But the way you're expressing this is you'd laugh someone away for buying something for you. I'm into mechanical watches. Just because I find them interesting, not for show. I'm not brainwashed, but heck, getting one I really want from someone I love would be close to the ultimate gift. Do I need it? Of course not. Do I expect it? Of course not.
        Antimachides 8y ago
        I was talking about diamonds and extravagence desired purely to display wealth and social status (women are particularly vulnerable to this folly), not dinner dates, flowers, and mechanical watches. Like the two month salary rule for an engagement ring would be a ludicrous thing to expect of a man. Run from that woman.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- comicjk 8y ago
  Besides the fact that most people don't have any savings cushion, making this terrible advice for them, you're neglecting the social pressure aspect. Many people feel compelled to overspend on weddings by the expectations of their friends, family, and society. Discussions like this one help to ease that pressure, to allow people to make wedding decisions with less fear of what people will think.
  - charlesdm 8y ago
    I'm just saying: go for what you want. You don't really have to do anything in life -- it's all up for debate. If I had plenty of money and nothing more important to spend it on, I'd (personally) go for a crazy fun extravagant wedding. If not, then I wouldn't. If you have no savings, obviously don't spend a ton on a wedding...
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Yes, you're right. I don't understand the myopia on this forum when it comes to people spending money irrationally. Human beings are not hyper-efficient savings maximization engines. Every time the story about why "diamonds suck" hits the front page (maybe once a year or so?), the same rounds of patting-on-the-back are exchanged in the comments for rehashing a one-dimensional social commentary that buying diamonds is silly. Yes of course it's silly! But that's not the point, and it never has been. Once you're at the point of buying a gift that costs far more than its intrinsic, utilitarian value, worrying about its "true scarcity" is just haggling on the details. I purchased an engagement ring for my wife that costed about $30,000. She didn't ask for anything remotely as extravagant as that, but she likes it and I enjoy it for frankly vain reasons. I take immense pleasure out of the reactions it elicits from other people. Despite being very clear-eyed about the artificial scarcity of diamonds and DeBeers marketing, I still bought it because I enjoyed being able to make a frivolous purchase. Personally I don't like spending a lot on things that aren't either experiential or somewhat long-lasting, so I'd never spend much at all on a wedding dress. But I don't begrudge people for spending money inefficiently if they can afford it. We're all the same species. With very few exceptions, none of us is hyper-vigilant, hyper-rational or hyper-efficient. There are many, many things we idly buy which are artificially scarce or inflated in price. Buying them is not categorically different from buying expensive jewelry under a cultural zeitgeist perpetuated by a global conglomerate. I think most people really don't have much self-awareness about how high their floor of wealth and personal spending is over the ceiling of frugality and efficiency they talk about so much.
  - theunixbeard 8y ago
    Are you an entrepreneur with a profitable business or successful exit? If not, 30K might represent 6-12 months of personal runway to build your own business.
    - charlesdm 8y ago
      He's not going to buy his wife a $30k engagement ring if he's earning $30k a year...
- quadyeast 8y ago
  Is it something you really want or is it expected of you? Do you really want to enrich debeers? Buy a 2K wedding cake?
  - charlesdm 8y ago
    I would negotiate down the listing price significantly -- i.e. 20 to 35% depending on the item (I.e. $30k ring like post made above) and the price. Alternatively I would get a custom piece designed.
retSava 8y ago
Yeah, it's upsetting. As soon as merchandise X is prefixed with "wedding", the cost is doubled. Wedding cake? Boom. Wedding napkins? Check. Etc. It's astonishing how easy it is to fall into the trap of "it's just a one-time event", "it's the most important day of my life", etc.
- Freak_NL 8y ago
  > "it's the most important day of my life" Implying that its all downhill from there. I find this such a depressing way of looking at life.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    The other opposite would be considering your final day the "most important day of your life".
  - mjhagen 8y ago
    I can't believe I'm about to defend a marketing slogan. "Most important" doesn't imply "best", in my opinion, I think it implies that this day has the most impact on your life, so make it a good one. Maybe future days will be better because of what happened on this day.
    - hrktb 8y ago
      That’s still usually not the most important. For instance even if your partner is the best thing that ever happens to your life, the most important moment will be the proposal or whatever moment you recognize and mutually accept you need each other in your life. The wedding is the inking of the deal, the most important moment is when you agree to the deal in the first place (and I hope that’s way far before the wedding takes place). From there, the impact of the wedding is mostly memories, networking and social perception.
      - test1235 8y ago
        it doesn't matter how you define it - the initial premise was that once you've decided that it the most important, then it's all downhill from there.
lostcolony 8y ago
Some aspects of a wedding are unnecessary inflated...others aren't or don't have to be. The engagement ring is one that is. It's totally worth diving into what is and isn't a sensible expense, but diamonds are unique in that you can get substitutes or alternatives for far cheaper, far more humanely, and in the case of a synthetic, at least, aren't even visibly different.
- arethuza 8y ago
  A couple of years back my wife (of 27 years) bought a ring for herself with a conspicuous "diamond" on it - I think it cost about £30. Anyone who noticed thought it must have cost tens of thousands and how generous I was.... even though it was fake and she bought it for herself on a whim!
  - quadyeast 8y ago
    This is great. I would ask my wife if she wanted a fake diamond and new car or a real diamond.
wybiral 8y ago
Status symbols are always an unspoken tax on the people who want them. Weddings could be casual ordeals without frills and rigid formalities but they function as a status symbol of sorts.
arkh 8y ago
> Average U.S. wedding cost $30k in 2014 Averages are mostly useless for this kind of things where some people can go crazy on prices. What is the median? Are other deciles available to check? But I think the most important would be with the cost of a wedding / current capital owned and cost of wedding / revenues ratios.
- dionidium 8y ago
  >"In 2012, when the average wedding cost was $27,427, the median was $18,086. In 2011, when the average was $27,021, the median was $16,886. In Manhattan, where the widely reported average is $76,687, the median is $55,104. And in Alaska, where the average is $15,504, the median is a mere $8,440." http://www.slate.com/articles/life/weddings/2013/06/average_wedding_cost_published_numbers_on_the_price_of_a_wedding_are_totally.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/weddings/2013/06/average_... I grew up exclusively attending weddings from the (bottom of the) bottom half of that median and I now routinely interact with people who (seemingly) have only been to weddings from the top half; the disconnect is enormous.
- asr 8y ago
  Average or median, the more fundamental problem is that this number is just wrong. Wedding industry statistics are spin from wedding-industry-affiliated companies, who have a tremendous incentive to convince you that it's normal to spend this kind of money on your wedding (as an average U.S. household--make sure you spend more if you are above-average!). The source here, valuepenguin.com (which is trying to sell you wedding insurance), cites three data sources. Once source is no longer online. The other two sources (TheKnot and Costofwedding.com) claim to have conducted surveys. But The Knot just surveys people on its own website (not representative). Anyone want to venture a guess as to whether a representative number of courthouse-ceremony-and-lunch-buffet-afterwards weddings are counted in these figures?[1] Meanwhile, Cost of Wedding is "owned and operated by The Wedding Report, Inc." and reports the results of a survey The Wedding Report did. And The Wedding Report has this gem in its methodology description: We take a bottom up approach to "Average Wedding Cost." The total "Average Cost" is calculated using "Weighted Demand Average (WDA)," which is; average spent times demand equals the weighted demand average. Sum of weighted demand average for all items equals the average wedding cost. Using WDA instead of a summed average gives a better calculation, because it takes into account all items that couples may or may not purchase.[2] As far as I can tell, this means the average cost is calculated by first determining average costs for each item you might possibly purchase, and then adding them all up as if every couple purchases every item! Umm... no. That's not how you do math. [1] "Respondents were recruited throughout the year from TheKnot.com membership." https://xogroupinc.com/press-releases/the-knot-2017-real-weddings-study-wedding-spend/ https://xogroupinc.com/press-releases/the-knot-2017-real-wed... [2] https://www.theweddingreport.com/index.cfm/action/home/view/methodology/ https://www.theweddingreport.com/index.cfm/action/home/view/...
lordvigm 8y ago
Holy shit 30k? Hopefully the average is just skewed up by rich people. If middle class people are plunking down that much, it would be insane
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  I don't have much to compare against, but my own wedding was... infinitely small. 2 witnesses, low cost ceremony, marriage license, 2 day honeymoon in a B&B, and a car rental was all had for under $500. (1998). I'd also started a new job that week - my new cubemate had just moved back to the area from out of state. She'd been married the year before, was now going through a divorce, and they were fighting over who was going to handle the $20k debt incurred for their wedding expenses. The $500 is a bit misleading - each family later threw us a small backyard get together with other friends/family, but we were in different countries, so there was airfare involved later, and the food/catering for each event was probably a couple hundred each (burgers, chips, drinks, cake, etc for a few dozens folks). Including airfare to visit people, and the cost of those events, it was probably still under $3k. I understand it was 20 years ago, but some people were spending $20k even back then, apparently.
- RandallBrown 8y ago
  I don't think so. I'm currently planning a wedding and while I hope to see the final price is under 30k, it would be very easy to go that high. Just buying dinner and drinks for 150 people (which seems like a lot, but it's really easy to come up with a list that long) will probably cost you $5000. Then you need another place to put those people and that's another $5000. Then you might want a nice photographer for at least another $2000. Add in music, decorations, lodging, clothing, etc. and you're almost to 30k for a pretty "normal" wedding. Once you start getting higher end food/drinks/venue then the prices go up quickly.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Or you have a barbeque on the beach and spend $200 on meat, with BYOB.
fapjacks 8y ago
Well, Mister Wonderful put it nicely: "I love weddings. They're one of the only times in a person's life when they're completely irrational about price."
empath75 8y ago
I paid for my own wedding. My wife took the first pass at planning it. We priced out her dream wedding. It was close to $35k. My wife, bless her heart, hates spending money, so it didn’t take much to convince her to dial back expectations. We started googling for ‘state park weddings’ and found a great park an hour outside of town on the waterfront with a barn. It cost us $500 to book it for the day. We tracked down the wedding planner from one of the weddings there on instagram. She had only done the one wedding for her friend and didn’t know if she wanted to do it for a living. She offered to do it for us for almost nothing. She completely blew us away, making handmade decorations, and even emceeing for us. We ended up giving her a 100% tip and still feel like we underpaid. We didn’t get a DJ, we just used Spotify. We hired a photography student that was a friend of a friend to do the pictures. We got a roadside bbq joint to cater. I think we spent $3500 for everything including the wedding dress and photographer. We used the savings to do an around the world trip for our honeymoon. I think after the wedding and honeymoon we ended up with like $2000 of debt on our credit card. So you can definitely do a low budget wedding that’s still beautiful if you try.
- alistairSH 8y ago
  I'll 2nd the "state park wedding" thought. Our county maintains about a dozen historic buildings, all of which can be rented for a small fraction the cost of a commercial venue. Our ceremony was held at a small 19th century chapel. The reception was at an 18th century mill house. Worked out great.
Simon_says 8y ago
He helped me. We spent under $1,000 on the wedding, of which $0 was spent on rocks.
tvanantwerp 8y ago
I'm immensely grateful that my wife is from Hong Kong. Wedding gifts there take the form of cash in a red envelope, and it's normal to get married at a profit. When I explained to her that American weddings are usually held at a considerable loss, her reaction was to set the wedding budget to as close to zero as possible. I think the Hong Kong idea makes much more sense--a newly married couple needs a financial boost, not a debt burden.
- dmoy 8y ago
  Yea I did weddings in both China and the US. (Way cheaper city in China than HK too). US wedding probably cost us $13-15k including plane tickets. Chinese wedding we were way up, but gave all the money to parent. She was lugging a giant bag of cash though.
- bufferoverflow 8y ago
  If most people around you get married, there's no profit. It's, roughly, a zero sum game. Everyone gifts everyone money.
  - goodJobWalrus 8y ago
    No really, if a lot of them (gift givers) are older family members (already married). In that case, you will pay back much later when you are that older family, so, at best, it's like a long-term loan when you needed most.
gnulinux 8y ago
> (especially given about half will end in divorce) If a person was married in their 20s and 30s but their marriage ends in a divorce in 40s this person spent a very significant part of their life with a companion. It simply doesn't matter that the marriage ended up with a divorse, as long as it lasted and both parties were satisfied, it was a marriage. The fact that the marriage ended up with a divorce doesn't make it less quality, or less worthy to spend more money on.
- isostatic 8y ago
  7 year marriage and $30k is still $12 a day. (My own marriage probably cost $30k - was a decade ago and I forget. But then we had 60 guess, at least half of whom if I employed would cost at least $600 for the day, so the bigger cost may well be lost earnings)
to_bpr 8y ago
>(especially given about half will end in divorce) Very much depending on some key demographics[0], and also assumes that all marriages start with an expensive engagement and wedding. [0]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divor...
nailer 8y ago
Just book a restaurant table for 40 people. Don't tell them it's a weddding.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I just do not get why anyone would spend that kind of money on a wedding under circumstances where they have to borrow to do it, which supposedly anywhere from one third to three quarters of people do. If you can afford to pay cash and want a big party, okay, fine, it's your money. I don't have to get the appeal. But, supposedly, some high percentage of people actually go into debt to get hitched. And that's just seriously problematic. https://studentloanhero.com/featured/wedding-costs-survey-couples-take-debt-married/ https://studentloanhero.com/featured/wedding-costs-survey-co... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-third-of-couples-go-into-debt-for-their-wedding-day-2015-09-29 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-third-of-couples-go-in...
mchahn 8y ago
> especially given about half will end in divorce That ancient statistic is very misleading. It is derived from dividing the number of divorces by the number of marriages. A more interesting statistic is the number of people who get married and then divorced compared to the overall population. This is much lower since some people have a lot of divorces.

charlesdm 8y ago

Not everything is about money though. Want to have an extravagant wedding? Fine. Want something basic? Also fine. Yes: diamonds, jewellery, mechanical watches etc are all bad value for money. People don't buy them because they're bad value. They buy them because they like wearing them, and women buy jewellery because it makes them feel pretty. That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime.

darkcha0s 8y ago
>mechanical watches [...] are all bad value for money Citation needed. Seriously, mechanical watches can be a great investment if you know what you are buying.
- tgb 8y ago
  I think the meaning was in terms of a time keeping device not as a value store. The cheapest Walmart watch keeps time significantly better than the most expensive mechanic watch and many will last years of use.
koolba 8y ago
> That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime. Sure if you have the money. The problem is that most people don’t and spend what would be a down payment on a house on complete bullshit. It’s a terrible way to start a marriage and likely leads to higher rates of divorce.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  That strikes me as a problem with fiscal irresponsibility, not a problem with the object of the irresponsibility.
  - koolba 8y ago
    It's by far the biggest example of fiscal irresponsibility. What's particularly egregious is when the families of the bride (_cough_ her mother _cough_) or groom push them towards spending they can't afford. The wedding industry preys on those weak emotions knowing that many couples won't push back on the non-sense.
    - cf498 8y ago
      Weddings are a good example of horrible vicious social pressure depending on where you live. Too much of this is similar to "The child of a proper family marries at a certain age and gets a proper wedding".
      - koolba 8y ago
        > Weddings are a good example of horrible vicious social pressure depending on where you live. Fight the power! Be the change! > Too much of this is similar to "The child of a proper family marries at a certain age and gets a proper wedding". Getting married "at a certain age" (i.e. young) isn't necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, I'd argue that being a parent (or grandparent!) while you're still young, active, and in good health is a wonderful thing. It's blindly succumbing to social pressure to make financially disastrous decisions that must be avoided. Go ahead an have a wedding party too, but do it on your terms.
        cf498 8y ago
        The emphasis is on "proper", i.e. the pressure to do that at the socially required age in the expected fashion to proof your worth, which you find in different versions throughout large parts of the world. Be it most blatantly the shaming of older unmarried women in Chinese society or more practically arranged marriages of young girls in rural middle eastern areas. Honor killings are just the crassest and most publicized method to uphold the second tradition, but if you read reports of women who went through this, the first part is always brutal social pressure by the direct family including "asking" and begging by their own mothers. Never underestimate the viciousness of parents who think they are pushing their children to do the "right" thing and are not above making this their first priority. If I caught someone in my family pulling crap like continually pressuring spouses to spend above their means and force them into debt with that line of argument they will likely have to reevaluate whether they might be better off without me in their life. A lot of people sadly only realize this after they see family members trying to do the same thing to the next generation. Differently put, depending on how much grandma doesnt understand the word "no stop it" she wont be coming over for the holidays anymore.
Antimachides 8y ago
Not fine with me. If a girl wanted a diamond ring and/or and extravagant wedding I'd dump her. Materialistic, low IQ and shallow. Though that's what most people are, I suppose.
- charlesdm 8y ago
  You must be a catch. Depends what you're looking for in life, I guess. There's a difference between shopping until you drop, and giving the woman you love the occasional gift to show that you love and appreciate her. Yes, it's not required, you don't _NEED_ expensive jewellery or fancy weddings, but if you have excess money that you are not investing, why not? On the flipside, I also like getting nice gifts. Don't you?
  - Antimachides 8y ago
    Give her a blood diamond to show my affection? No thanks. I'm not brainwashed to think love is suitably communicated through the purchase of goods and services. Excess money not being invested? By golly I better not use it for any form of good; it must obviously go to De Beers! Just tell someone you love them and do nice things for them and be there for them. It's free.
    - charlesdm 8y ago
      It's not, and it doesn't need to be a diamond -- it could be flowers, a nice dinner, a exciting getaway together to some obscure place, etc. But the way you're expressing this is you'd laugh someone away for buying something for you. I'm into mechanical watches. Just because I find them interesting, not for show. I'm not brainwashed, but heck, getting one I really want from someone I love would be close to the ultimate gift. Do I need it? Of course not. Do I expect it? Of course not.
      - Antimachides 8y ago
        I was talking about diamonds and extravagence desired purely to display wealth and social status (women are particularly vulnerable to this folly), not dinner dates, flowers, and mechanical watches. Like the two month salary rule for an engagement ring would be a ludicrous thing to expect of a man. Run from that woman.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
comicjk 8y ago
Besides the fact that most people don't have any savings cushion, making this terrible advice for them, you're neglecting the social pressure aspect. Many people feel compelled to overspend on weddings by the expectations of their friends, family, and society. Discussions like this one help to ease that pressure, to allow people to make wedding decisions with less fear of what people will think.
- charlesdm 8y ago
  I'm just saying: go for what you want. You don't really have to do anything in life -- it's all up for debate. If I had plenty of money and nothing more important to spend it on, I'd (personally) go for a crazy fun extravagant wedding. If not, then I wouldn't. If you have no savings, obviously don't spend a ton on a wedding...
throwawaymath 8y ago
Yes, you're right. I don't understand the myopia on this forum when it comes to people spending money irrationally. Human beings are not hyper-efficient savings maximization engines. Every time the story about why "diamonds suck" hits the front page (maybe once a year or so?), the same rounds of patting-on-the-back are exchanged in the comments for rehashing a one-dimensional social commentary that buying diamonds is silly. Yes of course it's silly! But that's not the point, and it never has been. Once you're at the point of buying a gift that costs far more than its intrinsic, utilitarian value, worrying about its "true scarcity" is just haggling on the details. I purchased an engagement ring for my wife that costed about $30,000. She didn't ask for anything remotely as extravagant as that, but she likes it and I enjoy it for frankly vain reasons. I take immense pleasure out of the reactions it elicits from other people. Despite being very clear-eyed about the artificial scarcity of diamonds and DeBeers marketing, I still bought it because I enjoyed being able to make a frivolous purchase. Personally I don't like spending a lot on things that aren't either experiential or somewhat long-lasting, so I'd never spend much at all on a wedding dress. But I don't begrudge people for spending money inefficiently if they can afford it. We're all the same species. With very few exceptions, none of us is hyper-vigilant, hyper-rational or hyper-efficient. There are many, many things we idly buy which are artificially scarce or inflated in price. Buying them is not categorically different from buying expensive jewelry under a cultural zeitgeist perpetuated by a global conglomerate. I think most people really don't have much self-awareness about how high their floor of wealth and personal spending is over the ceiling of frugality and efficiency they talk about so much.
- theunixbeard 8y ago
  Are you an entrepreneur with a profitable business or successful exit? If not, 30K might represent 6-12 months of personal runway to build your own business.
  - charlesdm 8y ago
    He's not going to buy his wife a $30k engagement ring if he's earning $30k a year...
quadyeast 8y ago
Is it something you really want or is it expected of you? Do you really want to enrich debeers? Buy a 2K wedding cake?
- charlesdm 8y ago
  I would negotiate down the listing price significantly -- i.e. 20 to 35% depending on the item (I.e. $30k ring like post made above) and the price. Alternatively I would get a custom piece designed.

retSava 8y ago

Yeah, it's upsetting. As soon as merchandise X is prefixed with "wedding", the cost is doubled. Wedding cake? Boom. Wedding napkins? Check. Etc. It's astonishing how easy it is to fall into the trap of "it's just a one-time event", "it's the most important day of my life", etc.

Freak_NL 8y ago
> "it's the most important day of my life" Implying that its all downhill from there. I find this such a depressing way of looking at life.
- coldtea 8y ago
  The other opposite would be considering your final day the "most important day of your life".
- mjhagen 8y ago
  I can't believe I'm about to defend a marketing slogan. "Most important" doesn't imply "best", in my opinion, I think it implies that this day has the most impact on your life, so make it a good one. Maybe future days will be better because of what happened on this day.
  - hrktb 8y ago
    That’s still usually not the most important. For instance even if your partner is the best thing that ever happens to your life, the most important moment will be the proposal or whatever moment you recognize and mutually accept you need each other in your life. The wedding is the inking of the deal, the most important moment is when you agree to the deal in the first place (and I hope that’s way far before the wedding takes place). From there, the impact of the wedding is mostly memories, networking and social perception.
    - test1235 8y ago
      it doesn't matter how you define it - the initial premise was that once you've decided that it the most important, then it's all downhill from there.

lostcolony 8y ago

Some aspects of a wedding are unnecessary inflated...others aren't or don't have to be. The engagement ring is one that is. It's totally worth diving into what is and isn't a sensible expense, but diamonds are unique in that you can get substitutes or alternatives for far cheaper, far more humanely, and in the case of a synthetic, at least, aren't even visibly different.

arethuza 8y ago
A couple of years back my wife (of 27 years) bought a ring for herself with a conspicuous "diamond" on it - I think it cost about £30. Anyone who noticed thought it must have cost tens of thousands and how generous I was.... even though it was fake and she bought it for herself on a whim!
- quadyeast 8y ago
  This is great. I would ask my wife if she wanted a fake diamond and new car or a real diamond.

wybiral 8y ago

Status symbols are always an unspoken tax on the people who want them. Weddings could be casual ordeals without frills and rigid formalities but they function as a status symbol of sorts.

arkh 8y ago

> Average U.S. wedding cost $30k in 2014 Averages are mostly useless for this kind of things where some people can go crazy on prices. What is the median? Are other deciles available to check? But I think the most important would be with the cost of a wedding / current capital owned and cost of wedding / revenues ratios.

dionidium 8y ago
>"In 2012, when the average wedding cost was $27,427, the median was $18,086. In 2011, when the average was $27,021, the median was $16,886. In Manhattan, where the widely reported average is $76,687, the median is $55,104. And in Alaska, where the average is $15,504, the median is a mere $8,440." http://www.slate.com/articles/life/weddings/2013/06/average_wedding_cost_published_numbers_on_the_price_of_a_wedding_are_totally.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/weddings/2013/06/average_... I grew up exclusively attending weddings from the (bottom of the) bottom half of that median and I now routinely interact with people who (seemingly) have only been to weddings from the top half; the disconnect is enormous.
asr 8y ago
Average or median, the more fundamental problem is that this number is just wrong. Wedding industry statistics are spin from wedding-industry-affiliated companies, who have a tremendous incentive to convince you that it's normal to spend this kind of money on your wedding (as an average U.S. household--make sure you spend more if you are above-average!). The source here, valuepenguin.com (which is trying to sell you wedding insurance), cites three data sources. Once source is no longer online. The other two sources (TheKnot and Costofwedding.com) claim to have conducted surveys. But The Knot just surveys people on its own website (not representative). Anyone want to venture a guess as to whether a representative number of courthouse-ceremony-and-lunch-buffet-afterwards weddings are counted in these figures?[1] Meanwhile, Cost of Wedding is "owned and operated by The Wedding Report, Inc." and reports the results of a survey The Wedding Report did. And The Wedding Report has this gem in its methodology description: We take a bottom up approach to "Average Wedding Cost." The total "Average Cost" is calculated using "Weighted Demand Average (WDA)," which is; average spent times demand equals the weighted demand average. Sum of weighted demand average for all items equals the average wedding cost. Using WDA instead of a summed average gives a better calculation, because it takes into account all items that couples may or may not purchase.[2] As far as I can tell, this means the average cost is calculated by first determining average costs for each item you might possibly purchase, and then adding them all up as if every couple purchases every item! Umm... no. That's not how you do math. [1] "Respondents were recruited throughout the year from TheKnot.com membership." https://xogroupinc.com/press-releases/the-knot-2017-real-weddings-study-wedding-spend/ https://xogroupinc.com/press-releases/the-knot-2017-real-wed... [2] https://www.theweddingreport.com/index.cfm/action/home/view/methodology/ https://www.theweddingreport.com/index.cfm/action/home/view/...

lordvigm 8y ago

Holy shit 30k? Hopefully the average is just skewed up by rich people. If middle class people are plunking down that much, it would be insane

mgkimsal 8y ago
I don't have much to compare against, but my own wedding was... infinitely small. 2 witnesses, low cost ceremony, marriage license, 2 day honeymoon in a B&B, and a car rental was all had for under $500. (1998). I'd also started a new job that week - my new cubemate had just moved back to the area from out of state. She'd been married the year before, was now going through a divorce, and they were fighting over who was going to handle the $20k debt incurred for their wedding expenses. The $500 is a bit misleading - each family later threw us a small backyard get together with other friends/family, but we were in different countries, so there was airfare involved later, and the food/catering for each event was probably a couple hundred each (burgers, chips, drinks, cake, etc for a few dozens folks). Including airfare to visit people, and the cost of those events, it was probably still under $3k. I understand it was 20 years ago, but some people were spending $20k even back then, apparently.
RandallBrown 8y ago
I don't think so. I'm currently planning a wedding and while I hope to see the final price is under 30k, it would be very easy to go that high. Just buying dinner and drinks for 150 people (which seems like a lot, but it's really easy to come up with a list that long) will probably cost you $5000. Then you need another place to put those people and that's another $5000. Then you might want a nice photographer for at least another $2000. Add in music, decorations, lodging, clothing, etc. and you're almost to 30k for a pretty "normal" wedding. Once you start getting higher end food/drinks/venue then the prices go up quickly.
- isostatic 8y ago
  Or you have a barbeque on the beach and spend $200 on meat, with BYOB.

fapjacks 8y ago

Well, Mister Wonderful put it nicely: "I love weddings. They're one of the only times in a person's life when they're completely irrational about price."

empath75 8y ago

I paid for my own wedding. My wife took the first pass at planning it. We priced out her dream wedding. It was close to $35k. My wife, bless her heart, hates spending money, so it didn’t take much to convince her to dial back expectations. We started googling for ‘state park weddings’ and found a great park an hour outside of town on the waterfront with a barn. It cost us $500 to book it for the day. We tracked down the wedding planner from one of the weddings there on instagram. She had only done the one wedding for her friend and didn’t know if she wanted to do it for a living. She offered to do it for us for almost nothing. She completely blew us away, making handmade decorations, and even emceeing for us. We ended up giving her a 100% tip and still feel like we underpaid. We didn’t get a DJ, we just used Spotify. We hired a photography student that was a friend of a friend to do the pictures. We got a roadside bbq joint to cater. I think we spent $3500 for everything including the wedding dress and photographer. We used the savings to do an around the world trip for our honeymoon. I think after the wedding and honeymoon we ended up with like $2000 of debt on our credit card. So you can definitely do a low budget wedding that’s still beautiful if you try.

alistairSH 8y ago
I'll 2nd the "state park wedding" thought. Our county maintains about a dozen historic buildings, all of which can be rented for a small fraction the cost of a commercial venue. Our ceremony was held at a small 19th century chapel. The reception was at an 18th century mill house. Worked out great.

Simon_says 8y ago

He helped me. We spent under $1,000 on the wedding, of which $0 was spent on rocks.

tvanantwerp 8y ago

I'm immensely grateful that my wife is from Hong Kong. Wedding gifts there take the form of cash in a red envelope, and it's normal to get married at a profit. When I explained to her that American weddings are usually held at a considerable loss, her reaction was to set the wedding budget to as close to zero as possible. I think the Hong Kong idea makes much more sense--a newly married couple needs a financial boost, not a debt burden.

dmoy 8y ago
Yea I did weddings in both China and the US. (Way cheaper city in China than HK too). US wedding probably cost us $13-15k including plane tickets. Chinese wedding we were way up, but gave all the money to parent. She was lugging a giant bag of cash though.
bufferoverflow 8y ago
If most people around you get married, there's no profit. It's, roughly, a zero sum game. Everyone gifts everyone money.
- goodJobWalrus 8y ago
  No really, if a lot of them (gift givers) are older family members (already married). In that case, you will pay back much later when you are that older family, so, at best, it's like a long-term loan when you needed most.

gnulinux 8y ago

> (especially given about half will end in divorce) If a person was married in their 20s and 30s but their marriage ends in a divorce in 40s this person spent a very significant part of their life with a companion. It simply doesn't matter that the marriage ended up with a divorse, as long as it lasted and both parties were satisfied, it was a marriage. The fact that the marriage ended up with a divorce doesn't make it less quality, or less worthy to spend more money on.

isostatic 8y ago
7 year marriage and $30k is still $12 a day. (My own marriage probably cost $30k - was a decade ago and I forget. But then we had 60 guess, at least half of whom if I employed would cost at least $600 for the day, so the bigger cost may well be lost earnings)

to_bpr 8y ago

>(especially given about half will end in divorce) Very much depending on some key demographics[0], and also assumes that all marriages start with an expensive engagement and wedding. [0]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divor...

nailer 8y ago

Just book a restaurant table for 40 people. Don't tell them it's a weddding.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I just do not get why anyone would spend that kind of money on a wedding under circumstances where they have to borrow to do it, which supposedly anywhere from one third to three quarters of people do. If you can afford to pay cash and want a big party, okay, fine, it's your money. I don't have to get the appeal. But, supposedly, some high percentage of people actually go into debt to get hitched. And that's just seriously problematic. https://studentloanhero.com/featured/wedding-costs-survey-couples-take-debt-married/ https://studentloanhero.com/featured/wedding-costs-survey-co... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-third-of-couples-go-into-debt-for-their-wedding-day-2015-09-29 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-third-of-couples-go-in...

mchahn 8y ago

> especially given about half will end in divorce That ancient statistic is very misleading. It is derived from dividing the number of divorces by the number of marriages. A more interesting statistic is the number of people who get married and then divorced compared to the overall population. This is much lower since some people have a lot of divorces.