I wonder how many divorced people there are who are still paying off their wedding and honeymoon.

Wedding Spending Discourse lives at the intersection of Your Spending Is A Status Symbol and How Dare Poor People Have Fun.

On the one end, there's a deluge of ad copy invested in selling you a gussied up family reunion where everything sells at 10x markup.

On the other, there's a bunch of Austerity Scalds who insist wearing nice clothes and eating a big cake at a pretty venue or a dance hall with dozens of family and friends should be totally out of reach for non-millionaires.

My wedding was $61. The license was $60, and we needed paper towels for folks to use after the cake a friend bought. Got married in a tiny apartment with maybe twenty people present, and streamed it so a couple hundred more could watch. I still sometimes wear the outfit I got married in. Makes my wife’s heart skip a beat when I do.

My brother got married in Venice to the tune of $48,000. I wasn’t on the guest list cause we’re rather estranged but there were apparently tailored suits and an actual wedding ring involved.

I don’t wanna think about paying a student loan amount of money for a wedding.

Dave Ramsey is a bad person, but one thing I'm grateful to him for is the lesson to avoid debt as much as possible. Don't treat it like a casual piggy bank; it's predatory. They want to get you into debt and keep you in debt.

outa

Outta, like 'out of'

Oughta, like 'ought to'?

You may need to pick a lane, here.

I got married during COVID, and all the pandemic restrictions limited what was possible. While I was disappointed that my out-of-town friends and family couldn't be there, our bank accounts certainly thanked us.

We did a courthouse wedding because cheap and fuck having a huge thing, we had the people there that actual matter to us

And they try to lecture us about avocado toast and making our own coffee.

I've never understood the concept of having a a large, expensive wedding that was monetarily and socially burdening.

I'm really grateful that I've only ever been with one person that's really thought it was a good idea and that relationship did not reach the point where it had to be considered.

I'm a bachelor. Money spent on wedding: $0. Money spent in divorce court: $0. I ain't rich but I'm also not in debt.

My wedding was 7k and had 23 people attending. It was still bigger than I wanted.

My wife (then-fiancée) and I originally planned to have a wedding in the fall time, but then I got stationed in South Korea for a year with the US military. I wasn't allowed to bring a spouse with me, more or less a fiancée. So she went back to her home state while I went overseas.

She was also interested in joining the military, but I told her, if she joined single, she'd get an assignment to some random place in the world and we may never see each other again.

So we decided to forego the whole ceremony and just knock out the legal stuff. Get married on paper, so the military would recognize our status and keep us stationed together.

My then-fiancée was living in Nebraska at the time, so she went to her local county courthouse and looked up the local laws on marriages. Turns out, in Nebraska your fiancé(e) doesn't have to physically be present for the ceremony, and you can sign the marriage license in advance.

So she mailed a marriage license to me in South Korea. I took it to my base's legal office and got a notary to sign it with me. Then I mailed it back.

One of her friends was an ordained minister, so she agreed to do a quick ceremony for us. We met up through Skype from our respective bedrooms; her in her apartment in Nebraska and me in my dorm room in South Korea.

Her military recruiter showed up as a witness on her end. Once the ceremony was over, she and her minister friend signed the marriage license, then the recruiter took it back to his office to quickly update her status as "married" in his system.

Five days later, my new wife left for Basic Training. It would be 6 months until we first met in person as a married couple. I had moved to Germany as my next assignment and my wife got her first assignment to tag along with me.

About 4-5 years later, we were stationed back in the US and decided to finally have that ceremony; mostly for the relatives that were upset that we just announced we were married.

We had to mark it as a "vow renewal ceremony" because wedding groups online got extremely hostile at us for hosting a "wedding ceremony" when we were already married. Even though we never had an actual wedding ceremony in the first place. Some people are obsessed with their tradition. 🙄

Again, we didn't go into debt to party. One of my wife's aunts owned a farm and agreed to hold a ceremony in her beautiful flower garden. We hired a caterer to provide food, brought in as many folding chairs and tables as we could find, then my wife bought a pretty dress. I wore my military uniform so I wouldn't have to buy a new suit.

Then our reception was held at a local rodeo in town that evening, which my wife's family typically hosted for the town, so it was free for all of us. They also owned a tiny campground on the edge of town, so we were given free accommodations if you wanted to camp for the night instead of staying in a hotel.

We paid out of pocket ourselves for the whole ceremony, although we got enough money in wedding cards to offset a good chunk of it. It cost us a few thousand dollars in total, which was very affordable with our dual military pay.

We rented a camper van and took our two best friends on a roadtrip through 7 national parks. Both are professional musicians, so one officiated and one accompanied during the wedding, and our first dance was on top of a mountain. We hired a photographer who specialized in the park for the day, and he knew all the best spots. The whole affair was both small and intimate and epic and breath-taking all at once.

The major expenses were the dress, the van, and the photographer. It was perfect.

"marriage duration is either not associated or inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony" "having high wedding attendance and having a honeymoon (regardless of how much it costs) are generally positively associated with marriage duration" Francis-Tan, Mialon 2015 PDF

Spending less money is correlated to longer marriages, as is having a honeymoon, and lots of people at the wedding.

We had our wedding at home. Invited about 25 of our friends and family, rented some tables and chairs, ordered some platters of food from a local bbq joint, and lit the fire pit. One of our friends officiated since she was an ordained Dudist. No one dressed up (except the cats who were wearing bowties) and we had an amazing time that no one will ever forget. Total cost was about $500.

We got married 35 years ago just as the big wedding trend was getting going. Brides were attending Bridal Fairs to learn (be indoctrinated into) how to spend a downpayment on a house on a 1 day event instead. The "it's your big day, you are worth it" marketing is still going strong. We had the traditional wedding but at home with catered food and spent only what we had saved in cash. My cousin got married the same year and his wife's dress cost as much as our whole wedding. They loved how lux their wedding was in comparison until we bought a house and they bought a tiny condo because their parents refused to gift them any more money for the downpayment. To each their own but know the consequences of your decision. Don't go in debt for it is my advice. If I were to do it all again, I'd go even smaller and have a backyard BBQ with immediate family and the wedding party. If friends and family are a good approximation of the population in general, the more expensive the wedding, especially if there is debt or years of engagement while saving, the more likelihood of divorce within 5 years. Those who get married because they want the wedding aren't as good of candidates for long term as those who get married because they want to indicate a lifelong commitment to their partner.

Covid was such an out. I got married in a beautiful spot, with just our parents.

My wife and I got married in a back yard. Her dress was inexpensive. The cake was $115 at walmart. My favorite part was the seating, we got some old chuch pews that were being discarded. After the wedding we tore the pews down and dear old dad was making stuff out of the wood for a long time.

That was almost 20 years ago. Still married. Still happy. Still can't believe she's mine.

Once again, a young generation thinking it came up with an age-old idea.