Weddings

[gerntz]

noun
noun: hand; plural noun: hands

1. 1.
   the end part of a person's arm beyond the wrist, including the palm, fingers, and thumb.
   "she placed the money on the palm of her hand"
   synonyms palm, fist; Moreinformalpaw, mitt, duke, hook, meathook
   "big, strong hands"
   • a prehensile organ similar to a hand, forming the end part of a limb of various mammals, such as that on all four limbs of a monkey.
   • operated by or held in the hand.
     modifier noun: hand
     "hand luggage"
   • done or made manually rather than by machine.
     "hand signals"
   • informal
     a round of applause.
     "his fans gave him a big hand"
   • dated
     a pledge of marriage by a woman.
     "he wrote to request the hand of her daughter in marriage"
   
   
2. 2.
   something resembling a hand in form or position, in particular.

Thanks.

So which of those definitions apply to out of hand? I don't seeign any fitting the phrase. Thanks again.

 

[Moemg]

. Then a year later after my son turned Catholic they had a big church wedding in Poland with 80 people. It was a 2 day reception with band, disc jockey, food every hour ( a different course) and tons of booze. The total cost was 10k and the kids paid part and so did her parents. 8 years later they are still very happy. Things in Poland are cheap)

If my daughter ever marries again I will send her to Poland .

 

[Scuba]

It’s really crazy if you’re an attendant in a wedding. Everyone seems to have out of town bachelor/bachelorette party weekends, bridal showers, plus the wedding. Our neighbor’s DIL grew up here and has many close friends. A few years ago, she was in 8 weddings! When my best friend got married 2 years ago, DH & I spent several thousand on the various festivities, attire, plus a nice gift. Luckily all of our other friends are married so it was a once in a lifetime experience for us!

 

[skipro33]

First, I'm so glad I had boys.
Second, I'm so glad I was dirt poor when they married.

 

[Danmar]

As long as the money is spent willingly, so be it. Parents that are guilt-ed or extorted into it - not so cool.

Exactly. I paid for a very expensive wedding that I thought was a “waste”. But I promised many years before to do so. I could afford it and it was a lovely affair.

 

[kcowan]

We contributed 50% to our boys' weddings. It was worth it.

 

[gayl]

I paid for my DS' and DD' weddings, rehearsal dinners, and downpayments. My ex and his inlaws talk big but they know they don't have it. My DD' inlaws barely survive. But DD = $200 and a dress in her closet (backyard bbq) ~~~~ DS was equally cheap by today's standards. Both preferred downpayments as that's their future not up to 10 hrs in time (1 was a Polish wedding).

 

[Legally_dead]

My wife's best friend sent out save the dates for a wedding in Mexico. She also connected all her friends and family with a travel agent for travel plans. Then she visited the resort for the first time and decided she didn't like it. She changed the location to the states. We lost a $300 deposit so we didn't buy her a wedding present.

My best friend had a bachelor party in Vegas. His anticipated budget was $2,000, which included bottle service at a night club. He described the main perk of the bottle service being "you look cool." I had a baby during that trip, so didn't have to go. We gave him Dave Ramsey's FPU as a wedding present. His wife now calls him "Dave."

 

[aja8888]

My 37 year old DD is getting married for the first time in April. (Yes!!) We are covering the "event" and my guess is it will cost about $15 K. She is pretty conservative. We are renting a "wedding venue" place and my BIL is doing the ceremony vows (he did ours 22 years ago). We expect around 60 guests. I'll post up the expense tally in May.

 

[Souschef]

My best friend had a bachelor party in Vegas. His anticipated budget was $2,000, which included bottle service at a night club. He described the main perk of the bottle service being "you look cool." I had a baby during that trip, so didn't have to go. We gave him Dave Ramsey's FPU as a wedding present. His wife now calls him "Dave."

I had not heard of "bottle service" until I saw this post. I googled it and came up with this quote:
Want the ultimate experience in poseur chic? Just plop down a grand on a $50 bottle of booze and you can lord it over the plebs from your private booth..

 

[Moemg]

My daughter got married twelve years ago in upstate New York . I paid for most of the wedding . My ex did kick in for the photography and some of the booze . It was a lovely wedding in a hotel on the water .Total cost was around $18,000 . The in laws paid for the rehearsal dinner .I also bought the dress and veil .We picked out the dress together .It was one of the moments I will always cherish .

 

[Bestwifeever]

We had a very nice downtown wedding for DD and paid maybe $20k toward DS's. No one was invited who didn't know the kids well. I hope the guests had as much fun as DH and I did, and didn't spend the whole time tsk tsking over what they think the occasions cost. Both are still happily married in spite of the nice weddings, apparently.

 

[googily]

Our Vegas wedding in 2000 was probably about $20k, paid willingly (okay, mostly willingly) by my father. We did it at one of the big casinos, and did not really initially expect more than family, and ended up with 120 people. I told the bridesmaids to wear whatever black dress they wanted to wear, and we required nothing of anyone otherwise, and it was an absolute blast. The waiters were actually dancing during the reception.

My favorite photo of the night is my dad, clearly a sheet or two to the wind and with a huge smile on his face, being handed the bill by the wait staff captain.

Maybe it helped that DH and I were appropriately astonished that anyone would want to come, rather than being the sorts who expected everyone to bow and scrape for Our Day.

 

[FUEGO]

I think anyone should be able to spend whatever they want on a wedding.

I personally consider anything over $500 or $1000 or so to be a lot of money spent on what is basically a party, but that's just me. I figure when the day comes, we'll give our three kids a few thousand $$ each and suggest they make the most of it. Have a simple wedding, small reception and blow out honeymoon. Or buy a $3000 dress or whatever. My kids are pretty practical so I doubt they will want a $100k fairy tale wedding and would probably prefer a simple affair plus a paid off condo in town instead (if I was plopping $100k down on the table).

Our wedding 14 years ago was a pretty simple affair. We made money on it since the cash gifts and house cut of gambling (he11 yeah for tons of Asian people representing from DW's family!!) more than offset what we spent on groceries for the self-catering, a truckload of liquor and beer, and some basic chair and table rentals.

I think anyone should be able to spend whatever they want on a wedding.

 

[Amethyst]

The only way to keep the costs down is to trim the guest lists. Why does everybody the couple have ever known have to be there, anyway?

Our wedding was tiny (only about 20 guests) so the costs were fairly low, yet we managed to have very good food, real flowers, etc. I don't see how you can throw a decent party for 150+ people - even if it's not some fairy-tale, destination wedding - and not have it cost a fortune.

 

[Scrapr]

My So 's son is getting married and the bride said she was going to have a wedding for $10,000 . Right now the rehersal dinner alone is at $7,000.

Yeah, but rehearsal dinner is on the grooms family! So that doesn't count (in the brides head) toward a total

Mrs scrapr & I were driving past the joint we had our rehearsal dinner yesterday. She remarked that we had not been back there since. It's a landmark in Portland. Italian joint known for it's pizza. aka Pizza Parlor. Mrs Scrapr says she thinks my Mom was mad about that.

My cousin had a big wedding. Downtown at a landmark hotel. Black tie. Absolutely no idea on cost but had to be over $100k. Saw her in the grocery store a couple years later. She was a bit ashamed and sort of tried to avoid us. Divorced

 

[Souschef]

The only way to keep the costs down is to trim the guest lists. Why does everybody the couple have ever known have to be there, anyway?

The reason is that their "presents" are requested.
Which reminds me of my first wedding. My MIL invited some acquaintances of hers that were supposedly wealthy. She said,"They will give you a nice present". Well, they gave us a set of steak knives that came from a gas station. I never let her forget it

 

[Dawg52]

My niece had her wedding in Ireland 3 years ago. I thought it was a bit much asking family and friends to spend that much on attending a wedding. I admit, I wouldn't mind visiting Ireland but I declined. Plus I really don't get along with her mom and she would have been ramrodding the whole trip. I sent my niece a nice check for her wedding present and to get myself off the hook. Ha.

 

[FUEGO]

In our case, the huge guest list was my mother in law and my sister in law's idea. My wife and I didn't care a bit about the big wedding or most of the guests that showed up (other than the handful of immediate family and a few friends of course). We didn't even know most of the guests, and we snuck out early once the people we knew had left. As I recall we were in bed by 9-10 pm that night though the festivities continued well into the night. I don't recall our early departure being noticed or it being problematic

The huge guest list was in part to extract gifts from others that had received gifts from my parents in law in the past. My MIL had a ledger listing all the past gifts they had given to others, and they compared that to what we received from others as if it was a quid-pro-quo exchange between families. This is sadly the most organized bit of personal finance I've seen from my wife's side of the family ever and the mercantile nature of this ledger was ridiculous (but maybe it's a common thing??). Needless to say I did my part by shutting my mouth, smiling, and cutting the cake (and enjoying 14 years of a pretty great gal that popped out 3 kids of mine).

 

[REWahoo]

As I recall we were in bed by 9-10 pm that night though the festivities continued well into the night.

 

[Sunset]

My wife's best friend sent out save the dates for a wedding in Mexico. She also connected all her friends and family with a travel agent for travel plans. Then she visited the resort for the first time and decided she didn't like it. She changed the location to the states. We lost a $300 deposit so we didn't buy her a wedding present.

Wow, I'm shocked at the bride being so thoughtless, that is something one would see on that crazy tv show Bridezilla.

My best friend had a bachelor party in Vegas. His anticipated budget was $2,000, which included bottle service at a night club. He described the main perk of the bottle service being "you look cool." I had a baby during that trip, so didn't have to go. We gave him Dave Ramsey's FPU as a wedding present. His wife now calls him "Dave."

It's just amazing to me how folks who work at a job, throw money away on useless vastly overpriced things like bottle service.

 

[kgtest]

Got married in 2014 for under 10k. Worked out great because between in-laws and my folks they offered a 20k gift and we still paid for some things ourselves. I paid for my best man to come to our destination wedding, and I helped him out with an outfit, and I bought my outfit. I also bought some small gifts for the wedding party.

If I showed you the pictures you wouldn't believe. Private ocean-front estate, two photographers and a wedding planner, priest, hairdressers and our 8 guests. Our reception back home was for 75 guests, they all had a great time and we did not have booze, just a pig roast at a very nice park we rented.

After saying I do as the sunset onto the pacific, we went to the Four Seasons private bamboo room for dinner and drinks.

Took that $10k we had leftover and invested it. Seemed like the sensible thing to do. DW and I always discussed before making any wedding commitments that we didn't want to go into our marriage in debt, and we didn't.

Reasons we were able to keep it under 10,000:
1. We limited the guest list to 75
2. We picked a Sunday for our reception and shopped venues for a good deal
3. We eloped for the actual wedding, which added costs for some of our guests but decreased our overall costs
4. We didn't go too absurd on our wedding attire, and it was wear the theme colors, none of that everyone where matching everything, so not a lot of wardrobe renal or costs
5. We rode to and from our wedding/receptions in our personal vehicles
6. We did not have a DJ, but I did setup some background Hawaiian music at the reception, again without booze and DJ people still said they had a fun time at my wedding, I personally think folks remember it because it was remarkably humble.

Before I got married I sort of reached out to some good buds. I recall one stating "Dude the only thing people are going to remember about your wedding, is if you had booze and where it was...and some won't even remember where it was." SO I decided not to have booze in the hopes folks would remember where we actually had the wedding reception.

 

[atmsmshr]

i agree weddings have become a venue for couples (but mostly women) to have a Disney experience and call attention to themselves. There is a lot of oneupsmanship as every wedding seems to be bigger than the last. Having had to fly or drive great distances to some of these, I will say I have had enough. And yes many of the marriages end in divorce within a couple of years. I propose a new tradition: if the marriage lasts less than 10 years the couple must return all gifts and travel costs incurred by the wedding guests. And also send out letters apologizing to the guests for needlessly inconveniencing them. And if it was a church wedding, go back to the church and ask for forgiveness for breaking their vows to God. I have a few other ideas but as you can see this is a sore spot for me so I’ll just leave it there. LOL.

A friend of DS recently married with a blend of two ceremonies: western and Thai. Part of the Thai ceremony was the groom's father presenting a basket of gold and cash to the bride's father. This amount was negotiated, and was about the price of a new car. This offering (the 'Sin') was to be held for something like 5 years or until the birth of the first child when it would be given to the couple. If they divorced, the bride's family kept the amount.

Very civilized - I plan on this for when DD gets married.

 

[Amethyst]

That definitely would not have worked for either of my weddings. The first marriage, we were grateful to get coffee mugs, Pyrex bakeware and bedsheets The second time, we already had what we needed and the guests were hardly loaded. I recall we got a coffee-table book, an obviously regifted vase, a couple of handmade items. Everything was clearly from sale tables and one item was labeled Amway!

Edit: It now occurs to me that the guests probably figured we would soon get divorced, due to our age difference. Sadly, that was a long time ago and most of them are now dead, so they will never know for sure!

The reason is that their "presents" are requested.
:

 

[Gumby]

When the young wife and I got married in 1984, her dad gave her a $3k budget and she came in under budget. She designed and made her own dress (that was her profession at the time), as well as all the bridesmaid dresses and her mother's dress. We got married in the morning and the reception was lunch, so it was less expensive and not so much booze was poured. There were about 100 people in attendance, about 90% of whom I did not know.

That was back in the day when people gave you physical things, so we got our share of toasters and dishes and such, along with enough cash to buy a queen bed.

There was no rehearsal dinner, as I was at sea for six months before the wedding. I made it ashore and to her hometown late the night before the wedding and got married the next morning without knowing a single thing about what was in store.