Weddings: how far would you go, how much would you spend?
May 21, 2010
Speaking of weddings ….
The furthest distance I’ve ever traveled for a wedding was Miami. [2348 miles]
The furthest distance I’ve been invited to go is Greece (no go, sadly). [6900 miles]
Before age 25, the furthest I’d ever gone was Atlanta, and that was also the furthest I’d been invited to travel. [2190 miles]
The lowest cost (to me) destination wedding attended: Nashville [$350]
The highest cost (to me) destination wedding attended: Miami [$500]
The lowest cost (for them) wedding attended: Los Angeles [under $100]
The highest cost (for them) wedding attended: tie between Miami and Napa [both were six-figure weddings]
ERghh. OK, I am not a festive person and I had a $32.00 wedding–most of which went for the license and German measles test….I think destination weddings are an awful imposition on guests. And uber-expensive weddings are a fairly recent phenomenon. They really go against my value system, in all senses.
So far, I’ve not even had to buy a flight for a wedding (but I will this fall). The furthest I traveled? 12 hours by car, so probably about 1200 miles.
The wedding this fall will be both the most expensive wedding for me (except my own! Ha.) and probably the most extravagant/expensive wedding for the bride/groom.
Driving distance – and back – in a weekend. If I have to get on a plane, I think I would just send a card and a gift. If someone wants to spend a small fortune getting hitched, it’s their money. Expecting others to shell out big style is just self-centred, in my opinion. Theoretically, you want people there to share your happy occasion, it’s not about how much of a haul you get. Unless you live in Hawaii, however, having a wedding there is about great photos and hopefully good memories, but not about sharing the occasion with family and friends — unless they are all super-wealthy. In which case, money is no object, right?
The rich kids my son went to school with are given to destination weddings. One of his college classmates invited all and sundry to her wedding in Tahiti. His cousin was married in Scotland, but she had an excuse: the groom was Scottish.
The rationale for dropping six figures on a wedding escapes me. Is the idea that if you’ve spent that much on getting married, maybe you won’t divorce? You have a hundred grand in student and credit-card debt, so another hundred grand won’t matter, ’cause you can’t pay the bills anyway??
I’m old enough to remember when big, expensive weddings went out of style. Niche magazines devoted to selling people on vast celebrations with every expensive accoutrement stopped publishing. People wanted to be married in the forest in their jeans and tie-died shirts. More straight types preferred a nice backyard wedding. The pendulum has swung, I guess. Which is another cliche for nothing’s new under the sun… 😉
Can I just say that you’ve been to a lot of weddings?
The furthest I went for a wedding was in Pasadena. Ahaha. Although…once all my international friends start to get married, that will change. Better start saving for it now!
Awww, no Greece anymore? Sounded so enchanting. Sorry to hear. If I had the money, I would spend it to go anywhere. But I’ve done Hawaii. Costs… $3,000 for two for all.
One flew home from Europe for a wedding. I was in it though, so it wasn’t just attending. That was 5015.8 miles.
And I’ve drive 931 miles to attend a wedding.
Also, I don’t understand six figure weddings. At all.
The furthest I’ve traveled for a wedding was from Washington State to Cayman Island (all 4 of us: me, husband, 2 kids) for my sister’s wedding. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. Needless to say, we spent several thousands of dollars – much more than my own wedding, which I spent $50 on.
The closer the friend, the farther I will travel.
The Borrower summarized my feelings – the deeper the relationship, the more I’m willing to spend to be there for whatever (weddings, hard times, etc).
Our wedding cost $3000 and was split between his parents, my parents, and us so nobody went into debt and we had a really awesome day…relaxing and I don’t think any guests were too put out since we had it centrally located a university campus in Houston. I had some family members that flew in (all of hubby’s family and most of mine live in and around Houston), but I made sure that those family members were coming because they wanted to…
I was invited to a Las Vegas wedding but we live in Houston and would have had to take 2 vacation days from work. It would have been more than $1000 for the whole ordeal for us, so we didn’t go.
Obviously it’s up to the bride and groom where to hold the wedding, but I didn’t appreciate the guilt-trip I got for bowing out. Just because they wanted a destination wedding didn’t mean I wanted to pay to be there…
A friend of mine is getting married in Seattle in July – I’m really hoping we’ll be able to swing the trip.
the farthest I ever went was about 200 km. Haha. I don’t know that many people getting married.