People have a lot of opinions about money.
In our "Money Mic" series, we hand over the podium to someone with a strong opinion on a financial topic. These are their views, not ours, but we welcome your responses.
Today, one married woman tells us why she thinks that weddings are not only not the best day of your life, but also a huge waste of money.
I'm usually not one to give Dr. Phil any credence; I hate that self-righteous, twangy, moustachioed cue-ball. But he did say one thing that struck me as genius.
A woman on his show was pouring some huge amount of money into her wedding, and as a reason for this irresponsible, childish behavior, she said, "But I've always dreamed of my wedding."
"Well, I've always dreamed of playing in the NBA," he told her, invoking his most patronizing sing-song so it sounded like enn-bee-aaaaay. "That doesn't mean I get to suit up and play."
Point taken. When I was 9, I thought I was going to marry a horse, for heaven's sake. (Wait. Actually, I kind of did that; my husband is 6"4.) Just because we were brainwashed into thinking a wedding is the ultimate entitlement doesn't mean we have to act on it.
I Learned Better the Second Time Around
I've had two weddings. One cost about $20,000 and had 150 guests. It was really fun, and I cut a lot of corners and was proud of how little I (my parents) spent. The second time around, there was no way I was going to ask for their financial input yet again. The total cost was $6,000, it was just as fun, and we had the rest of our savings for the three months of unpaid leave I ended up having to take a few months later to care for our premature baby.
Now, I realize putting those things in the same paragraph might seem unfair, but it's actually the perfect way to illustrate what I am talking about. Because maybe you're a bajillionaire with stacks of money placed together to form an end-table on which you have a lamp that burns $100 bills, in which case, go on with your bad self at Lake Como across from George Clooney.
Or maybe you're just a regular woman who really does have a secret desire for Your Day and you need to be talked down. So I'll say it again: Because we kept the wedding to a reasonable party level, we had a big enough savings cushion to get us through the worst health crisis of our lives (we hope).
And that is the correct priority to keep in mind when planning your wedding.
It Was Not the Best Day of Our Lives
Look, I get it. Any overhyped event can make you anxious enough to turn into a 'zilla of some kind -- I've known Prom-zillas, Christmas-zillas and even a Bris-zilla. You must resist the hype and focus on the fact that no matter how beautiful an event it is, it's Just. One. Day.
I don't know if I speak for every wife when I say this, but honestly, when I look back on my wedding pictures, the main emotion I feel is incredulous -- that my husband and I had no idea of the challenges we were facing, that we barely knew each other, that I wish I had professional portraits that weren't so obviously bridal shots and oh my God, my dress was more low-cut than I realized.
It was not the best day of our lives. It was an amazing party and probably the best day of our lives up till then, but we've had days since that blew that one out of the water. And some of them didn't cost nothin'.
A Wedding Costs a House Down Payment
Enough preaching. These are the numbers. According to CostOfWedding.com, which is produced by a market-research company collecting information for the wedding industry, the average wedding in the U.S. costs about $25,631, possibly more depending on where you live (here in the Bay Area, it goes up to more than $40,000). That is a down payment on a very nice house here -- or the whole house, in large swaths of the country -- and an amount many claim they just can't manage to save up.
So ask yourself: You want to take that amount and blow it on a one-day party, or you want to use it to create an investment that'll end up paying your kids' tuition if you play it right? And if your answer is the former, holy crap. Are you bipolar?
The website goes on to list all the expenses you should take into account when planning a wedding. Things like gifts for the parents, wedding favors, a "traditional leather bound album" for the photos, flower-girl petals. According to the Association of Wedding Professionals, the wedding industry nets about $86 billion per year. That's billion with a B.
That is a lot of people counting on you getting starry-eyed about your wedding. Just like Las Vegas counts on chumps who think they're going to beat the craps table, and the tobacco industry counts on weak-willed copycats who feel rebellious when they emulate Courtney Love.
It's an industry. It wants your money. Don't give in to it. This idea that you deserve a wedding is not the point; of course you deserve a wonderful day. But what you deserve even more is financial security and a debt-free future. So plan a wedding based in reality, and who you are and what kind of wife you want to be: supportive, smart and with two feet firmly in reality.
You're not a princess, princess. You're a smart cookie. Trust me, that's so much better.
Amy Keyishian has been a staff writer for Cosmopolitan Magazine, a freelance writer for Glamour, Self, Maxim and other magazines, and now blogs for Learnvest as well as Recipe.com and Kveller. She lives with her family in San Francisco.Â
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And great.
The best part was how the casino preacher was unprepared to deviate from his standard speech. So he held up our simple silver bands and said:
These rings will represent your love, they will never tarnish, they .... Blah blah blah.
And I thought, "of course they'll tarnish. They are silver." and I glanced at him to see if he'd noticed and caught him glancing at me to see if I'd noticed.
And we looked into each others eyes with little grins knowing that we were both thinking **the exact same thing** and that we both knew the other was thinking it and knew that the other knew we knew ...
Two minds one train of thought.
Perfect start to a marriage.
Cost less than a grand including travel, clothes, and lodgings. Highly recommend it.
And seriously. Paying off your house is much, MUCH more important than frivolity. No amount of party favors will add any gravitas to your vows. If anything, the debt will endanger your union as most divorces are due to financial strain.
Spending money on a wedding that you can't afford is a very different thing than blowing excess on it.
I've been proudly planning weddings for 17 years and I've seen more tears of joy than you can possibly imagine. Pity that you're so blinded by your own bitterness that you feel the need to mock others pathways to the creation of wonderful memories.
A good day sure. Best?
Yikes.
I would not ask you to look beyond your self interest.
I think you just described a great way to identify which of your friends doesn't actually care about you. Dump the complainers and don't look back.
I guess it depends on how you look at weddings.
To me, a wedding is a celebration. Celebrations should be fun. While it is not the case that the more money spent equates to a more fun wedding, there will be a minimum amount required so that its not... blah.
Because a couple hundred years ago new inventions put a whole bunch of men our of work by reducing the need for manual labor. They turned around and put a whole bunch of women out of work by stealing our jobs in turn.
That shirt? The one you are wearing right now? Before the industrial revolution it would have been made by hand in a cottage by a woman. Now it's made in a factory by a machine. All of cottage industry moved from women at home to men in factories.
And cottage industry up to that point had been almost all the skilled labor jobs in existence. Textiles, soap, food preservation, water purification, pottery ... Men did grunt work like plowing and minding herds. Women did craft work. Blacksmiths were a special exception.
So for a couple generations the things traditionally taught to daughters became more and more pointless. Our practical skills ceased to matter. Knitting is now an adorable hobby, not the only thing keeping your husband from freezing in the winter.
Wedding talk filled the void as the job of "mother" became the only female occupation left.
You can justify anything. If you want a big wedding, go fo it, but think about the opportiunity costs first, at least. If ten years in the future seems like a long time, you might want to practice more longterm planning, because it will be here before you know it.
Go to a financial site like bankrate or similar with financial calculators and see the effect of compound interest on whatever amount of money you were planning to allot for the wedding.
Compound interest is energizing.
My sis and her hubby paid for most of the wedding themselves. It was beautiful, tasteful, and thankfully over.