Good news for me: wedding costs are apparently down 33%. Bad news: this seems to mean that I am going to have to hand craft invitations and centerpieces. A gifted florist, I am not.
My theory is, if anyone even notices the centerpieces, the band isn't good enough. It's all band-liquor-food (in various orders depending on individual tastes) from the standpoint of the guests. You can wear jeans to your wedding and have the reception in the basement of the firehouse if you nail those three.
I agree, MC, but why have a band? Good/great music is practically free. Food and liquor are what makes a party pleasing. All the other trappings are mostly irrelevant to the guests themselves.
Depends how serious your crowd is about dancing, and about live interactive performance in general. A good wedding band can make a party, and I would definitely spend for an excellent band before I'd go for more elaborate food. (Assuming the food had at least reached the level of good.) Both would trump flowers, cards, favors, expensive dresses, etc. But I would take a good DJ over a bad band.
The worst, music-wise, is to try to impose very specific tastes on a diverse crowd. If your playlist is cool jazz and everyone wants to hit the dance floor for four or five hours, you've got a mismatch.
Unless Yancey is suggesting Limewire, etc. for the source of all the music, intellectual properties aren't an issue. It's a private function, the music isn't the reason people are there, and no profits are being made. It's been a while since I studied intellectual property law and entertainment law and I'm not a lawyer, so I may be missing something.
As I mentioned in the engagement announcement post, my wife and I were married in Jamaica. 4 guests, jam box with some Bob Marley, lovely scenery, and only spent about $4000. That's significantly more than Rob's $30, but it's still less than many suggestions I've seen in these threads. Make the wedding about you and just throw a party, in your own honor, for your friends. High satisfaction and lower cost than wedding/reception combined into one activity.
Thing is, a musician's gotta eat, too. That's my real beef. Those music lessons, instruments, and the technical gear to perform are expensive. Not to mention the investment in time.
I was once an aspiring musician. Went on to earn a BBA with a focus on the music business as I realized my performing and songwriting abilities were never going to pay the bills. Unfortunately, I was in school as the digital file revolution was occurring. I'd go to class everyday and listen to the professors talk about how many people had been laid off that day. I ended up focusing on the business admin side instead of the studio side.
Having said all that, I sympathize with the "musician's gotta eat" side, I was only speaking to the IP side.
You're getting at the heart of my sorrow; I don't see recording sales as a viable future for most people in the industry. We've had some success in the software side.
Most of the good musicians I know either teach or tour Europe, where many of the governments pay for original performance. (I know mostly jazz players.)
I see more hope for income from performance as music gets both tribal and global; an artist or band can develop a world-wide following of a relatively small tribe that will pay to see them.
But those wedding gigs matter for a lot of people. The demise of the $30,000 wedding is gonna hit the future of the developing talent pool hard.
I agree that in order to have a memorable and enjoyable wedding the most important elements from the standpoint of your guests are: the food, the music, and the booze.
So, can you imagine the fun I had recently when I was a guest at a "dry" wedding reception? Yawn! The reception felt more like a business gathering than a wedding celebration.
You know what?....forget about the food and the music, just make sure that you have plenty of booze on hand. Makes for a great pary!
I'm with MC. Indeed, depending on the size of the reception and the demographics, you can probably skip the band as the wife and I did. Great food and plenty of good alcohol pretty much do the trick. Our flower budget consisted of:
I agree with you on the food and wine, but I'd go the other way on the flowers. Boutonnieres for the groom, possibly also the two groomsmen and two fathers; but skip the bouquets entirely. I never found a natural way to hold the bouquet, and it seemed the flowertoddler put it to its highest and best use: bang it on the floor and laugh.
Bottles of wine and candles beat floral concoctions as centerpieces.
Brian Tropiano is a good DC photographer, and I can assure he has photographed at least one wedding in which the bride's hair was turning gray and the groom was losing his, and the photos were taken in downtown DC (the portfolio features blonds in rural small towns).
We did balloons instead of flowers and emphasized the "party" element. We also bought the wedding cake from a Chinese bakery that built and delivered the cake for about 1/3 the price of the competition. We had a DJ with a huge inventory of CDs and good equipment. Oh, and an open bar, which ended up being extended by the hotel because the power went out for awhile and they wanted to "make good".
Food was standard hotel catering food of steak and salmon.
A good time was had by all, and ten years later, it's still the talk of the family. We paid cash for the whole thing, and it was under $6K for 100 people.
Also, we skipped the ceremony itself; we were married by a justice of the peace at the county courthouse. For various reasons having to do with visa issues and taxes, we had our reception about three months after our wedding. Nobody cared.
And that's about what it all comes down to. The absurdly expensive weddings tend to be money spent on the participants - the guests want to be happy for the two of you and have a party, not necessarily in that order.
We told the bakery that the cake was for a Bar Mitzvah and it cost about 40% of what they would have charged for a wedding.
Good food, lots of booze, a good DJ and a chance to actually interact with your guests make a good wedding.
Neither my wife not I are particularly arts-n-crafty but with some nice paper and envelopes from a gift store and a laser printer we made pretty respectable invites and saved a much of cash, which was instead spent on booze.
For wedding invitations, go to www.indianweddingcard.com. Don't be fooled by the name - they do all kinds of invites, not just for Indian weddings. We got our cards from there - 100 invites for $230 dollars including shipping and samples. The invitations were pretty elaborate with two insets. And the cards are shipped to you already put together.
Ooo - and a cupcake tree. Especially good if you and your other half have different tastes like my wife and I. And cheap (less than $500 for 130 cupcakes and a 7 inch pistachio cake including delivery and setup in NYC). And no need to have someone on hand who knows how to cut the wedding cake (apparently one of life's more difficult tasks involving concentric circles and the skill of a surgeon). This was a factor for us because we didn't have a catering company handle our wedding.
I must say, I didn't spend a fortune at my wedding on flowers or a DJ. For the DJ we rented the equipment from a local music store for $150 and then hired a college kid who would DJ college parties and knew how to use the equipment to play the CDs. And the CDs were ours and we put together the playlist ourself. The flowers we spent $1000 on (almost exactly) and then the event after our wedding purchased the centerpieces from us for $350.
On the other hand, invitations were very important to me for some reason and we spent $1500 at Kate's Papere. I agree with the above, my advice for a wedding is this:
It's a party, and a celebration. Spend the money on the things that are important to making the event a success.
Also, it's not your day. You are not the most important person. Chill out. Things don't have to be perfect. Things will go wrong. Don't stress about the stupid stuff.
Are you committing to a person you love? Are your family and friends there to support you? If yes to both of these then that's all you really need. The rest is gravy.
Centerpieces are really simple, if you can figure out what makes a good one. My wife used lanterns, candles, etc. Hobby Lobby and Michael's are your friend, if you can make it out to suburbia.
My wife and I were one of those couples that wanted to try and do everything ourselves. I think our guests appreciated the personal touches though be prepared for some major stress if you go that route. For the flowers and food we hired professionals. The food especially is just one of those things that is very hard to do on your own and who needs that stress on top of an already hectic day?
I second Girish's comment in that you should investigate "ethnic" providers of wedding/reception items; Chinese and Indians (and probably others - these are just the two groups I know most about business-wise) are far more sensible about hard-core haggling on prices, and don't buy into the "it's a special day, so shut up and open your wallet" mindset that too many non-immigrant Americans get into.
Go ahead and haggle, get price quotes, and force people to match. Don't worry about some random person on the phone thinking you're "cheap"; they want your business, especially these days, and they'll deal.
As for centerpieces, ours were balloon bouquets, which were cheap and fun, and made for good pictures. We also did the disposable camera thing (this was before digital cameras were common) and that worked well, along with my brother wandering around taking random snaps. Most sucked, a few were great...
My wife and I neglected centerpieces. Instead, our families found a bunch of pictures of the two of us from when we were growing up. Since we had no history together (we met on a plane flight; yes, seriously) our friends and relatives appreciated the chance to see the other side of the family from our younger days.
Bonus: We now have a bunch of pictures of ourselves gathered around the house in nice picture frames!
A wedding is a nice party that you throw for all your friends. Treat it as such, and everyone will have a good time.
Congratulations!
As the comments demonstrate, the actual cost of a wedding is limited to the license and officiant fees. Everything else is discretionary. A wedding is utilitarianism in action; get out there and maximize happiness.
Congratulations and good luck! There are lots of tips online from other brides for getting better prices - ex. I got my bouquet from Whole Foods and centerpieces were arranged with vases from IKEA and flowers from Costco. Also, make sure you check with BBB for any vendor you choose BEFORE you pay them any deposit. There are lots of scams out there. In the end though, if you have fun, everyone else will too.
One of the things my bride-to-be and I did that turned out to be more inspired than usual was to contact a local daycare and ask if a couple of their people wanted to make some good coin for four or five hours' worth of work. We hired a community centre that had an annex off of the main banquet / meeting hall, where the younger children of the attendant guests could hang out with the daycare folks, being entertained, eating mac-'n-cheese instead of whatever the caterer was providing, etc.
Allowed the adults to really relax and concentrate on having a good time, rather than worrying about / herding their children.
The other good idea? A "semi"-cash bar (beer and wine only). [As the old joke goes, if I'd had a *full* cash bar at my wedding, some of my friends would still be there.] Kept anyone from getting too much of a snootful, but also allowed the more indulgent to give 'er. To compensate, the beer was from a high-end local producer, and the wine was also local from a producer that was considered "colourful," to say the least, so you had good conversation fodder if nothing else.
Total cost? About six grand in 1992 Canadian dollars. That would have been -- what? -- about $1.98 U.S.? ;-)
I've mentioned before that I was married in a former interrogation room in the LA county office building (sheriff had moved to a different location). I think it cost $30 or something, plus a couple bucks for parking.
Not as much fun as as drinking and swing dancing, but it seems to have done the job.
Agree with all the above except the cash bar. Make it a tea party or a kegger before you resort to charging for drinks. It's a private party, not a night out in a public place, and you are the hostess. Get what you can afford and don't charge the guests.
For my daughter's wedding, we did the work ourselves, or at least she did most of it. We had it in our backyard, with rented tables & linen & stuff, and I arranged for a local b'bcue place to cater the meal. And we had an open bar, a full bar. Used a DJ for the music.
Total cost was around $6K about 10 years ago.
Oh, yeah, there were 180-200 friends and relatives there.
Better news: the length of the marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding.
Now that is a study I'd love to see a link to. I believe it, but actual evidence would be really nifty.
My theory is, if anyone even notices the centerpieces, the band isn't good enough. It's all band-liquor-food (in various orders depending on individual tastes) from the standpoint of the guests. You can wear jeans to your wedding and have the reception in the basement of the firehouse if you nail those three.
In other words, it's a party.
I agree, MC, but why have a band? Good/great music is practically free. Food and liquor are what makes a party pleasing. All the other trappings are mostly irrelevant to the guests themselves.
Depends how serious your crowd is about dancing, and about live interactive performance in general. A good wedding band can make a party, and I would definitely spend for an excellent band before I'd go for more elaborate food. (Assuming the food had at least reached the level of good.) Both would trump flowers, cards, favors, expensive dresses, etc. But I would take a good DJ over a bad band.
The worst, music-wise, is to try to impose very specific tastes on a diverse crowd. If your playlist is cool jazz and everyone wants to hit the dance floor for four or five hours, you've got a mismatch.
being married to a musician, I can't tell you how sad this comment makes me.
I could give you dozens of reasons, starting with intellectual property and moving on.
Unless Yancey is suggesting Limewire, etc. for the source of all the music, intellectual properties aren't an issue. It's a private function, the music isn't the reason people are there, and no profits are being made. It's been a while since I studied intellectual property law and entertainment law and I'm not a lawyer, so I may be missing something.
As I mentioned in the engagement announcement post, my wife and I were married in Jamaica. 4 guests, jam box with some Bob Marley, lovely scenery, and only spent about $4000. That's significantly more than Rob's $30, but it's still less than many suggestions I've seen in these threads. Make the wedding about you and just throw a party, in your own honor, for your friends. High satisfaction and lower cost than wedding/reception combined into one activity.
Mine (28 years ago,) cost about $500.
Thing is, a musician's gotta eat, too. That's my real beef. Those music lessons, instruments, and the technical gear to perform are expensive. Not to mention the investment in time.
I was once an aspiring musician. Went on to earn a BBA with a focus on the music business as I realized my performing and songwriting abilities were never going to pay the bills. Unfortunately, I was in school as the digital file revolution was occurring. I'd go to class everyday and listen to the professors talk about how many people had been laid off that day. I ended up focusing on the business admin side instead of the studio side.
Having said all that, I sympathize with the "musician's gotta eat" side, I was only speaking to the IP side.
You're getting at the heart of my sorrow; I don't see recording sales as a viable future for most people in the industry. We've had some success in the software side.
Most of the good musicians I know either teach or tour Europe, where many of the governments pay for original performance. (I know mostly jazz players.)
I see more hope for income from performance as music gets both tribal and global; an artist or band can develop a world-wide following of a relatively small tribe that will pay to see them.
But those wedding gigs matter for a lot of people. The demise of the $30,000 wedding is gonna hit the future of the developing talent pool hard.
I agree that in order to have a memorable and enjoyable wedding the most important elements from the standpoint of your guests are: the food, the music, and the booze.
So, can you imagine the fun I had recently when I was a guest at a "dry" wedding reception? Yawn! The reception felt more like a business gathering than a wedding celebration.
You know what?....forget about the food and the music, just make sure that you have plenty of booze on hand. Makes for a great pary!
I'm with MC. Indeed, depending on the size of the reception and the demographics, you can probably skip the band as the wife and I did. Great food and plenty of good alcohol pretty much do the trick. Our flower budget consisted of:
- Bouquet, 1 each
- Boutonniere, 1 each.
In hindsight, the Boutonniere was overkill.
I agree with you on the food and wine, but I'd go the other way on the flowers. Boutonnieres for the groom, possibly also the two groomsmen and two fathers; but skip the bouquets entirely. I never found a natural way to hold the bouquet, and it seemed the flowertoddler put it to its highest and best use: bang it on the floor and laugh.
Bottles of wine and candles beat floral concoctions as centerpieces.
Brian Tropiano is a good DC photographer, and I can assure he has photographed at least one wedding in which the bride's hair was turning gray and the groom was losing his, and the photos were taken in downtown DC (the portfolio features blonds in rural small towns).
We did balloons instead of flowers and emphasized the "party" element. We also bought the wedding cake from a Chinese bakery that built and delivered the cake for about 1/3 the price of the competition. We had a DJ with a huge inventory of CDs and good equipment. Oh, and an open bar, which ended up being extended by the hotel because the power went out for awhile and they wanted to "make good".
Food was standard hotel catering food of steak and salmon.
A good time was had by all, and ten years later, it's still the talk of the family. We paid cash for the whole thing, and it was under $6K for 100 people.
Also, we skipped the ceremony itself; we were married by a justice of the peace at the county courthouse. For various reasons having to do with visa issues and taxes, we had our reception about three months after our wedding. Nobody cared.
Nobody cared.
And that's about what it all comes down to. The absurdly expensive weddings tend to be money spent on the participants - the guests want to be happy for the two of you and have a party, not necessarily in that order.
We told the bakery that the cake was for a Bar Mitzvah and it cost about 40% of what they would have charged for a wedding.
Good food, lots of booze, a good DJ and a chance to actually interact with your guests make a good wedding.
Neither my wife not I are particularly arts-n-crafty but with some nice paper and envelopes from a gift store and a laser printer we made pretty respectable invites and saved a much of cash, which was instead spent on booze.
For wedding invitations, go to www.indianweddingcard.com. Don't be fooled by the name - they do all kinds of invites, not just for Indian weddings. We got our cards from there - 100 invites for $230 dollars including shipping and samples. The invitations were pretty elaborate with two insets. And the cards are shipped to you already put together.
Have a great wedding!
Girish
Ooo - and a cupcake tree. Especially good if you and your other half have different tastes like my wife and I. And cheap (less than $500 for 130 cupcakes and a 7 inch pistachio cake including delivery and setup in NYC). And no need to have someone on hand who knows how to cut the wedding cake (apparently one of life's more difficult tasks involving concentric circles and the skill of a surgeon). This was a factor for us because we didn't have a catering company handle our wedding.
g
I must say, I didn't spend a fortune at my wedding on flowers or a DJ. For the DJ we rented the equipment from a local music store for $150 and then hired a college kid who would DJ college parties and knew how to use the equipment to play the CDs. And the CDs were ours and we put together the playlist ourself. The flowers we spent $1000 on (almost exactly) and then the event after our wedding purchased the centerpieces from us for $350.
On the other hand, invitations were very important to me for some reason and we spent $1500 at Kate's Papere. I agree with the above, my advice for a wedding is this:
It's a party, and a celebration. Spend the money on the things that are important to making the event a success.
Also, it's not your day. You are not the most important person. Chill out. Things don't have to be perfect. Things will go wrong. Don't stress about the stupid stuff.
Are you committing to a person you love? Are your family and friends there to support you? If yes to both of these then that's all you really need. The rest is gravy.
Centerpieces are really simple, if you can figure out what makes a good one. My wife used lanterns, candles, etc. Hobby Lobby and Michael's are your friend, if you can make it out to suburbia.
As a guy I'm a bit embarrassed I know about this, but for some cheap but super-cool wedding ideas try this:
http://www.younghouselove.com/wedding-album/
My wife and I were one of those couples that wanted to try and do everything ourselves. I think our guests appreciated the personal touches though be prepared for some major stress if you go that route. For the flowers and food we hired professionals. The food especially is just one of those things that is very hard to do on your own and who needs that stress on top of an already hectic day?
I second Girish's comment in that you should investigate "ethnic" providers of wedding/reception items; Chinese and Indians (and probably others - these are just the two groups I know most about business-wise) are far more sensible about hard-core haggling on prices, and don't buy into the "it's a special day, so shut up and open your wallet" mindset that too many non-immigrant Americans get into.
Go ahead and haggle, get price quotes, and force people to match. Don't worry about some random person on the phone thinking you're "cheap"; they want your business, especially these days, and they'll deal.
As for centerpieces, ours were balloon bouquets, which were cheap and fun, and made for good pictures. We also did the disposable camera thing (this was before digital cameras were common) and that worked well, along with my brother wandering around taking random snaps. Most sucked, a few were great...
Congrats Megan. Wish you the best. You turned out to be one of the best out of GSB. Love your business/finance articles.
Congratulations on your impending nuptials!
My wife and I neglected centerpieces. Instead, our families found a bunch of pictures of the two of us from when we were growing up. Since we had no history together (we met on a plane flight; yes, seriously) our friends and relatives appreciated the chance to see the other side of the family from our younger days.
Bonus: We now have a bunch of pictures of ourselves gathered around the house in nice picture frames!
A wedding is a nice party that you throw for all your friends. Treat it as such, and everyone will have a good time.
Congratulations!
As the comments demonstrate, the actual cost of a wedding is limited to the license and officiant fees. Everything else is discretionary. A wedding is utilitarianism in action; get out there and maximize happiness.
Be careful.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/14/italy-wedding-bouquet-airplane
Congratulations and good luck! There are lots of tips online from other brides for getting better prices - ex. I got my bouquet from Whole Foods and centerpieces were arranged with vases from IKEA and flowers from Costco. Also, make sure you check with BBB for any vendor you choose BEFORE you pay them any deposit. There are lots of scams out there. In the end though, if you have fun, everyone else will too.
One of the things my bride-to-be and I did that turned out to be more inspired than usual was to contact a local daycare and ask if a couple of their people wanted to make some good coin for four or five hours' worth of work. We hired a community centre that had an annex off of the main banquet / meeting hall, where the younger children of the attendant guests could hang out with the daycare folks, being entertained, eating mac-'n-cheese instead of whatever the caterer was providing, etc.
Allowed the adults to really relax and concentrate on having a good time, rather than worrying about / herding their children.
The other good idea? A "semi"-cash bar (beer and wine only). [As the old joke goes, if I'd had a *full* cash bar at my wedding, some of my friends would still be there.] Kept anyone from getting too much of a snootful, but also allowed the more indulgent to give 'er. To compensate, the beer was from a high-end local producer, and the wine was also local from a producer that was considered "colourful," to say the least, so you had good conversation fodder if nothing else.
Total cost? About six grand in 1992 Canadian dollars. That would have been -- what? -- about $1.98 U.S.? ;-)
I've mentioned before that I was married in a former interrogation room in the LA county office building (sheriff had moved to a different location). I think it cost $30 or something, plus a couple bucks for parking.
Not as much fun as as drinking and swing dancing, but it seems to have done the job.
Agree with all the above except the cash bar. Make it a tea party or a kegger before you resort to charging for drinks. It's a private party, not a night out in a public place, and you are the hostess. Get what you can afford and don't charge the guests.
Heh, I think I led that trend.
Fortunately, I was blessed with bride who possessed an uncommon mix of beauty and practicality.
For my daughter's wedding, we did the work ourselves, or at least she did most of it. We had it in our backyard, with rented tables & linen & stuff, and I arranged for a local b'bcue place to cater the meal. And we had an open bar, a full bar. Used a DJ for the music.
Total cost was around $6K about 10 years ago.
Oh, yeah, there were 180-200 friends and relatives there.
As has been said, it's a party!