The HuffPo wedding page recently began a campaign entitled Take Back Your Wedding. It’s about how you don’t have to bow to the pressure to have a traditional wedding blowout your family and friends want.
Today they are running an infographic on what else you could spend that much money on.
Taking the average cost of a wedding in eleven major cities across the country, they tell you what else that money could buy. For instance, the $65,824 for a traditional wedding in New York City could get you two year’s rent on a one-bedroom apartment in the East Village. In Dallas the $28,717 could get you 164 pairs of cowboy boots, just in case it’s your ambition in life to be the Texan Imelda Marcos.
Now you all know that I’m foursquare in favor of bridal budget sanity. I believe strongly in not spending more money on a wedding than you have to spend. I’m big on making the day personal to you rather than a set of traditions followed for the purpose of not upsetting people who aren’t the ones getting married, and in favor of dumping the trappings that don’t matter much to you personally. So if you would truly rather buy 32,715 beignets from Cafe du Monde than hold a traditional wedding, I will be the first person to have your back… and help you dispose of your beignet surplus.
But really? If you’ve got the money and want to spend it on a wedding, I will also be the first person in your corner. Your money, your priorities. Your choice.
It is my firm belief that a wedding will cost precisely what you are willing to spend on it. Whether you have a potluck backyard gathering for ten or a million dollar extravaganza in an exotic location where you fly in four hundred of your nearest and dearest, if you can pay for it and it makes you happy, then that’s what you should do.
The value of your wedding isn’t something that can be measured entirely in cold dollars and cents or comparison of how many hands of blackjack the same money would buy.
Base your budget decisions on your value system. And don’t let anyone else tell you what that is.