Marriage and the Power of Divorce

Most of our gifts were either received at the wedding shower or mailed. Although like I said, we only had like 14 people at our wedding so maybe that makes it different.

The close friends of mine that have gotten married had destination weddings in Costa Rica or Jamaica, and requested no gifts. Which makes sense, it would be fucking asinine to expect gifts after your friends are spending $2,500 to get to your wedding.

The other weddings I've been to I've just made a habit of getting on to their gift registry and buying them a set of steak knives and beer mugs (which add up to around $100-150 generally as everyone always picks high end shit), with the card saying "I look forward to being invited over for steak and beers!" or something to that effect. Number of steaks and beers consumed: zero. The only exception was one couple who had a Dutch Oven on their registry, which I could not resist buying. They had a laugh about it too.

But yeah, it's pretty rare to see gifts at an actual wedding these days. And I wasn't even aware until recently that you're supposed to bring a card, too. So many rules!

I let the woman remember the rules, I just hand over the money

We got married in Vegas at one of the hotels. Super easy, all choices are buffet style, good photographers on hand, and everything ran efficiently, and no surprise gotchas. Best of all, it was my wife's choice to get married there. We had the wedding streamed online, some close friends and family came, and all had a blast while there.

joeboo_sl said:

lol this. An uncle of mine came from out of town for our wedding, wife, 3 kids, the whole family. They live in a half a million dollar house(which is huge here in the midwest) and gave us $35 cash in an envelope. I don't even know how you come up with that random amount. I could see 2 $20 bills, or even a single twenty, or fifty or something, but you have to go out of your way to come up with $35 bucks. His family of 5 cost us about $200 in food and who knows what in drinks at our reception. We even had kids meals available that were cheaper, and he still RSVP'd for 5 adult meals, even though 2 of his kids are well under 10 years old. I'm sure they just loved the salmon and asparagus, rather than chicken strips and french fries.

cheapass bastards

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See this is the sort of thinking I just don't understand. Invite people to your wedding you WANT to be there, don't do it in hopes of getting shit. We asked for no gifts, and I'd say about 25% of our guests did just that - not even money. And I'm totally ok with that. A wedding isn't an event in which you separate your cheap relatives/friends from your giving ones. YOU chose to have a wedding in which it cost you $40/plate, don't blame others because they "cost" you money. I think it's awesome we made out like bandits cash-wise at our wedding, but we never thought it would happen, and we certainly didn't EXPECT it.

That's well and good, and we only invited people we wanted. I even barred some of my own family, some major drug users who I really wish were dead - I hate them and I got shit for not inviting them. The problem is you invite these cool people who have disgusting morbidly obese wives/husbands that you don't want there. I didn't feel comfortable sending an invite to someone and not allowing them to bring a guest - especially if it's someone who is married. You can't help that shit.

Noodleface_sl said:

I let the woman remember the rules, I just hand over the money

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+1

Every wedding I've been to recently, I've had to fly a couple thousand miles and rent a tux because I was in the wedding party. I spent nearly a thousand dollars just to go to the wedding. You're not getting a gift too.

Getting married in 12 days. I remember when we got engaged 3 years ago going "We have so much time to plan this", and now we are in serious crunch mode. I think we somehow managed to pay everything off without charging much to the credit cards - we only charged our hotels and excursions but we already paid those off months ago. I think all told we're dropping about $16K and it is a fairly small wedding. Photographer was most important to her, so he was pretty fucking expensive ($5K) - food was most important to me so it was expensive ($5K for 86 people). Cake is going to be the best wedding cake, my "tier" is chocolate cake with peanut butter cream filling.

Immediately after we leave for 2 weeks. We both work 2 jobs and for the passed several years we've both worked 7 days a week with the only days being off as holidays, personal days, or whatever we could get. It's been rough. I will feel a huge weight off my shoulder when this is over.

Insert divorce comments below this post.

Just the way it worked out, tough to get a wedding going working 2 jobs and going to school full-time.

Holy shit, $5000 for food for 86 people? That's $58 a plate. You're one crazy motherfucker.

Elurin_sl said:

Holy shit, $5000 for food for 86 people? That's $58 a plate. You're one crazy motherfucker.

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That doesn't sound too ridiculous to me for a wedding. Everything's double for that shit.

Whatever, Scrooge McDuck. Some of us don't swim in our own money.

Elurin_sl said:

Holy shit, $5000 for food for 86 people? That's $58 a plate. You're one crazy motherfucker.

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It's technically $58 for a signature drink, "unlimited" apps, "unlimited" pasta bar, carving stations (multiple), salad and a soup, desert table, and $2 a person for them to cut and serve our cake (BULLSHIT)

Elurin_sl said:

Whatever, Scrooge McDuck. Some of us don't swim in our own money.

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Don't get me wrong, I think weddings are stupid (or at least the ridiculous amount of money spent on them is), and so is the mark-up charged for anything to do with a wedding. But if you were having a private function and wanted to serve a good meal, $30/plate doesn't sound too outlandish cost wise. I think that's about what we paid for our company's golf tournament meal (BBQ steak etc). Now double it because it's a wedding.

For our rehearsal dinner, if we wanted to book the same place with 13 people in total it was $1000 for just the food. We are going to a bar for the dinner............................................ .. >_>