Why are weddings so expensive?

You don`t need all that crap! £40 or something is it for a marriage licence and off down to the Registry Office. Do all the other celebrations cheaply yourself. I had a cut-price wedding with costs kept to bare minimum.

You do not have to spend a fortune if you use your imagination. In August 2009 my sone got married. The family camped on a beautiful lakeside camp site (we have a small motorhome) The brides sister made the 3 dresses, my wife made a superb cake shaped like a picnic basket and filled with marzipan fruits made by my 10 year old daughter. The service was at the Brides local village church. The reception was in a large gazeebo which was borrowed from my sister-in-law and food was a picnic for about 35 guests All the male guests provided their own suits. Photographs were taken by everyone, BUT the brides brother was asked to be official photographer to ensure that most photographs had everyone looking in the same direction. The lake on the campside made a superb background for "official pictures" The memory cards were collected and copied onto one computer. After the wedding the best pictures were selected and using an online company were printed in a hardback album for approx £30. We were fortunate to wave a nice day and everone had a good day.
The total cost of the wedding was around £1000 for everything.

If you managed to get a Limo for £150.00 WELL DONE.
Have you ever tried to clean one ,drive one, Insure one ; Oh & there is the cost of buying and maintaining one !

My wedding cost 12/6 plus a dinner for 4 (us and the witnesses). It need not cost more.

Sorry got sidetracked, the best wedding I have ever been to was a friend who got married in a dress from Oxfam, a veil she borrowed from a friend and took place at the nearest Register Office that had a free appointment asap, (not shotgun I hasten to add!), there were 5 people there other than bride and groom and after the ceremony we spent the afternoon and early evening in the local pub and then went on for a late dinner in our local favourite restaurant. Best wedding ever and cost the bride and groom about £100 and the few friends and family not much more so all in all about £400!

Myself and my partner have been together for 12 years, we want to get married but would both rather nip down the registry office in our lunch hour, but as an only daughter I feel duty bound to invite my mum so she can do the mother of the bride thing, then my brothers would want to come, so in turn we must invite my partners mum and dad and siblings etc etc so instead we just don't get married!

I have to agree with grumpyoldwoman the whole country has gone "keepin up with the Jones" all this money is just a waste, ask the kids about their parties the next week and they have no clue. We are breeding greeedy, never satisfied, forever envious kids that have the concentration span of a knat because they are so distracted by the next gift or the next entertainer. We then get older and wonder what is wrong with the younger generation and the answer is us!

I am also trying to plan my own wedding and feel the exact same way! I just can't understand where this huge markup is coming from, based on what you are really getting. I am also a woman and my fiance is the one who wants all the trappings of a big wedding. I seriously just want to elope!

Weddings are so expensive because everyone has make theirs better than the last one they went to & don't have the sense to realise when things are getting out of hand! Just the stag & hen nights have escalated to weekends abroad in a few years.
It's the same with kid's birthday parties. The guests now have to have expensive entertainers & go home with bags stuffed with goodies.
No-one has the courage to say ENOUGH!

Why is everything expensive? Produce us a list of 'things' that are cheap. A wedding can be as expensive as you want it to be.

How do you perceive your wedding to be? A couple get married, exquisite bash, 6 month down the road they split.

Ok, heres what you should do, go abroad to get married. Getting married in this country is a rip off and anyone with a hand wants to put it in your pocket. Go abroad, get your relatives to pay for their own flights and if they wont then they just dont want to go to your wedding enough. People are very selfish and expect you to foot the bill for them to have a free feed here but as soon as you expect them to pony up some cash they get all affronted.

I feel the same on this one. It's all one big money making scheme! It's the same as Valentine's day, Christmas, Easter etc. All everyone wants is a big portion of your bank balance. Nothing has any meaning anymore. I want to marry my fiance very much but I don't want a wedding. I just want the two of us to run away somewhere and come back as husband and wife =] I'd quite happily pay for the required documents and drag him down to the registry office in my jeans and a t-shirt.

Why spend over £10,000 on one day when it's every day after that counts? It takes two people to make a marriage and you certainly don't need 300 family members to bless it! Or a £300 photo album to remember it by.

As a woman in her 20s, I think weddings are such a huge waste of time! I can afford to have a big expensive do, but I choose not to - I find them so narcassistic, always about a woman who wants lots of people admiring her and her dress, and guess what - two years down the road, they want a divorce. A lot of my friends would not get married if it involved not getting a wedding to - what does that say about their commitment!