Average Cost of UK wedding

Derivative

shellsuit wrote: »

What tax benefits?
And from what you've said, if you have to save for anything, it costs too much

Inheritance and CGT mainly. It would have been better if I said 'legal benefits' as opposed to 'tax benefits' (in reference to next of kin), sorry.

I am not begrudging those who choose to get married, merely stating my opinion that £20k is overkill and probably not a fair representation of 'average'. Having some sort of 5 year savings plan (or worse still going into debt) for what amounts to essentially a fancy day out and a name change seems silly to me, if you strip away the importance society places on marriage. Maybe I'll change my mind when I meet 'the one'.

There are so many other things that I think would have more impact even if you want to splash out on your family. Putting kids through private school sticks out. Or for £20k you and your partner could pretty much go and live it up for 6 months.

edit: On reading my post I think I should state again - I have nothing against marriage. It is just not - in my opinion - something worth blowing a full years' net income on.

nykied

But surely that depends on what the income of the couple in question is? If they're taking in £120k between them per year, for example, then £20k is only two month's wages.

I think it's easy to think that only people who need to save money come on here. That's how rich people stay rich, by saving the pennies to make the pounds.

Derivative

nykied wrote: »

But surely that depends on what the income of the couple in question is? If they're taking in £120k between them per year, for example, then £20k is only two month's wages.

I think it's easy to think that only people who need to save money come on here. That's how rich people stay rich, by saving the pennies to make the pounds.

Indeed, but £120k is not the 'average' household income or even close to it. A rough search shows me 5% of individuals earn above 60k gross. You can assume that doesn't translate into 5% of households earning 120 pretax.

If you allow for tax it's probably less than 2-3% of households earning that much.

The median income for a household is around 25-30k pretax as far as I'm aware. The 20k figure means that most people are either spending almost a years' salary, or that this 'average' is grossly inflated in some way.

Edit: with the aid of 'reliable source' wikipedia - not saying this is accurate but it's probably not too far off the mark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_household_income.jpg

If your household income is 120k, I think we can assume a 20k wedding is fair enough. Someone with that level of income is in a position to easily make themselves millionaires within 10-15 years.

zcrat41

Hi,

I'm one of those Guardian "average" people. Please don't shoot me!!!

Actually, thinking about it, its probably more than that.

I'm very very lucky that my parents are uber traditional and are paying for everything.

h2B family will pay for his suits and honeymoon.

Our family budget is 20k. I honestly don't believe its extravagent and I have bartered like hell to get most prices down. The killer for us is caterers (130 people in a marquee) as they take up most of the budget. But its important to us. My dress was a bargainous £350 but its the one I wanted.

I have to say that from my friends weddings, some of which I know the cost of (some of which you can guess ;-) I would say mine is very much in the average category.

I wouldn't say my family are wealthy but I know that we won't get into debt over this.

I think its really important to have what you can afford as close to what you want. When I was trying on wedding dresses there was one girl who insisted on only looking at the 2k + rail. It later turned out she was getting married in 2013 cos she needed that long to save up for it! I think thats a bit sad a misses the point of what a wedding is about.

Yes, I'm really lucky to be getting the wedding of my dreams but its the church ceremony and the commitment we are making to each other that matters.

emsbet

I stubbled on a poll on a website asking people what their total budget is for their wedding and the results looked like this

<£2.5 = 18.5%
£2.5 -£5k = 21.4%
£5 - £10 = 28.5 %
£10k- £20k = 25%
£20k+ = £6.6%

xx

minerva_windsong

zcrat41 wrote: »

I think its really important to have what you can afford as close to what you want. When I was trying on wedding dresses there was one girl who insisted on only looking at the 2k + rail. It later turned out she was getting married in 2013 cos she needed that long to save up for it! I think thats a bit sad a misses the point of what a wedding is about.

That's why I a) want to save as much of the money as possible before I get married and b) want to pay for at least some of it myself - like you I have very traditional parents so my dad will insist on paying for a hefty whack of it, but when my middle sister (I'm one of three girls) got married they had to remortgage the house to pay for it, and I don't want them to feel like they have to do anything like that for me when I could squirrel away at least some of the cash myself.

zcrat41

Oh minerva, I can see you wouldn't want your parents getting in that kind of state for you!
I think it also depends where in the country you live. I'm in the South East near London and prices are according. We were at a wedding North of the border recently where you could get an all in one package at a hotel for 5k.

Unfortunately they would also advertise that price at your wedding to try and get the next one.

I've also told the h2b we're only having 1 girl if we're lucky enough to have kids. 3 to pay for!!

gingercordial

trying_2_b_good wrote: »

I can't imagine anyone on this forum admitting to paying £21k!

OK, I'll admit it. Ours cost more than that in fact. We never added the whole thing up exactly but in the region of £26k. About £12k of that came from the parents, the rest was ours.

It was within our means and we had exactly the day we wanted, and was worth every penny as far as I'm concerned.

Most of it was paid for before the wedding, though a few things went onto 0% credit cards (I used to stooze and old habits die hard) but those were cleared when necessary.

Although we were spending lots of money, we spent it wisely, found good deals/discounts, used cashback credit cards and websites, cut out things that we didn't care about (eg chair bows, favours), did a booze run to France, and took up offers of services from friends and family as wedding presents (eg a friend of the family has a wedding car business so gave me that as a present, another friend is a graphic designer so he did the orders of service). We also hand-made a lot of stuff, eg the invitations, the cake (I had a week off beforehand and baked 250 cupcakes, never again), my bouquet and lots of other things. It could have cost a lot more, so I don't see it as being un-MSE to spend what you can afford and keep an eye out for bargains.

We spent lots on the venue itself and the entertainment (two live bands, hired lots of fun stuff like arcade games and pinball tables). We paid for flights and hotels for a few foreign friends who might not have made it otherwise, and we did not have to be constrained as to numbers so we could have all our friends and family there. We also both had our outfits made bespoke which is something that we both enjoy - and I don't see why the groom should not get a fancy outfit if the bride does.

BUT your wedding should be what you want and what you can afford. I have been to plenty of weddings with all sorts of budgets and have always enjoyed them hugely if the bride and groom are happy.

Nobody should be condemned for spending however much they like on their wedding, whether that's a lot or a little, assuming they can afford to do so.

Epic_panther

emsbet wrote: »

I stubbled on a poll on a website asking people what their total budget is for their wedding and the results looked like this

<£2.5 = 18.5%
£2.5 -£5k = 21.4%
£5 - £10 = 28.5 %
£10k- £20k = 25%
£20k+ = £6.6%

£0 - £2,500 (18.5%)

xx

40% spend less than 5k? I simply can't see how...

sammy_wheeler

easily!!!!!