Young folks weddings: match "projected" quality of life?

sugarwalsh

You would hope. But who knows?! When you have kids you make sure you do the best by them.
I guess I don't understand the logic in amassing debt for a wedding. A small amount maybe, but to purposefully choose a wedding way beyond our means would be ludicrous to me.
But, each to their own.

Idiophreak

sugarwalsh wrote: »

You would hope. But who knows?! When you have kids you make sure you do the best by them.
I guess I don't understand the logic in amassing debt for a wedding. A small amount maybe, but to purposefully choose a wedding way beyond our means would be ludicrous to me.
But, each to their own.

Again, this thread wasn't particularly supposed to be about debt, more to do with the attitude to money.

I'm not saying for an instant that the student should run out and put a £10k engagement ring on a credit card...Just that the £50 they're going to spend probably feels like a lot now, but maybe in 2 years time, when they've graduated and are (hopefully!) earning money, they might think "actually, maybe I should have spent a little more on it"...It may well be that they could afforded to spend a little more if they think about how that amount fits in in the broader scheme of their life...

mandragora_2

We got married in 1984. I had £200 in the bank. The wedding cost £200 - we split the costs between us. The only additional cost was the dress which was £90, and my mum bought that as a present for me. We had a great day, with a fantastic barbeque and party in the garden, and there wasn't anyone missing that I really wanted to be there. Everyone had plenty to eat and drink, and the 12 'official' photos we had on the day turned out fine. I've never looked back and regretted a single thing, and as we were on our uppers a few years later (when my husband got laid off at very short notice, and I had stopped working to bring up the kids) we managed to keep our heads above water. I found a job relatvely quickly, but just a short spell with no money coming in took about two years to get over, and put us back in a position where if something went wrong it wasn't an immediate crisis. If we'd had a loan to pay off, think we'd have sunk. Some months, getting the mortagage paid just about cleaned us out - and if we hadn't had a veg patch, we'd have been hungry. Nope. No regrets whatsoever.

sugarwalsh

I don't really understand how you can separate it? If all you can afford is a £50 ring why would you borrow more money? Your aspirations for a 'better' life have meant you have borrowed money to have a wedding more 'befitting'.
we would have married with just us and our kids, if that was all we could afford, to us it's not about anything more than making a life time commitment to one another. As it happened we could afford a little more so we had a wedding where our friends could come. It was a fairly low key affair. At the end of the day, all weddings are much the same. You turn uo, the couple get married, you go to a reception. It doesn't matter how you dress it up, they all come down to the same format.
why are you suggesting some people may regret their decisions yet are adamant you won't? I sincerely hope you don't, as much as i hope those on a tight budget don't.

Idiophreak

sugarwalsh wrote: »

I don't really understand how you can separate it? If all you can afford is a £50 ring why would you borrow more money? Your aspirations for a 'better' life have meant you have borrowed money to have a wedding more 'befitting'. ...
why are you suggesting some people may regret their decisions yet are adamant you won't? I sincerely hope you don't, as much as i hope those on a tight budget don't.

Again, I'm not talking about *borrowing* money...I'm just talking about spending more.

Maybe our student has a couple of thousand in the bank...and like I said before, he could *afford* to spend more, but because of his *immediate* financial circumstances, he decides he doesn't want to....because, as I said, £50 seems like a lot to a student.

I've not really meant to "suggest" people would regret their decisions, but was wondering if people did, or more to the point, whether people worried they would. All I've really said is that *I* worried a great deal about whether I'd regret not spending the money after the event.

Also, I don't recall being "adamant" that I won't regret the thing, at all. As I said before - if my life turns in a direction I'm not expecting, I expect I'll feel like my wedding was somewhat out of proportion with the rest of my life. My whole point is that I've gambled on this not happening - and like most gambles, you generally only regret the ones that don't pay off...

RainbowDrops

I'm not sure I entirely get the gist of this thread, but I'll have a go.OH & I had been together 7 years before he propose. Of course, I would have loved it if he had proposed sooner, and there were times where I thought I was going to be an old wrinkly bride!
But, waiting longer did mean we could put our own money into the wedding as well as contributions fro our parents.
And it was the things that we got that made the wedding personal.


OH waited to propose as he had gone back to uni, then was waiting to get his job secured before making that final commitment.
And being purely materialistic for a second, he was able to get me a beautiful engagement ring. Now don't get me wrong, I love a bargain, and had I been the one to get it, I would have spent pennies. But I love the sentiment behind why he got me the ring he did.

johannalf88

I think I understand Idiophreak, and if so I agree. We have a budget of £10,000 (and although coming under that) but are relatively young in starting work. I have been working for a couple of years, but my OH only started working in Feb. he is now the main breadwinner, and brings in significantly more than me, so we are working to his 'lifestyle' not mine, even though when he proposed it was jut me earning. He also spent a considerable amount in a ring, but got the money by tutoring. But I quests if he had brought a cheaper ring the money would have gone on the wedding, but he spent all of it, gambling that he would pas his exams (he already had the job offer).

JOHN1982

Just as an aside (to defer from all the anger in this thread!) ... does anyone else whistle Peter Bjorn and John's "Young Folks" whenever they read the thread title?!

Nope ... just me then?!

TheSeventh

(I'm 26, OH is 27, we both went to uni but we both have long term health problems. I've worked full time for 2 years, OH is unable to work atm, possibly will never work full time)

I chose my £70 engagement ring, and my £60 wedding ring (matching pair with diamond, £170!).
The engagement ring is 'cheap' because I can only wear one ring at a time at work, so I'd only be wearing it for the 18 months I was 'engaged' before I swap it for the wedding ring.
The wedding rings are 'cheap' because they are a SYMBOL of our marriage, not the marriage itself, and can be replaced or 'upgraded' for other rings if we choose throughout our married life. They are what we can currently afford, we both love the design, and frankly, it doesn't matter how much they cost, it's what they symbolise that matters.

We're spending £7K on our wedding. It's probably a smidge more than we can comfortably afford, but we won't be going into massive debt because we think we 'deserve' a better wedding. Yes, MAYBE at some point in the future, we'll be able to afford a £20K wedding, and we'll think "hmmn, if we could do it again we'd do this, that and the other differently, shame we can't..." but... the future is uncertain!

I'm on a pretty good career path, I'm optimistic about becoming relatively comfortable in the future. BUT in my teens, my life was incredibly shaken up by serious illness which changed all my plans, so now I'm wary of counting any chickens before they've hatched! Perhaps I'm too wary, but I wouldn't go into debt for a single symbolic day based on how I HOPE my life will turn out.

Bad things happen. Yes, I'm in remission right now and on track to a pretty comfortable career - but anything could change at any moment. We are not in total control of our future, and I'm not going to assume I'll be 'rich' someday to justify a bigger/more impressive wedding.

My wedding represents who OH and I are as of right now. It cannot represent anything other than that, because we don't know who we'll be or what out tastes will be like in the future. I can't imagine we'll look back on our day with regret. If anything, we may someday look back with amusement and tolerance for our naive younger selves, in the same way we look at pictures of us in our mid-teens, and the ridiculous things we did and wore back then! It's a part of our lives, it should be respected as a snapshot of who we were at that point, and not regretted for who we weren't.

hamsterfan1

I was 24 when I got married - 24 years ago - so I suppose that is young. My daughter is now engaged and has had to postpone her wedding because of the costs involved. She is not wanting a big wedding and reckons the one she wants will cost about 5k . One thing I have noticed is the change on empahsis within a wedding - when I got married the wedding magazines were full of practical advice , but now they all seem to be buy this,buy that, you must have this , you must have that & people believe them.

It seems it is forgotten that a wedding is a means to an end ie. a marriage , not an end in itself. I have very few specific memories of my wedding day , giggling at the alter, japanese tourists videoing us in our car and the best man spilling champagne on my dress, the rest is one happy blur. A wedding is about getting married not supplying firends & families with as many luxuries as ,you are told by magazines , companies can sell you.