User Post: The Lie of Wedding "Averages"

curucu- i totally agree with you. we got an all-inclusive package too. i think it definitely depends on location but also time of year. we're doing it right before christmas which made the reception site super cheap. the wedding coordinator for the location was completely willing to work within our budget because she knew nobody else would be booking at that time. we're also saving money by getting married at city hall.
there are definitely options for all budgets and people should just do what they want since it's their day, not anyone else's.

The ONLY people who are competing to out-do each other in wedding expense are the one's who can afford it. The rest of society pays what they can or budget for so what difference does it make how much the wedding cost? This is an OPTIONAL expense of life (ie, eloping or justice-the-peace anyone?) this isn't a house, college or raising a child.

I don't see it. I'm planning one right now and as far as I can tell, most venues are doing all inclusive packages, complete with cakes and centerpieces, linens and china. All you need is the officiant, DJ and someone to do your hair. I think too its location. I cancelled our previous arrangements because it was getting ridiculous fast - but just renting a venue was around 10K...photographers were asking 10K too - that's not a typo! Moving our location from New England helped A TON!

A good article on how flawed methodology can be at times. I have to deal with this when I analyze polls. It's very frustrating for someone who understands statistics to hear these figures trotted out with no back up. I prefer to read scholarly articles for my information, because the breakdown is right there and you can either say it's sound or say it's crap.

Meh... if you want a really accurate "average" (which the mean IS an average, so technically they aren't lying) you would take the mode of all the figures. It's all about figuring out which numbers most accurately represents the data. Even if the mode was taken, it'd be somewhere 10,000 probably. It also depends on the number of guests and such, since a lot of people these days are opting for inviting less people. I know people (they're my Indian friends) and they invite a minimum of 500 people to a wedding... and their weddings aren't just one day. It's a 2 week long ordeal. So they tend to spend about 20,000 on what they consider a "normal sized wedding." A lot of factors are present, such as a culture, family traditions, religion, guests, and just the tastes and styles of the bride and groom.

But as far as the numbers go, 20,000 is actually fairly accurate for a MAJORITY of people. It's what my parents wedding cost, and probably what mine will cost, since I want a really nice wedding. : )

My husband and I ended up spending about 10 grand on our wedding and don't regret a second of it. It was the party of a life time and one of the greatest nights of my life! It was nothing too fancy, David's bridal dresses, family church and a buffet at the local park's indoor reception hall.
Sure, you can save money by doing things outside but that's really hard to plan in Ohio and it would have been very uncomfortable for many of my elderly family members that I wanted there.
In my opinion, your wedding is YOURS and hopefully it is a day you'll only get to have once! So if your taste is a Vegas Chapel or St. Peter's make it special (so long as it's with in your means!)

i don't see how its possible to have a wedding under $2000. I had a VERY last minute graduation party and just renting a hall (not that grand) and food and dj put us over $4000. that is NOT including clothes, party favors or whatever else is needed.

and we got the place VERY cheap as my mother has good connections

Very interesting!

Tracy you have more interest in numbers and stats than I do.
My guess is there is no real way to know how they came up with the 250 guest number. Most weddings I have personally attended have been within the 100 to 125 range. Stats can be manipulated for any purpose.

My guess is a lot of this information may have been gathered when people had larger families. Multiple siblings with kids could add up very quickly especially if most of the family failed to migrate to other states! ha ha ha

Money is nothing more than a tool or a means to an end.
As long as you can avoid long-term debt with the exception of a mortgage then I say have the kind of wedding you want and don't be concerned with "keeping up with the Jones".
A wedding is celebration of two lives coming together.
P Diddy recently spent $350k on a car for his 16 year old.
That would throw off the stats for pricing of first cars owned.
Of course he's worth over $400 Million. (Music, colonges, restaurants and clothing empires...).
It's all relative I suppose and unimportant for the most part.

Dashing, that is very true!

Lots of people tend to read my blog/freelance work/whatever and think I'm one of people who thinks everyone should make their wedding as cheap as possible. I don't, though. Wedding are personal and influenced by so much (family pressure, desire for certain traditions, etc.).

I personally love a good bargain, and I'm always impressed by people who can do more with less, but large, expensive weddings don't bother me. No skin off my nose, so to speak.

Although I do admit to having some kind of upper-limit concept of wastefulness in my head, I'll rarely say it out loud. (But this is one of those times that I will: $350 thousand on a car for a 16 year old?!)

Heck, I spend money on things other people consider unimportant. Antique porcelain and pottery are my particular vices, but we all have them.

What I really, really can't stand, though, is when the same people trying to sell me stuff try to influence what I'm willing to spend. The whole De Beers marketing campaign of telling people they should spend three months' salary on a ring is a good example. So many people believe that's some kind of behavioral standard or something, and it's not. Would we fall into this marketing trap if the Planters snack food company said we should spend one tenth of every paycheck on cashews to prove we had culinary taste and loved our families?

I know!
Most wedding packages are waay below, even if you book for a holiday wedding.
Who wants to spend all that money on party where half the people you don't know and the other half you don't get along with?
IF you have that kind of money better of putting a down payment on a house and car.
You can have a relatively inexpensive wedding by keeping the guest list small, sticking to your budget, and not obsessing over tiny details nobody cares about. Like invites and font, for instance. Most of them will be tossed out anyway so its best to go cheap.
Dresses can be copied for a fraction of the price, and if you must get designer shoes, wait for the sale.

I've been to 5 weddings in the last 6 month and not ONE of the was over $2000. This is all Bridal Store hype. People that think it's a disaster to not spend a ton on a wedding outnumber those that do by at least 80 to 1. If you such a loser you got to spend $20,000 to get people to come, your doomed anyhow. Whatever spoiled rich people these people are doesn't make them more married than a normal wedding. Who they trying to impress? No one that matters is going to change their opinion of you, care about you more, or follow up with you, because you spent more money than most people. This I believe is a total farce as to accuracy.

It's easy to see how they came up with the $20k number if statistics are correct regarding people waiting until later in life to get married.
Someone who has finished school and established a career will have more disposable income than a couple getting married at age 22 or 23.

A wedding can be as cheap as you want it to be (gold bands) and a justice of the peace or having a royal wedding with a big time planner.
On the "low or modest" end by most standards today it's not too uncommon to see expenses similar to these for 100 guests.

"Save The Date" notices - $150 plus postage
Professional invitations with RSVP self stamped envelopes $500
Minister - "donation" - $200
Reception Venue - $3000
Dinner with open bar (basic chicken) for 100 guests at $45 each = $4500
Wedding dress - $2000
Wedding cake - $500
Professional Photographer and photo package $800
Professional DJ - $400
Professional Videographer - $500
Limo - $300
Bride's dress - $1500
Groom's Tux rental - $250
Bride's wedding ring - $3000
Grooms ring - $1000
Flowers - $500 (includes bridal bouquet, bride's maids, boutonnieres..)
Hotel Room for "the wedding night" - $200
That's almost $13k! (And this not upscale by most standards today)

So much of the expenses also depends on where you live.
Naturally cities like New York, LA, Chicago...etc the venue prices could go higher, I didn't include cost for bride's maid dresses, best man tux & groomsman tuxes because they are usually picked up by the participants.

According to what I've read the average wedding has close to 250 guests.
Just for the meal portion at $45 each would come up to $11,250!
These numbers also do not include the cost for the Honeymoon vacation.
My point is the $20k price for a wedding is very easy to reach.

No one has to spend a more than they are comfortable with.
You can always get married in someone's large back yard, have family members bake a cake, play CDs, take pictures, and order fried chicken and spagehetti from some local fast food joint....

Or simply elope, take $4000 to fly to Jamaica and stay at one of those all inclusive resorts which also preforms weddings for next to nothing.
Most men would rather elope than go through the whole wedding process!LOL!

Reading all of this information about how much weddings cost is making me strongly consider the courthouse route. Four words: no white dress necessary.

I'm getting married in just under 3months and my fiancee and I are doing it all on under $3,000 and $800 of that is my dress!

A wedding for under $2000.00 would indeed be difficult to plan if you believe a hall must be rented and a sit-down dinner for 150 must be catered. However, many people find that it's possible to get married for less than $1000.00 simply by inviting parents and witnesses only, wearing bridal clothing bought on sale or at consignment shops, and taking their guests out to dinner afterward.

A wedding is the ceremony (and in general usage, the reception following) joining a couple in matrimony. That's what it is. It isn't, by definition, a formal party, a DJed party, a big party, or any other particular KIND of party.

Not all weddings have DJs, rented halls, favors, or alcohol. There's nothing wrong with wanting those things or having those things, not at all. But there is something wrong when we're taught by the very industry selling these things that we're supposed to have them.

A mean is definitely "an" average, but the wedding industry, by calling whatever figure du jour "the" average, certain seems to be implying that the figure provided is what most people spend. (I think the ballpark nature of such figures leans toward an implication of a median, but mode works, too. For those who aren't aware, the mode is the figure that represents the most commonly recurring number in a list; for example, if you have five weddings costing $10,000.00, $20,000.00, $20,000.00, $50,000.00, and $4,000.00, respectively, the mode would be $20,000.00.)

If the figures thrown around by industry consultants are accurate, great; I'd like to see the actual math that backs this up, though. I don't believe it's there. Using the people one knows or meets as gauges of spending is not likely to yield accurate results.

The only way to really come up with any accurate average is to take a weighted cross section of the population - rich, poor, all forms of middle class, extravagant, thrifty, capitalist, anti-consumerist, etc. - and use their spending to extrapolate figures.

And whether figuring mean, median, or mode, the final result should be labeled as such. It's dishonest to imply that one is providing a median (or mode) when one is providing something entirely different.

Sorry; that should be "certainly" in the first sentence.

And granted, these companies providing "averages" don't actually call them medians or modes; perhaps it's unfair to say that those concepts are implicit. I think they are; perhaps others don't and the companies never intended the figures to be taken as such.

Still, the formulas used are unclear and, for the reasons stated in the blog, I believe the results they yield must be inaccurate by their very nature.

That's just it, Runa! If you get married at a courthouse - that's still a wedding. Would your utter lack of demand for certain items be factored in to the "weighted demand average." When product data is gathered, is anyone figuring out the growth rate of the $20.00 stainless steel wedding bands sold on eBay? Do china rentals share survey space with paper plate purchases?

Not everyone has the big wedding with all the traditional products and services, and many who use them are off the grid.

It doesn't matter if older couples have more disposable income - what matters is how they decide to spend it. Every older couple I'm familiar with chose to forgo a big wedding for something simpler. That doesn't mean that's what most do (as I've already pointed out, just because something is what we most observe doesn't mean it's what most occurs), but it does happen. It's faulty logic to assume that, simply because they have more disposable income, older couples will spend more to get married.

Dashing Darne, you've read that the average wedding has 250 guests. What was used to arrive at this number, and by whom? Did the information you read cite a methodology, and was that methodology transparent?

I'm getting married in just under 3months and my fiancee and I are doing it all on under $3,000 and $800 of that is my dress!