The Thousand Dollar Middle Class Wedding

A case study

Here’s our pitch

for scratching the wedding itch

Say no to the urge

to splurge

Or as a grandmother once pithily told us,

less wedding, more marriage

Today’s transmission is a guest post from a steader on his daughter’s thousand dollar wedding.

We know enough of the two families involved to say that both are doing well, in the top 10-20% of American households. For some of you this will be a strange journey into a foreign world. For others, it will open up your possibility space.

Every institution has to pay attention to the bottom line and the family is no exception. Our culture has a hard line between institutions directed towards human flourishing and institutions directed to material needs; the line needs to be crossed in both directions.

Too many are frightened off from steady thriving permafamily life by the twin illusions that it is difficult and expensive. Neither has to be true.

It’s easy. And even in these days of galloping costs, it can be cheap.

Here’s the blow by blow, lightly editing for formatting.

Well, it was probably inevitable that my competitive juices got up and I decided to marry off my daughter for under a thousand. It was probably also inevitable that I failed. But we got close!

I think this might be interesting to those of you who are at the marrying stage or who are at the marrying off stage.

Part of the reason this worked so well was the young couple were ok with it and so were the groom’s parents. We gave them the cash we would have spent instead. Which still isn’t much by most people’s standards. They got low five figures to take the edge off being poor college students.

It’s possible I missed something but this is it to the best of my recollection.

Dress

Her mother’s old wedding dress that was stored in one of her grandmother’s closets.

Alterations kit-- $20.

Mom knows how to sew. Mom got some good advice from some older friends and youtube.

Cleaning. Again following some youtube advice. She soaked the dress in Biz for a week, and then washed it on the delicate setting.

Professional pressing -- $50

white undershirt - $12

Announcements

we did them ourselves from the ground up. I designed the announcement and invitation on my computer then ran off color copies on good paper. We had a family activity more or less where we addressed everything by hand, stuffed the enveloped, put in the announcements, invitations, and a photo print. We did around 220.

Paper/envelopes - $25

photo prints - $20

digital design elements $12

Stamps- $155

Cutting out the announcements and invitations was laborious. If I did it all over again, announcements is the one area I would do differently.

The engagement photos were free—my wife’s sister is a hobbyist photographer who does excellent work.

Wedding website to better coordinate - $20

Clothing

I generally decided not to count this because we didn’t get a lot, the clothes we got were stuff we were planning on getting anyway. They were also inexpensive.

drycleaning/professional pressing - $50

with everything else going on we didn’t have time to do all the cleaning and ironing we would normally do.

emergency purchase of a shirt and belt because the bride’s younger brother forgot to bring it, Walmart was the only store open at 7 AM -- $25

Lodging

Lodging was mostly people staying with family. We did the wedding in [—] where we have a lot of family, people just crashed. I and my father-in-law also threw in a bunch of hotel points where needed. Some people just paid for a hotel or an AirBnb for a night or two. My only lodging expense came after the wedding when we stuck around for a few days for an impromptu family reunion. I don’t count that towards wedding expenses.

Travel

we put on the wedding in the city where the bride was living for the summer, where many members of our extended family live and within easy driving distance for us. Basically everyone who came to the wedding paid their own way. Most drove, a few had inexpensive domestic flights. I decided not to count the costs of gasoline for us, we make that trip a lot. Also I didn’t keep the receipts. It would have been around $80.

Church

Free. We are LDS. LDS temples have no charge, they don’t allow you to do any decorations. There is literally no cost for the actual wedding. The man who celebrated the wedding was an old family friend, doesn’t matter, there would have been no charge anyway.

Wedding photographer

Free. My sister-in-law is a professional wedding photographer who volunteered to do it for free. There will be nice things we do for her and her husband but we aren’t keeping score.

Bouquet

We bought a few flowers then mixed them with flowers from my parents’ place. The bride had a great time putting some together for the groom’s corsage, he forgot to bring it oh well.

Purchased flowers - $15

Wedding lunch

instead of doing a reception, we decided to have a lunch for the wedding party. The family members living there asked their churches until we got permission to use an outdoor pavilion for free. I planned on about 80-90 people. We did most of the shopping and prep the day before. Some I had already loaded before our trip out. We had a whole bunch of people drop by to help including his parents. Not much prep was needed anyway. Our menu was Mexican food with a lot of additional fruit and vegetable options in addition to homemade dips and homemade lemonade from homemade concentrate. The beef and pork roasts were distributed to various homes to slow cook in crockpots for 18-24 hours-they shredded at the touch come lunch time. A friend of ours volunteered to take almost all the food and set it out while we were doing the group photos after the wedding. She and her kids did a lot of work and when everybody else arrived everybody all pitched in to get everything else out and ready. It was pretty cool.

We didn’t do a cake.

Tablecloths, paper goods in wedding colors - $120

food - $710

misting system to keep the temperatures down - $45

Friend--$160. We insisted on some payment, she said no but let us pay her kids.

We had more food than we needed for 80-90 people. Most items we had 2-3 times as much. It was more expensive because we got tortillas/chips without seed oils.

Total = $1485

We bought a roaster to use for the meat. I don’t count that either. Our old roaster broke a couple of months ago, we meant to get a new one anyway.

Well, that’s it. That’s our $1,000 wedding. Don’t be horrified.

Photos by permission

What we notice is that having a big extended family that was all onboard made all the difference. If you don’t have that, take heart—you are building one. If you don’t have the benefits, your children and grandchildren will.

Less wedding, more marriage. Spend the money building a beautiful family instead.