tell me I'm not the only one

[Ladybug122]

who goes into debt for someone else's wedding! Seriously! My brother is getting married on Saturday and similar to his personality, he does things big. Big wedding, big festivities surrounding the wedding, big money. My DH, DS, and I are all in the wedding ($$), hotel for 3 nights ($), gifts (wedding and bridal), attire for prewedding festivities ($). Oy vey! Obviously, having a med spouse means I am no stranger to debt, but we have been very consciencious of credit card debt and really don't have any...until now. It's just that my 4 month hiatus/maternity leave back at the beginning of the year leaves us with very little disposable income...still. I'm feeling really bad that we have been using our VISA constantly lately but I don't see any other solution. I am at the point where I am seriously considering cancelling our planned vaca in August (renting a condo in the mountains), but I really don't want to do that. stress!!
Good thing I married a "dawkter" .....

Yes, we also recently experienced this for my brother-in-law's wedding last month. We had to get plane tickets, a hotel for 4 nights, a new dress and shoes for me as I was in the wedding, engagement and wedding gift expenses, and food/tourist expenses for the trip in general. Overall it was a fun trip, but when you add all of that up, definitely not cheap!

[Tenacious_D]

Wedding season is a love hate thing for me us. We just got back from a friends wedding in NYC and tried to do everything on the cheap..stayed with my godmother (she cooked for us YUMMY) and drove down and left E with the inlaws. But for DH's sisters wedding this Sunday, it requires more money and it's a local wedding. I have spent money on the bridal shower gifts, we bought them a fabulous wedding gift (a Wii - she and her fiance have been great help with little E so I felt like we owed them something substantial). I had to buy the maternity dress for the wedding and although I love it, it's really not a dress that I can rock outside of the 6-9 month pregnant stage. We also now have to pay for my sister to come up from NYC to watch E during the ceremony because I am the videographer and DH is in the wedding.

So yes, I feel your pain of going into debt for a wedding. I would have rather bought a great new sheet/comforter/pillow set

[SuzySunshine]

tell me I'm not the only one

If you can afford it all don't cancel your vacation. You need your family time too, hang in there.

[ladymoreta]

Us, too. For my BIL's wedding, our in-laws paid for our flight and hotel, which saved us the majority of the expenses, and we really appreciated it. But there was still a dress for me (my hips and ribcage still haven't gone back to pre-pregnancy size, so most of my dresses don't fit yet). We also paid for all the groomsmen's tuxes because BIL doesn't have a credit card. :eyeroll: And the gifts, meals, and luggage fees also added up. I feel bad complaining since his parents paid so much, but we're still hurting from that trip.

[radwife]

ME!

Within a year we will have attended 5 weddings (I'm a bridesmaid in 3). They are in different states which require flights, hotels, and transportation. We've had to turn down 3 other weddings, but still sent gifts. It's not too bad when they happen over a period of time, but this year has been a huge wedding boom for us. I only have 1 vacation day left that won't be used for wedding related festivities.

[MarissaNicole]

We told our bridal party not to get us presents, personally I think BEING in a wedding is a gift enough, and it seriously adds up!
Do you have to give them gifts? I would think that your brother would not want to be stressing about money because you were so generous as to have the whole family in the wedding.

Our friends have been getting SMALL wedding gifts because that is all we can afford... I'm kind of worried about a fall wedding we have, DH is an usher, and I'm afraid this "friend" will expect us to give him as generous of a gift as he gave us.... not sure how to handle that yet? (Sorry for the hijack).

[DCJenn]

We have to somehow haul our butts to Dayton, Ohio for Labor Day weekend for my cousin's wedding- so yes, we've got airfare (for two different cities since my husband and I don't actually inhabit the same city), car rental (we're all flying in to different airports on different days), clothes and shoes for me, clothes and shoes for the dude, hotel, dining out, gifts, etc. and it's over LABOR DAY- my last day off until Thanksgiving.

Jenn

[houseelf]

Hijack to La Hussey: /Dude, you can't come labor day. I'm not going to be in town. I'll miss you. /end hijack.

I didn't want to post to this thread for fear of offending some people who have had fairly big soirees for their wedding, but I'm not a fan of these obligations. I place this in the same category as my perennial disdain for Christmas present obligations. (Yeah, I'm a crotchety old cow, I admit it. )


I have been a bridesmaid in 7 different weddings. I did have to turn one request down because I couldn't afford to fly our family of four out to Orange County, pay for a hotel, rent a car, buy a gift all while we were struggling to stay financially afloat. I still harbor some guilt about it because it was a fairly close friend's wedding. She is a truly amazing human being and I feel like I couldn't give her this one thing that seems to be such a common social expectation.

Has anyone else told a bride that they just couldn't do it or am I the only one? <slinks back to dark place under rock>

Oh no, I did, too. Our really, really good friends got married in OH less than a month after we moved here. Both dh & I were supposed to be in it, but we had to bow out. There was just no way we could a) afford it at that point in our lives or b) take the time off to travel back. I did throw the bridal shower before we left, but we didn't send an actual gift bc we couldn't afford it. To make matters worse, we were still given the bridesmaid / groomsmen gifts, even though we were very upfront about the real likelihood we wouldnt be able to participate i think the bride didnt fully grasp the reality of the situation (dh was interviewing when they originally asked us) I remember sending a very generous gift when their first baby arrived to try to make up for it.

[SoonerTexan]

We also paid for all the groomsmen's tuxes because BIL doesn't have a credit card.

Really? The tux place just had all they guys pay themselves when they picked them up. Or was he doing it as a gift?

Haha, I'm one of those guilty of throwing a big shindig--we invited just over 300, many of whom were out-of-town and 160 actually made it. Most of my family and many other out-of-towners just couldn't make it, and we understood--haha, it helped us stay *near* budget. I actually cant believe how many people who couldn't come sent us gifts. I was even more touched that my aunt's family drove 10 hours ON my cousin's 18th birthday (and he was so sweet about it too) AND gave us a really nice monetary gift on top of a homemade cookbook filled with recipes from my friends and relatives. We're really going to owe them.

I don't think anybody can really be mad at someone for declining to come for a monetary or any reason. The only people I had a beef with were those who RSVPed and didn't show up/never explained why (we had a decent amount), or our former youth ministers, who RSVPed yes and then told us they couldn't make it to the reception as they were congratulating us after the ceremony--(because they didn't realize what time the reception was at until then and had another wedding to attend that evening.) Umm...that's why we included the time on the reception card? It's one thing to say no right off the bat and another for the couple (or their parents) to pay for your seat and just never show. Luckily it was minimal for us because of the way we did the reception, but if was a $60/per head type thing, I would have been a little more pissed. It was very nice of them to attend the ceremony, though.

One thing I see often on The Knot (I post on some of their boards frequently) is brides who block off rooms for their guests at really expensive hotels. Like--$250 would be a good deal. Who can afford that? I shopped every dang hotel in the area to find the best price (if you are ever going anywhere, check out Hyatt Places--they have ridiculously nice rooms for under $100/night) because we had so many people who we knew were stretching their budgets to come.

[ladymoreta]

SoonerTexan - nope, we hadn't planned on paying for anyone's but DH's. They all went together to pick them up two days before the wedding, and somehow DH ended up paying for them. My guess is that BIL thought his groomsmen were going to pay, and the groomsmen thought BIL was going to pay, so none of them actually brought money.

I'm not sure if it's my family or where I'm from, but for all the weddings I've been in (which have only been family), the bridal party pays for the bridesmaid dresses and tuxes. We asked that my bridesmaids bring their own shoes (to save money), but we didn't specify what color or anything. The only expenses my bridesmaids had were the travel costs. (The out of town girls stayed with me at my parents' house, and the guys with DH at his parents'.)

[scarlett09]

My bridesmaids had the cost of a hotel room the night before the wedding, hair/makeup, jewelry and purse covered by us. They only had to be concerned with dress, alterations, shoes, bachelorette party, shower/wedding gifts, and a hotel room the night of the wedding (if they wanted it, since they were all local). And yet, they still managed to complain. My MOH, who is struggling, didn't complain about a thing, but my cousin, who brings in the $$, complained every chance she got.

SoonerTexan - my mother was one of those people who wanted everyone to stay at the hotel whose group rate was still $200/night. She was angry when I booked block rates at other cheaper hotels in the area whose rates were right around $100/night. It took a lot of me explaining to her that not everyone had the finances to drop $200/night and that we needed to be sensitive to our guests' situations. It took her awhile to understand this, but in the end, she was glad I got those blocks of rooms because they enabled her to spend more time with her family. I honestly believe she wanted me to have a wedding like Carrie Underwood's where everyone stayed at the same hotel and the weekend was full of wedding events.

In a one year period, we will have been invited to 6 weddings and attended 4-5 of them. I say 4-5 because we are currently on the fence about my cousin's wedding in Reno, NV the weekend before Thanksgiving. It will cost us over $800 in airfare, we will have to fly in late Friday night and fly out on Sunday morning and we don't even know if DH will have off that weekend (wedding date was moved after we put in our time off requests for the year). We are leaning very much towards not going, but yet I feel so guilty. My cousin flew out for our wedding, and I know it wasn't easy for him financially, so it meant a lot to us. I don't know what to do! Thankfully, all of the other weddings were nearby and we could drive there and stay with relatives/friends.

[oceanchild]

Flying to Reno is such a huge hassle from the east coast! So much so that that was one of my criteria in residency location selection.

I have not been asked to be in a wedding, but I did my very best to keep costs for others down in my own. It's hard. And I wouldn't have been upset if someone had asked for help or said that it was more than they could afford. I think it's totally fair to do that.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

I actually cant believe how many people who couldn't come sent us gifts.

My understanding was that this is required if you can afford it. That you send a gift even if you can't attend.

The weddings are going to kill us in the next year. DH is in two weddings of the 6 we're currently invited to for next year. Two are in California, one is in Alabama, one is in MA, one is in Michigan (drive-able thank goodness!), and one is TBD. I don't know how we're going to afford this. It seems to me that it costs at least $500 to fly anywhere from Cleveland, plus gift, plus car, plus hotel, plus extras like showers and bachelor/bachelorrette parties. I feel badly because so many people just traveled to our wedding but I'm at my wits end as to how we're going to do this.

One question: do you guys attend weddings on your own if the doctor is not able to go? Obviously weddings for my friends and family are one thing but what about his friends or family? I'm close with some of his friends but it seems kinda weird to go without him.