Is It The Love Or The Loot?
Via Kate Coe, who knows I'm writing a column for this week's deadline on registering for wedding gifts, the site, helpusgetleid.com, where they're looking to their friends to pay for their wedding in Hawaii:
While we lived together, I racked up $30,000 in student loans in the process of earning a bachelor's degree in business administration. Then, all I could find were $11/hr administrative assistant jobs! And my loan payment is how much a month??The bad news…
Knowing that neither of our parents could possibly contribute to a wedding, we continued to postpone our plans. Now seven years later, we just want to get married already! So, we’re scaling back – no big party with all of our friends and family, no caterers, no big band – just a ceremony please! We have both always dreamed of getting married with sand between our toes in Hawaii, so now it’s just going to be the two of us.The plan…
We decided that we want to do it this year, on June 26 in Hawaii. I figured that a Monday would hopefully be a little less expensive than the traditional weekend weddings. Our family and friends are not likely to be able to afford to join us, but the date is set and we are going regardless of where the chips may fall!We hope you can help! Mahalo!
Tacky, tacky, tacky!
My point of view on the expectation of wedding gifts: This is America, not the Sudan. We all basically have everything we need. Even at my churchmouse poorest, I didn't need people to buy me presents to make my coffee, toast my toast, and have a plate or two for eating my dinner. Who really lacks for anything?
Do you really neeeeeed fine china and silver? Will your dinner parties be that much less without them? Is your love dependent upon getting that toaster that also makes espresso and accesses your email? To me, unless you're dirt poor, why not tell your guests "love is all we need," and in lieu of gifts, they can make a smaaaaaall anonymous donation to some charity if they really feel they must give something?
I also think the massive, expensive wedding is pretty tacky. Enough with all the overspending. My old assistant Lydia is one of the most happily married people I know, and she and her husband spent a total of about $300 for her wedding on the beach -- including a case of Prosecco, their wedding clothes, and a cake. They borrowed somebody's beach house for the reception and had their friends all bring pot-luck. Their friends, essentially, contributed to their wedding, made their wedding, in fact -- but in a small, reasonable way.
I understand some of the arguments for registering -- that people don't want to get 26 blenders, and that some people have no idea what to give. But, maybe people who don't know you well enough to give without your help have no business coming to your wedding? And maybe a truly meaningful wedding gift would simply be a note from each person about what they wish for you (such as, that your marriage will last longer than the payments they'd be making on that monogrammed silver decanter set they would have gotten you at Tiffany's).
If it's truly about the love, why is everybody expected to go out and spear you some expensive home appliance, or, tsk, tsk, tacky, tacky -- a down payment on a house or a honeymoon? Some say it's okay to go for that stuff as long as it comes from "word of mouth." Well, whose mouth does anyone think it originated from first of all? And what of the friends who don't have much money? Are they expected to go into hock, or just into embarrassment, for this kind of gift-giving plan?
If anything, what every couple really needs (for less than $20), is the book, The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work, and then, if you've still got some spare cash, She Comes First, The Sex-Starved Marriage (okay, so the title's a bit of a downer, but it's a preventive measure), maybe a couple of others, and maybe a few trips to a Certified Financial Planner.
I do think, however, it might make a certain kind of sense to register for a divorce lawyer, at the rate and length marriages are lasting these days. And I wonder...how many people would be so hot to get married if they couldn't have the big, splashy ceremony and all the gifts? If they just did it downtown, in a dressup clothes, before a couple close friends and family members and a justice of the peace?
Marriage license: $30
Ceremony at Beverly Hills City Hall: $50
Dinner that night at Campanile with four best friends and daughter and her friend: Not sure; two best friends splurged for this, but about $300
Party the following night at house for fifty friends: $300, including wedding cake and champagne
Wedding dress: vintage Jackie O cream boule suit, found a year before the wedding and not for that purpose: $2
nancy at March 6, 2006 6:40 AM
Personally, I think it makes more sense to have showers and gift registries for people who need stuff to set up a household, for example kids who have just graduated from college and have their first job and apartment. By the time most people marry these days, they have all of the household items they need.
deja pseu at March 6, 2006 7:07 AM
Nancy, like Emmanuelle Richard, has a genius for wearing THE most fabulous vintage outfits. If you press her, you find out they cost, like, 50 cents.
And regarding "setting up a household," let's look at this realistically. What do you really need? A coffeemaker, a comforter, a microwave, silverware, dishes, glasses. What else? All of that can be had, if you shop well, for about $300. Including the microwave. I've had mine since New York, bought it for $75 at Century 21...and I've had the same semi-matching dishes, plus some nice ones from my grandmother and my friend Emily, and silverware I bought for $29.99 at Tuesday Morning, and a comforter I got for about $49, also at Tuesday Morning (a discount store). I've been meaning to get matching dishes one of these days -- like, for about 10 years -- but haven't gotten around to it. Is my life really worse for it? Or maybe better because my thoughts are on more than my dishes?
Come on, what do we all really need, and why do our friends need to buy it for us?
Amy Alkon at March 6, 2006 7:19 AM
Don't we want communities of friends to invest in marriages in a serious (not vacations & knick-knacks) kinda way? Wouldn't that make help to make marriage a more serious enterprise?
Crid at March 6, 2006 7:55 AM
It just gets worse as you get older. Now all our friends have kids (b-day parties, graduations, bar mitvahs, etc) are having grand-kids (showers, christenings, holidays) and everyone seems to get married all over again every 7 years or so.
And it is nice to hear from some of you that weddings can be done tastefully without the extravaganza. Catered weddings usually suck. The best weddings I have ever been to were community/family style potlucks.
eric at March 6, 2006 8:30 AM
Yes, Crid - but how does that play out in terms of what they offer?
Amy Alkon at March 6, 2006 12:20 PM
I definitely agree that a lavish wedding is a bit ridiculous, but since one of our products is an online gift registry I sincerely hope that habit doesn't totally die out....
Stu "El Inglés" Harris at March 6, 2006 12:35 PM
> how does that play out...
When I married the first wife in '85, we decided to do it on a Wednesday. We drove to the courthouse in handsome but unremarkable clothes, walked up to the counter and said "Sign us up." Friends and family were uniformly offended, but they saved plenty on gifts. This proved convenient during the divorce six years later, when there was little matériel to be returned.
That's the opposite extreme from consumer-addled gift registries, isn't it? Either way, We want folks to take marriage more seriously. If we thought carefully about what our marrying friends needed, we might encourage better selections for investment... As regards both gifts and partners. A vacation in Hawaii is pure indulgence, as are all too many marriages [gulp]. If you'd helped a young couple with a down payment and they broke up six years later, you'd be pissed, and might feel some of the equity in the house was yours. The next time, you might be a little more judgmental --and helpful-- if you saw your niece getting serious with someone inappropriate.
Whether it's state-sanctioned marriage or it's something else, the future of civilization is in re-establishing the sense of obligation between couples and the community... The responsibility, and necessary intuition, isn't solely within the household.
Christ, I sound like Hillary. But don't get you a vibe that at Eric's potluck weddings, the people are already attentive to and invested in each other?
Crid at March 6, 2006 4:03 PM
And regarding "setting up a household," let's look at this realistically. What do you really need? A coffeemaker, a comforter, a microwave, silverware, dishes, glasses. What else? All of that can be had, if you shop well, for about $300.
A couple of towels, sheets, some furniture, cookware...
At any rate, when I first started working, coming up with even $300 would have been quite a stretch on the not-quite-minimum wages I was making at the time. I'm not saying everyone needs a set of china and demi-tasse, but even just having the items you mentioned would have been nice.
deja pseu at March 6, 2006 8:21 PM
Brief personal anecdote:
We kept it simple. Eloped to Niagara Falls over a weekend, my wife made her own wedding dress (all black, by the way), and we spent more on doing random touristy stuff while there than we did on the actual wedding ceremony. We had a great time. I've seen far too many friends of mine stress over wedding plans/arrangements to see any benefit in putting ourselves through the same emotional wringer.
Jnichols at March 7, 2006 6:42 AM
You got married in a cardboard box? Luxury! We only had a paper bag, and it was torn on one corner. :-)
Our honeymoon was on train and bicycles, stopping off for fish and chips, before spending a few days at a friend's house, that he was renovating. He turned up in the morning to hang the door to the bedroom - said he thought we might like some privacy!
Norman at March 7, 2006 8:45 AM
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