I am getting married in Spain and it is crazy expensive. I have a huge family and my girlfriend’s family is huge too so we are going to have +350 people. I was wondering what is the case in your country and state.

26 comments

  1. My mom’s family are 13 siblings, my father’s 6. I have 60 cousins, most of them are married. Only in direct family (brothers, sisters, first cousins and their wifes/husbands) have +100 people from my side. My gf’s family is of a similar size. This is also unsual in my country.

    With friends from both sides and our parents friends (it is traditional that the parents invite their friends here) we are looking at +350 people in our wedding. How does it look in your country?

  2. We had 61 guests and if course had to pay for ourselves. It cost us 16.5k but we utilized some cost cutting measures. We foraged our decorations and skipped having a DJ and we also wanted a winter wedding, which is the off-season.

  3. I don’t even know if I have a dozen people on my side that would show up to my future wedding. 350 is crazy.

  4. I was definitely not the norm. It was my husband and I, my parents, my sister, and my brother. My sister got ordained online and she married us. My brother was in his room playing video games. My mom was in the kitchen cooking. My dad was sitting in his recliner watching sports. My sister signed the paper at the dining room table, my mom ran in to take a picture, and then my husband and I both left and went home. 10/10 wouldn’t change a thing about it.

  5. We had 200+ at our church wedding in Indianapolis in 1977. The reception was immediately after in the church basement with refreshments and desserts. No meal was included and I believe my mother and father-in-law spent about 1000 dollars total for everything(about 5000 dollars today). We then went to the Canadian border on Namakan Lake; a family friend had 5 cabins and a “honeymoon cabin” 1 mile away across the bay. We rented the honeymoon cabin for 150 dollars a week for almost 3 weeks. All of that is gone now as it’s one of the newest national parks – Voyageurs National Park. It was all trees, lakes, bears, and fish. We ate a lot of walleye

  6. First wedding: small, backyard. Probably 70 people, about $120 a person.

    Wedding 2: 170 people at a venue, $250 a person

  7. We had 200 guests and my Mom ordered a catered lunch from a local restaurant. My dress was under $200.00 including my veil. My parents paid for the bridesmaids dresses and that was around $300.00 for 4 dresses. All of the groomsmen and the groom rented tuxedos which came to roughly $250.00. There was a photographer, the church organist, the minister, flowers for me and my bridesmaids, bouteniers for the groom and groomsmen, waitstaff for the lunch service, and a videographer. The use of the church was free but we donated money. The reception was at my parents home. We made silk roses on stems and filled them with rice but we didn’t have any decorations. My parents bought a 3 layer wedding cake topped with the cermaic bride and groom that was on my grandparents wedding cake from the 1940s. I bought my own trousseau and paid for the honeymoon. My father in law played his guitar outside while my Dad played mandolin in the house and that was our music. I’m guessing the day cost around $3,000 USD with roughly $20 or $25 per guest. It’s worth noting that we did not serve alcohol or have a bar.

  8. Started to plan our wedding but trying to get everyone here, transportation and housing was crazy. We decided to get married in a hot air balloon over Lake Tahoe. Maybe 5K total for airfare, balloon, car rental and two weeks in Tahoe and CA. Wouldn’t have done anything different.

  9. My wedding was small and unassuming. The actual event was attended by my parents and us in the courthouse and that’s it. We did fly out my wife’s family for a full celebration later, had a few local guests arrive. There were maybe 20 people total.

  10. I had a about 30 people. Subtracting my wife’s wedding dress, everything else came to about $300 per person.

  11. 70 people. It cost about 10k. It was rrally beautiful. Great food, low key event on a farm.

  14. We had a very small wedding about 25 years ago. Only about 25 guests. Total, including my dress, was about $1,000.

  15. My wife and I spent $18,000.

    Had roughly 200 people. Open bar (beer and liquor) and a DJ. Had a caterer that did a buffet style meal. Pretty simple food. We are friends with the venue owners so didn’t have to pay anything for that which was a major savings.

    One area that I was totally oblivious of was the cost of floral arrangements. It never crossed my mind how expensive they can be. My wife spent months bargaining the price down to an acceptable level. If not, they could have matched the total of all other wedding expenses which is absurd. Be forewarned.

    Lastly, we had a church wedding. It’s customary to give something to the church and the priest. I did $500 each. Another unexpected expense.

  17. About 15 people, a keg of beer, burgers and brats right on the lake overlooking the rockies….overall it was about 200 bucks and was a crazy party.

  18. We had about 150 people and it cost us $40,000. We got married back in 2019 though. Wedding costs have sky rocketed since then.

  19. We had what I would consider to be a small wedding, but it was important to my wife that we keep it that way and I didn’t mind. I think about 60-70 people.

    Much more importantly the marriage is good and we’re still together 17 years later!

  20. Maybe 15 or 20. We had a very small wedding at a friends home. It was perfect. No stress at all. We spent less than $1000 and bought a house instead of a honeymoon.

    We have been married 30 years and I would do it exactly the same way.

  21. ~$50k when my fiancée and I get married in Michigan this November. We are inviting 275 guests but I expect it to be around 130 attending due to the fact that most people will have to travel across the country to the event. We are both transplant NYers (Michigan and Tennessee) but you can get more bang for your buck in suburban Detroit.

  24. When we first started planning we wrote down pretty much every person we knew. That list was a bit over 700 people. We then grouped them into 3 groups, A, B, and C. Group A was “definitely invite”, group C was “yeah, nope” and group B was “TBD”.

    We then have group B to the parents and asked if they had any must have’s or if there was anyone else they wanted that was a must have. Anyone that wasn’t mentioned by the parents, got axed.

    We ended up with 150 in group A and 100 in group B. ~250 total were invited.

    It was $38/plate so $9500 for food, bar bill was $4000. DJ, photographer, cake, we had a trumpet quartet, transportation, etc.

    Total bill we were ballpark of $20,000 for the whole thing which would be about $34,000 in today’s dollars.

    USA, Ohio.

  26. I got married earlier this year. 110 people for 40k. It was not an extravagant wedding but it was perfect and I got everything I wanted.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like