So sometimes when Im bored I will go over to Weddingbee and read through the E board for some entertainment. Today I came across this gem! (Its pretty long but totally worth the read!):
Link:
http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/how-would-you-respond-to-this-wedding-request-tacky-emailThis email was sent out by the bride after a previous email going on and on about their recent trip to Hawaii. I wish I was making this up, but I'm not. Is this acceptable now? We're all baffled by how this bride (old friend from college) can actually feel this type of solicitation is okay. How would you respond?
"We're not as well off as I thought we were. Don't get me wrong, we're able to pay our bills, but we have a lot of debt. We're going to start putting away $200 a month into a wedding fund (which we opened up today!), but any other excess (which isn't that much) has to go toward paying off the credit card bills that have accumulated. When it comes to planning a dream wedding (and hopefully a nice honeymoon), $200 a month isn't going to add up to much. Which basically means nearly all of our wedding costs are going to go on credit cards. To be honest, I'm a bit freaked out by this because I really thought we had more expendable income than we actually do.
So...we're asking for your help. We're thinking that if all of our friends and family could each donate $15-20 toward our wedding fund, that would help out significantly. We understand that not everyone can give that much, and that's completely fine. If you can give more, that would be wonderful. If you can only give $5, that's completely okay too.
Just know that whatever you can and are willing to give would be ever so much appreciated.
We do ask though that if you do donate, there be no strings attached. What I mean by this is that I don't want you to feel cheated if we have to cut back on our guest list because we just can't find a venue big enough to hold everyone we want to share our special day with. Likewise, I don't want you to feel that money was mismanaged if we do decide we want to splurge on something or have a nice honeymoon. What we will promise though is that everything donated WILL go toward the wedding."
and the next email?
We've narrowed down our search for wedding venues to the Inland Empire so that more of xxx's friends will be able to make it. Also, our mutual friends either still live in the area or will be able to stay with friends and family and not have to get a hotel.
We're looking for suggestions of wedding venues in the Inland Empire for us to look into. We're hoping to pick a place and put down a deposit next month. Ideally I'd like to get married outside and have the reception inside (although that's not a complete deal breaker as we have already considered places where both the ceremony & reception would be outside or where both the ceremony & reception would be inside). We're looking at around 300 guests. (Now before you say that's a lot, we started with a guest list of 567. Our first stab dropped us to 332. We will still take some more time to go over it and refine it, but for the purposes of our search, we're looking for a venue that can hold around 300 people.)
We found a place that is really trying to work with us, including letting us bring in our own food to do a "potluck" wedding which cut the price SIGNIFICANTLY. However, it is still pretty pricey, although we get a lot included for the price, and again the lady is really working with us and is phenomenal. The people who work there really are great, and a couple of friends of mine work there and would be making sure everything went smoothly, including having a really good friend as our bartender! But it still kills me to spend that much money when it doesn't even include food. Also, it wouldn't be an outside wedding.
We found another place that we will visit not this weekend, but next weekend. They sent us their brochure and the ceremony and reception are extremely reasonably priced. We would also be able to get married outside and both the ceremony & reception areas have a capacity of more than 300 hundred. BUT, they will not allow us to bring our own food (which is what we've actually found with all but the other venue I mentioned). We HAVE to use their caterer and must spend a minimum of $17.95 per person. We looked at possibly just getting hors d' oeuvres, but if they are purchased without a full meal, they come to $19 per person. The cheapest full meal is $19.95 per person, so for the price difference, we might as well get the full meal. So while the ceremony and reception prices are very reasonable, the cost of the food kills us. At the moment, this is the venue we are most seriously considering because we would be able to get married outside (which is what I really want) and it includes food, but only costs $1,000 more than the first place I mentioned (but is still A LOT of money).
I used to joke that it would be great to charge a cover fee since the biggest cost of the wedding is feeding people. However, now that I'm in the throws of wedding planning, it feels less and less like a joke. Of course we're not *actually* going to charge a cover fee, but I still come back to wishing each of our friends and family could donate $15-20 toward the cost of the wedding. If we could just get the food covered, we could handle everything else - possibly without even going into debt, or at least only an amount of debt that's manageable.
I hate to ask again (and please don't feel this as pressure if you can't or just plain aren't interested), but I know many people didn't get through my last email because it was so long. We've opened up a wedding fund and would ever so much appreciate donations to it. You can do so by sending a donation through PayPal using xxxx or by following this link (I don't believe you have to have a PayPal account to send money if you use the link):
xxxx
You can also send a check made payable to either xxxx or xxxx at:
ETA: trying to split up GIANT wall o text