Lying About the Expense Snark

RezIpsa · May 2015

I have been looking at lots of info on weddings with budgets around 5k, since I think that is what we are zeroing in on for a budget.

It drives me bananas when people categorize their wedding as having a $1000 budget, $2000 budget, etc. but then go on to outline how many costs were paid by others.

"We had a $3000 budget and 80 guests and it was lovely! My mom bought my dress, my aunts bought and made all the food, the uncles bought the booze, my best friend did the photos" and so on. That is not a $3000 wedding. It's a $10k wedding, you just didn't have to pay the rest.

Not that there is anything wrong with people having generous families and talented friends, but it's so damn unrealistic not to add in fair market value for the services and goods you were gifted to get a true estimated cost. Especially when you are holding your wedding up as an example of a "$x budget wedding".

Sorry, "A Practical Wedding" is making me stabby.

frenchiekin · May 2015

Before I even got to the end of your post, I had a feeling you were reading APW! I love that site for many reasons (they usually have great advice and gave me a lot of down to earth perspective when I started to stress), though other things they promote (potluck weddings, etc) I just ignore. But for real, in almost every one of their budget wedding breakdowns, SO MUCH STUFF is free to the couple. They either have a family/friend connection or something major was gifted to them. It made me insane when I was trying to get some ideas for how to cut costs. Oh, of course - just have friends who are willing to (essentially) finance parts of your wedding. Brilliant idea!! /sarcasm

I'm with you on this.

AuroraRose41 · May 2015

This annoyed me so much too. While FI and I are having a fairly expensive wedding, we are paying for it ourselves and some things had to be cut as a result. I was looking for ways to save money on certain things that we weren't prioritizing, and looked for guidance on sites like that that advertised weddings under 5k. I was always so annoyed when the advice was basically "Rely on your friends and family, and if you don't know people who can do this, than you are out of luck!". It wasn't good advice on how to truly make a budget work at all.

I am totally in favor of starting a blog/site/what have you with real budget examples where you don't have to rely on others to fund your wedding or provide free services.

RezIpsa · May 2015

"A Budget Wedding" is super guilty of this too. Laid out perfectly with weddings grouped by budget categories. Seems super helpful until you see "We spent 3k of our 6k budget on a videographer, but only $600 on our buffet because our friends run Per Se and they made all our food!"

Well, no shit. I can make my budget work too if my best friend/ Vogue photographer pitches in.

I would rather have my family and friends be guests and enjoy the day. And I think I need to start auditioning new friends based on their ability to contribute to My Special Day.

Snaps816 · May 2015

I agree -- the "wedding budget" refers to the cost of the thing, not where the money comes from. If you put up $5k and family puts up $10k, that's a $15k wedding.

AddieCake · May 2015

I would be frustrated by that, too, It's not very helpful or practical advice for doing things on a small budget if there are expenses not included.

julieanne912 · May 2015

As someone who is on a budget (15k seems decent til you add it all up), I hear ya sister. Before starting my planning, I thought for sure we could do it for under 10k, mainly based on those kinds of sites/posts/featured articles. It was a shocker and quite depressing once I started adding it all up after getting going.

JCbride2015 · May 2015

Yes, totally frustrating. I had the same struggles with both of those sites; our budget is pretty large, objectively, but we are paying totally ourselves and had to cut certain things. The suggestions pretty much boiled down to "either get your friends and family to do it, or go without." .... okay then.

RezIpsa · May 2015

@julieanne912 and @JCbride2015,

I never even considered the fact that this is totally irritating at all budget levels! But I bet the omissions are the same relative percentages, just different amounts.

I don't get the push to pawn your wedding off as costing significantly less than it did. It's the AW side of frugality, and that just makes my head explode.

Lying About the Expense Snark

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