Weddit Survey! 20 questions about you and your wedding, just for fun

So cool! Are you planning on doing a recap after a couple of weeks?

It's now about tied with dating apps/sites as the most common way to meet! I'm actually surprised that "through friends" isn't more common, but I guess in college you often meet through friends and in that case the college category probably trumps it.

Same here! Would love to see that statistic.

Also I answered that we live in Australia, but we're getting married in the States. Would have loved to see that follow-up question.

Careful not to generalize too much! Reddit is self-selecting for people who are more likely to be non-religious than most, even among Millennials.

I also found this interesting. I expected to be in the minority on that question.

By refusing to not do so. Tailored number of people (75 tops) to venue price per person and minimum, decided what things were most important to us and went DIY on the rest, employing skills of family, and a lot of thorough searching/trusting less experienced but very skilled people.

If we couldn't have kept it under 10k we wouldn't have done it. No judgement of those who want to spend their money this way, but your wedding is a year salary for one of us. Wouldn't work here.

I think it's about size and location.

We're in Canada with under 70 people. I'm doing it at a hotel/resort so I'm not paying for the venue (except $300 for gazebo) since we're staying at the venue. Food and alcohol will be expensive (~$12k) but I was pretty cheap about everything else. For example my engagement ring was <$1000, dress was $200, and wedding cake <$400. The room is pretty with wood beams and big chandeliers so I'm only doing floral centrepieces and no other decorations.

We're right at $20k when I calculate tax and tips and little things, but might go slightly over in the end.

We're pulling off our wedding ceremony/reception for about $5,000, but it's only possible by skipping a lot of the more "traditional" elements. So for us that means a Sunday afternoon wedding at a park, with a BBQ reception, no DJ/dancing, no liquor/bar (only beer/hard cider from Costco), no wedding party, and our photographer is the wife of one of my coworkers (she's very talented, but is definitely giving us a "friends discount"). Not to mention we're only inviting 70 people. So it's doable, but may not be everyone's cup of tea.

When I do a write-up of results I'm planning to cross-reference number of guests and wedding budget - I'm sure there's a strong correlation! We're spending $15-16k by choosing a venue with a 100-person limit, forgoing a DJ and cake, doing beer and wine only, limiting our attire budget to under $750 for both of us together, and going with the least expensive option without compromising on quality in most other things. Those weren't elements we really valued, so they don't feel like a big sacrifice.

My thoughts too. We aimed initially for 20-25ish, we'll be lucky if we stay under 30. And this isn't just "oh let's get a sparkly pony to carry us home for 2k more", this is "oh shit we want plastic plates to eat on, versus using salad plates all night long? 3k"

I'm in the mid Atlantic, two hours from D.C. I'll add

It all depends on what you count as part of the total money spent. I count absolutely everything related to the wedding (including rehearsal dinner, wedding bands, etc). Some people only count the actual venue costs. A lot of people get gifts or favors from people and don't count those in the budget. So when some people say they"only did it for x" it's often times not an accurate depiction of the circumstances

I'm wondering if people include the cost of the rings and honeymoon in these figures (I don't). That would really skew the responses for a lot of people.

We live in the Midwest and are planning on diy-ing a lot of it. Estimated guests: 200ish Estimated budget: 15k, though we're sitting at about 12.

Some of the ways we're keeping costs down:

Venue: Catholic church in my hometown then a reception hall. We're looking at ~ $400 to rent the church. That includes the priests time (though we are looking into getting him a thank you gift) and we're using the church choir along with one of my very talented friends for music. Reception hall: ~$2500 including all tables and chairs, set up, take down, and ceiling draping. It's additional if we want to use their back drop for the head table, so we're pricing that out vs making something of our own.

Photos: using the same gal who took my senior portraits in high school and family pictures. She offered me a 10% discount because I'm a repeat customer. ~$900 for engagement shoot, 6 hours of coverage, and some extra goodies

Food: still pricing but deciding between a local delicious caterer who does simple bbq (so tentative menu would be: bbq sandwiches, mashed potatoes, beans, some sort of salad, and rolls) OR the grocery store I used to manage offers a discount for employees and a discount if you order flowers, food, and cake through them. Their tentative menu would be 2 roast meats (though I'm not a huge meat fan, so we might do 1 meat and 1 veggie option), a potato dish, vegetable, and salad. ~$2500-3000

Flowers: like I said, debating diy. Most of my girls are tomboys and don't actually like flowers, so they'll carry a single in season bloom.

Hair: once again, most of them will be doing simple buns or braids. My mom's best friends own a hair salon and they're doing hers and mine for free as a wedding present to me.

Rehearsal dinner: we're doing a summer wedding, so the plan is to head back to my parent's house to grill. Dad helps a neighbor farm in exchange for half a pig and half a cow. Probably going to throw pork loins in our smoker and then make salads to go with.

Booze: cash bar at the venue, debating doing drink tickets. That way everyone gets a drink to toast with. Both FH and my family's have some heavy drinkers, and we're hoping this will deter some riff raff.

As for the decorations, we're planning on doing them ourselves in a sort of vintage nerdy theme. Centerpieces will be terrariums with Pokemon figures hidden in them with book confetti sprinkled around. I'm planning on scoping out thrift stores and garage sales to get the glass bowls for these.

We're skipping favors too, in lieu of a bigger dessert bar. My lovely aunts are all wonderful bakers and each are bringing at least a couple pans of treats or mints. Because of this, we'll also probably just get a small cake to cut for pictures.

We're debating printing out some sort of coloring/activity pages and getting crayons for any kid under 12. Catholic ceremonies are long and sometimes boring so I'm hoping that'll occupy them. We're also looking into bulk glow stick bracelets for the reception. Amazon sells $300 for about $20.

Hope my super simple breakdown kind of helped! 😊

We got married last September, with the goal of spending as little money as we possibly could, in order to save as much as possible for our "extended honeymoon", which we are STILL enjoying (traveling the Western US in a self converted camper van).

We spent about $3000 on our wedding, and it was still beautiful and perfect for us. How we did it:

-$99 David's bridal dress from the discount section (I totally lucked out, it was my dream dress anyway!)

-Hubby chose to put together a more casual outfit from asos, then have it tailored instead of wearing a traditional suit

-we paid $350 total for alterations (dress straps shortened, dress hemmed, hubby's pants and vest fitted). I bustled my own dress to save an additional $300

-$300 bentwood ring set from Etsy

-venue was free, husband's uncle's beautiful backyard

-same Uncle officiated, he'd done a few ceremonies and wrote a beautiful personalized address

-limited guests to immediate family

-my father is a photographer and provided his services as a wedding present

-skipped the wedding party

-I made my own bouquet and boutonnieres

-Hubby & I made all decor ourselves, from craft shop materials

-opted for a small reception at a local park with buffet, self serve bar, and cupcake tower & 6"cake for us to cut.

Those are the main details, I think, of how we kept costs so low.

Edit- For those interested in how everything turned out: https://imgur.com/gallery/W1btA

Free venue that has crockery, glasses, kitchen etc, Only 30-40 people, No bridal party - we only have flower girls. No DJ/band, None of those stupid gifts for everyone and his mum that Americans seem to do.

[deleted]

State park venue ($2000 for 3 days 2 nights lodging for everyone) florist friend and we are growing some of our own flowers, $200 and $300 dresses, $200 mossanite rings, sister in law officiating. Found a very talented photographer for less than the going rate in this area because she has a day job, and my brother in law is also a wedding photographer who will be doing our engagement photos, I'm doing our makeup and fiancee's aunt is a hairstylist. Music is Spotify, photo booth is a selfie booth. Good friend is getting married a couple months later, our gifts to each other will be providing day of coordinator services for each other. The only thing we'll be dropping a large chunk of change really will be the caterer. And DIY all the things.

I agree that the questions aren't perfect, but they're actually pretty good (and I'm usually highly critical of surveys).

• Another issue is the one with year number ranges...if you've been together 2 years, which do you choose?
• If you're not a bride or groom, then the implication is don't take the survey. Yes, would've been better to have an other option, that directed to the end of the survey.
• The survey definitely feels US-centric, but would a European be unable to answer the race/ethnicity question, even if they don't "worry" about it? I don't think so, I have a European father and I'm pretty sure that Europeans aren't "race-blind," but agree that other countries/regions might use different reporting categories.
• The question with the seasons is a bit problematic, but it is qualified with months. Maybe for reporting purposes it would be better to leave off the seasons and just include the ranges of months.
• I think the budget question assumes US dollars, but you're right, that will skew answers if some assume other dollars.

For a research publication or dissertation, it falls short. For purposes of an overview of the sub and funsies, it does a good enough job.

Yeah, I should have specified I was interested in answers from Wedditors planning their own weddings - I added that to the title. I added USD to the question, and wrote a note for southern hemisphere people to ignore the months and just select their season. For the race thing, yeah, it reflects a US-centric perspective, but as the survey shows, so does the sub! I still think it's useful.

Also, perhaps the what are you wearing question could be a bit more fleshed out? "A suit" is as descriptive as saying "I'm wearing a dress."

Pretty sure that's the average.

In cities, that's what it costs

I'm sure you don't mean to come across as snooty, but as someone having an "expensive" wedding I get quite defensive about the whole culture of "OMG how can you spend so much money on it?"

150 guests, at a venue that costs £100 a head for catering, a nice honeymoon, generosity towards the bridal party (dresses/kilts, hotel room), a decent band, some day entertainment, transport... it adds up and you can easily end up with a large budget.

However, if you have the money and you are willing to spend it on your wedding, I think it's a great way to support several local businesses and create a day that's really special to the people you love.

Unfortunately Reddit generally self selects for white, less religious and younger people. Always look at Reddit polls through that lens.

Actually, a study in 2013 showed that about 1/3 of recent marriages started online! I can't imagine that it's done anything but increase. And I really should have had another option for people who met online but not through dating sites - just from skimming through results, a good number of the "other" responses are online (Reddit, Twitter, etc.). I'm one of them, too! We met through Coffee Meets Bagel a little over a year ago.