Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

For me its about the celebration of Marriage. We are paying for this wedding ourselves. FH family helped out some...my mom gave a small check. They did what they could.
We are having to the party to celebrate. We are not in debt & have not used credit....If we make some money back Great.!! If not, it's ok we don't expect it.

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

definitely don't expect to get as much back as you may just get disappointed I thought it's common wedding etiquette to cover at least your meal plus extra as a guest, we certainly always follow this rule when we go to friends' weddings but I guess not everyone is aware of this etiquette ... but no, don't count on it ...

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

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Posted by MD835

definitely don't expect to get as much back as you may just get disappointed I thought it's common wedding etiquette to cover at least your meal plus extra as a guest, we certainly always follow this rule when we go to friends' weddings but I guess not everyone is aware of this etiquette ... but no, don't count on it ...

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Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

Nope! And we didn't expect to, either. We got back less than a third of the overall total cost, and all of that is sitting in a savings account.

We financed our wedding, knowing full well what it would cost, and that we'd be making a payment on it (we joke that it's our third car), and we're fine with that. B/c in the end, we had the best day of our lives, and we had our friends and family to an amazing party that will only be the first in a long line of them.

If you are already worrying about getting gift money to pay for your plans, you should rethink your plans, and either scale back, or find another way to pay for them.

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

we're hoping to get back what we paid for the reception. we've been using money we would otherwise save to pay for the wedding, so we're hoping to use the gifts to replenish our savings. we chose a very reasonably priced RH, so i think this is within reason. I think everything else will end up being out-of-pocket. GL!

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

We are paying for it ourselves as well and on top of it all we have two kids in school.

We looked at it this way all of our vendors were very reasonably priced and the RH was not too bad but still more then I had wanted to pay.

We had no savings when we started. We pay our wedding off each month in bits.

So we are not really missing the money or going into debt.

No matter what we make at the wedding we wont owe anything.

So come April 11th what ever we got back is a lump sum we didn't have before and a new begining for our savings account. The one we will have to dump all of our money into if we ever want the house we have had our eyes on for ever!

I am not expecting to make alot. I can think of a couple of people I am not expecting anything from because I know these people truely don't have anything to give. My mother being one of them.

Times are tight these days and it's becoming almost impossible to survive living on LI so we are not expecting much.

Unfortunately I have one particular family member and family that I am leary about.

There are 5 of us in my family who attended one of there childrens weddings. Since my sibblings and I are adults we all have a SO. Anyway we went to this persons wedding and we all gave a gift as individual couples in our own seperate cards NOT as a family.

The mother of the bride has the same amount of adult children as our family and they all have SO and she made it very clear to us AFTER there daughters wedding that they were giving us a gift as a family because that is what they could afford. I think that is nervy and complete BS had we had known this 12 weeks ago we would have done the same thing. 10 people one card!

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

hmmmm by "commercializing" a wedding do you mean wearing a big white dress, getting a formal reception hall, lets say hmmm FOX HOLLOW for example, to have a party, hiring a photographer and band???

Get real. Anyone who has had any of these things is slightly commercializing the day. If not everyone would go with their FH ONLY and have a quiet deal at a church/temple....but we DO have the parties and the whole shabang And thats FINE. Its Normal, its what MOST people WANT. But dont JUMP on me if im asking an honest question that 99.99% of the women on here wonder.... MOST people who PAY for their own wedding actually are concerned with the gifts they get back. Not because they are not grateful, not because they EXPECT IT. I am chosing to have this wedding, and i chose the place, it is not my guest responsiblitly to pay anything, i will be greateful for ANYTHING i get, trust me on that, however if ONE BRIDE who just paid over 20k for a wedding says she doesnt WONDER how much her envelopes will bring is, in my opinion is a LIAR.
The whole "holier than thou" GASP how could you ask SUCH a question, its so "tacky" "inapproriate",
GIVE. ME. A. BREAK.

Message edited 10/11/2008 2:42:46 PM.

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

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Posted by queenschic

hmmmm by "commercializing" a wedding do you mean wearing a big white dress, getting a formal reception hall, lets say hmmm FOX HOLLOW for example, to have a party, hiring a photographer and band???

Get real. Anyone who has had any of these things is slightly commercializing the day. If not everyone would go with their FH ONLY and have a quiet deal at a church/temple....but we DO have the parties and the whole shabang And thats FINE. Its Normal, its what MOST people WANT. But dont JUMP on me if im asking an honest question that 99.99% of the women on here wonder.... MOST people who PAY for their own wedding actually are concerned with the gifts they get back. Not because they are not grateful, not because they EXPECT IT. I am chosing to have this wedding, and i chose the place, it is not my guest responsiblitly to pay anything, i will be greateful for ANYTHING i get, trust me on that, however if ONE BRIDE who just paid over 20k for a wedding says she doesnt WONDER how much her envelopes will bring is, in my opinion is a LIAR.
The whole "holier than thou" GASP how could you ask SUCH a question, its so "tacky" "inapproriate",
GIVE. ME. A. BREAK.

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Message edited 10/11/2008 3:13:32 PM.

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

MRS. ESPOSITO well said! you couldn't have said it any better! =] i feel the same way. and in my culture we think the same, we do not go to a wedding thinking how much they paid for our plate and literally going into that covering just for what we ate. that is silly! it's just like you said, an amount to help them start their life and nothing else! =] and honestly about this whole making money on your wedding deal, i honestly don't think now a days anyone will ever make back what they paid for. your even lucky if you make back what you paid for the RH alone and honestly i am not doing the wedding i am doing to make money, my wedding is not a buisness and whatever i get i will be happy with! of course it does cross our mind what people might give us and all but doesn't mean you are doing this wedding just to make money. i always wanted a big wedding and we have a big family and so we know this is costing us a lot of money but honestly whatever i just hope everyone has a GREAT time and can say this was a beautiful wedding. i am going all out and doing everything just as i always wanted! and honestly all i am hoping is that we dont fall into any dept after the wedding where we still owe besides that i dont care about anything else. and so far i am doing pretty good with my credit card, lol. havent really used it yet and have been using cash so so far we are good there.. and i guess having my parents and his parents helping is also a big help! =] but anyway.. good luck!!

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

I agree with both of you - queenschic & Espo22. You both made excellent points.

I'd def be lying if i said that i HADN'T thought about the money I'd get back. Of course i thought of it, of course i HOPE to get back at least some of what I spent. But my wedding isn't primarily to make money.

I actually DO know people though who only invite certain guests because they KNOW they'll give a butt load of money. That's definitely what I've been trying to stay away from. I'm not having a huge wedding. The only people i want there are the ones I know and love. I just want people with me who really want to celebrate this really special occasion. I knew a woman once who wasn't even in love with the man she was marrying. They got divorced maybe a month or two after the wedding and she even admitted that she had just wanted to be "Cinderella for a night". What the heck??? People like this DO make me sick!!!

If I HAD to elope and the only ring FH could give me was a ring pop, I'd still marry him. No question in my mind. Because i am sooo in love with him and just wanna begin our lives together. But that doesn't mean that i don't still want to celebrate with everyone I love. And still, deep down, i will admit that Yes, i am hoping people give generous gifts. But if they don't, I'm not gonna go Bridezilla on their @ss and start calling people. lol. I'll be happy with whatever people give, because it's not as tho I'm "charging" them to come. A gift - that's all it is. That's my opinion, at least

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

Ms. Espo, thats exactly what i meant, u said it better, i never should have used "make money" it implied something i didnt mean. I am not having a wedding to "get money" I am having a wedding A. to marry the man i love more than anything and be his partner in life and B. im also having a wedding i can afford.
But as the wedding draws closer i DO wonder about what $ will be getting, to start budgeting credit card bills and honeymoon expenses. Just being realistic not materalistic. Hence, why i asked the question.
Maybe i sound shallow, im just being real.

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

no where near what I thought I would !! We spent $16,000 and got back $3,000

Re: For those couples who Paid For their Wedding Themselves?

wow only 16K?? i wish that was all for us.. i cant even begin to tell you how much our wedding is costing us, so far all we have booked is.. the hall, photographer/video, and DJ.. and just the hall alone we are at close to 30 thousand right now... honestly right now with those 3 things booked, we are at about 45 thousand dollars and that is only with those 3 things booked so far...... we still have sooo much more to book and get so i cant even imagine at the end what this is all going to cost us... but with all that said, i am not expecting to have my guests pay back for all that, i am doing the wedding ive always wanted and at our expense and doing what we can without trying to than have any dept in the end, thats all i care about!!!!! =]