So .... did you 'make money'?

no way....not even close. I'd say about 25% of what was spent we got back in gifts.
Doesn't bother me though.....I didn't expect to pay for my wedding with our gifts.

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Posted by Songstress

Just thought Id crash to clarify my post on the 08 boards. In my post I mentioned how I hated to think of it that way. I never even thought about 'making money' back on my wedding day until my mom brought it up. Anyone who knows me knows I would never be that selfish to EXPECT money for something. It may sound 'tacky' but lets not try and act like most brides are financially strapped by the time the wedding comes up. I wrote that post while thinking about how many guests Im over and all the payments that are still due to vendors while my wedding is less than 2 months away. Its natural to be frazzled by that. IM happy that this day will bring my whole family together and at the end of the day I will make ends meet regardless of what I get that night. Okay just wanted to clarify because I know how that post can sound and IM definitely not selfish, just stressed.

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I didn't read your post on '08 and am not sure how many NW's did before they posted. I don't think anyone was trying to say anything about you specifically Good luck with the rest of your plans, your day will be here before you know it!

Gifts almost covered the cost of the hall- but that was it. I wouldn't expect to make back what I put in it. It's funny cuz a couple weeks ago my mom brought this up- and I said we did not make all the money back- meaning every little penny we spent. She laughed cuz in her mind, you don't count the dress, makeup, invites, etc...you just count the reception when you look at what you spent. To her, the cost of the wedding is the cost of the reception. She's nuts!

We made memories....so I guess you could say we made out pretty good.........If we would have been out to 'make money' we would have gotten married at McDonald's.

Wish that we did.
Made about half of what we spent.

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Posted by werock0709

Absolutely NOT!!!! I'm still sick over it,I don't even wanna go there Somepeople just URK the S H I T outta me.

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ditto

No we didn't.

but we knew that going in!

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Posted by Songstress

Just thought Id crash to clarify my post on the 08 boards. In my post I mentioned how I hated to think of it that way. I never even thought about 'making money' back on my wedding day until my mom brought it up. Anyone who knows me knows I would never be that selfish to EXPECT money for something. It may sound 'tacky' but lets not try and act like most brides are financially strapped by the time the wedding comes up. I wrote that post while thinking about how many guests Im over and all the payments that are still due to vendors while my wedding is less than 2 months away. Its natural to be frazzled by that. IM happy that this day will bring my whole family together and at the end of the day I will make ends meet regardless of what I get that night. Okay just wanted to clarify because I know how that post can sound and IM definitely not selfish, just stressed.

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I'm the one who said it was tacky to think of it as 'making money,' but i didn't even read your post so in no way was that meant towards you specifically.

we all understand what you mean though.

realistically, unless your parents (or someone) is paying for a big chunk of the wedding, you probably won't break even with gifts... Our guests were very generous in that we only had a few people not give us gifts at all, or not give us money and we still wouldn't have broke even for the amount spent on the wedding as a whole. I'm fortunate to have had my parents pay for the reception so the amount my husband and I spent was covered.

We didnt 'make money' but we did almost break even pretty much. His parents gave us a gift of moola to cover the hall completely which was our biggest expense. The rest of our gifts helped us break even more or less. Some people were far more gnerous than we expected while others gave nada so it evened out. We try to look at it as for the most part,we had only the people we really wnated there so we didnt care about the money as much.

I will admit though some people were CHEAP like the cousin who harrassed us to invite his 14 yr old kid and then gave us A PICTURE FRAME for their 3 plates...Mind u we said ADULTS ONLY...

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Posted by jtgarsik

LMAO. uuumm..NO. we got back ABOUT what we spent on the reception hall. but the cost of EVERYTHING?!???? that would've been really nice lol. but no.

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Ditto

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Posted by enjft

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Posted by werock0709

Absolutely NOT!!!! I'm still sick over it,I don't even wanna go there Somepeople just URK the S H I T outta me.

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ditto

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ditto ditto

We actually did, we rec'd just about what we put into it - BUT we had a VERY SIMPLE wedding.

It was 11AM on a Sat. Ceremony at the Recption location, only 50 guests, only beer/wine bar. I bought my dress on clearance for $200 and made many of the things for the wedding myself, so we only spent $3,500 not including the HM. We bought a house right before the wedding and didn't want to go into (more)debt , so we paid cash for everything and kept it pretty low key - which really suited us well, neither one of us likes big events. I loved our wedding and am really happy with what we did.

Nope. We came close to breaking even but not quite. We paid for it all ourselves and luckily didn't go too crazy!

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Posted by Nina_m74

We actually did, we rec'd just about what we put into it - BUT we had a VERY SIMPLE wedding.

It was 11AM on a Sat. Ceremony at the Recption location, only 50 guests, only beer/wine bar. I bought my dress on clearance for $200 and made many of the things for the wedding myself, so we only spent $3,500 not including the HM. We bought a house right before the wedding and didn't want to go into (more)debt , so we paid cash for everything and kept it pretty low key - which really suited us well, neither one of us likes big events. I loved our wedding and am really happy with what we did.

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$3,500 You go girl!

yes, we did....

We made about $7,000 more than we put in, EVERYTHING included. We paid for the entire wedding ourselves, so we were happy wedid that well. If our parents had paid for the reception, we would have done AMAZINGLY well. but i have to say overall people were amazingly generous and kind. We still'made money' even though we had some people that didnt' give gifts or the OOT who dont' give like they do in NY. over all though we did 'make a little money'... (I hate how that sounds, though!)

granted, i had a saturday AFTERNOON wedding in FEBRUARY and i was on a crazy *** budget... that is the only reason why we had extra at the end,