by Susan Wiggs
But…an Oscar dress (Mr. de la Renta and I were on a first-name basis by this time) cost $15,000. That would only leave…$10,000 for the rest of the wedding with nothing left over for the honeymoon.
In my mind, I saw Château Frontenac bursting into flames.
My lobster tail shriveled and became a saltine cracker adorned with a squirt of Easy Cheese.
My towering, glittering centerpieces toppled over with a deafening crash.
Twenty-five thousand bucks wouldn’t even cover a fraction of the wedding I had cruelly been led to imagine.
I tried to buy myself time by asking the question I thought I already knew the answer to. “Why would you want us to elope, Mommy? Don’t you want to see your only child get married?”
“Well, honestly, Elizabeth, it might be a good idea to focus on practicalities. You know that. Most people who get invited to weddings would rather send a gift and not have to go and pretend to enjoy gummy buffet food and cheesy DJ music.”
“But…what about the lobster?” I whimpered.
“Lobster?” she said. “Ha! Can you imagine how much that would cost? A nice lobster dinner’s gonna run you a hundred bucks a head…if you have 150 people at your wedding, that’s fifteen thousand bucks just on food. That’s insane!”
Was someone playing a practical joke on me? Hadn’t she proposed the lobster?
I tried a different approach. “Well, twenty-five grand would be great for eloping, but we want to have a real wedding. I mean, we don’t have to spend a hundred bucks a head, but…I mean, $15,000 for food and drink really isn’t that much.”
Oops.
Brides, take heed: never, ever tell your self-employed, freelance-writer mother whose royalty payments only come twice a year that any sum of money “isn’t that much.” For that matter, don’t say those words to any mother. She didn’t get to where she is by ignoring the realities of budget.
The conversation spiraled downward from there. At one point, my mom said $5,000 was a perfectly adequate amount for a wedding, to which I replied that I would need twenty times that amount to have the wedding I wanted. That’s right—I heard myself requesting $100,000 for my Big Day in the middle of a conversation that started out with her offering to pay me off for eloping.
I mean, really. My parents had generously paid my tuition for one of the most expensive private undergraduate institutions in the country. I blithely ignored the fact that putting me through said college meant that they had to hold off on traveling the world and buying a new home—one they had been saving for since before I was born. In their minds, they were financing a degree that would exponentially improve my life. Setting that aside, I stupidly told my mother that an ostentatious wedding would definitely improve my life!
I tried telling her that the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. was close to $30,000, to which she responded with the oldest mom trick in the book: “I don’t care what everyone else is doing. I’m your mother and I say you can do better than everyone else.”
She reminded me that $100,000 spent on one day amounted to a down payment on a starter home. Two years’ tuition at business school. A small fleet of new hybrid cars with all the trimmings. When I replied that I had no immediate plans to purchase a home, I’d get a scholarship for my MBA and I didn’t need a car, she upped the ante and figured out that a hundred grand would feed four hundred children in Ghana for a year.
And what could I say to that? She was right.
I got off the phone with her that day feeling shaken. Suddenly, my dream wedding felt impossibly out of reach. Worse, though, I experienced a frighteningly adult sensation of personal responsibility and conscience. My wedding fantasy had turned me into someone I barely knew—a person who was grasping and entitled, a person who had forgotten that any sum of money my parents gave us for the wedding was a gift.
The sum to underwrite the platinum wedding represented a life-changing fortune to 99 percent of the world’s population, yet I had assumed that my parents would gladly fork over whatever it took to give their baby a lavish wedding. I searched deep, trying to justify the lobster, the gown, the chateau, the whole glittering dream…and I couldn’t make myself do it.
And that was exactly what my mom wanted.
She’s a wily one, right?
In hindsight, I can see that she wasn’t as concerned about the money as she was about my values. She didn’t like the idea that her child had grown into the sort of person who would spend money on a party instead of saving it for something that really mattered.
And I have to give myself credit: If left to my own devices, I eventually would have come to my senses. Even if money were no object, my inner voice of reason would have hauled me back from the brink. I never would have been able to pull the trigger on ten-foot-tall, crystal-encrusted centerpieces, knowing that the money spent on them could be used for something much more lasting and meaningful in my life or the lives of those around me. (But let’s not kid ourselves, Dear Readers: I would have taken that Oscar de la Renta dress in a heartbeat. I said I was frugal, not crazy.)
A couple of weeks later we sat down as a family, my levelheaded father and manfully brave fiancé with us, to discuss the wedding budget like sane people.
The conversation was still unpleasant. It never feels good to ask or be asked for money, whether it’s $100 or $100, 000. We argued a bit, and I got defensive, but eventually we hammered out a sum that everyone could live with. At the end of the day my parents agreed to give us $20, 000 to spend however we wanted, and if our wedding ended up costing more than that, we would be on our own to figure out how to pay for it.
Not to ruin the ending of this book, but I eventually did have the wedding of my dreams. Dave and I set our priorities, item by item. We made a list of the most important wedding elements to us, and allotted our spending accordingly.
Remember that Google search I mentioned earlier about “how to have a wedding without flowers”? At first blush, the very concept seems inconceivable, doesn’t it? When a girl dreams of a wedding, she imagines imported Casablanca lilies, themed end-of-aisle arrangements, a bouquet of rare orchids trailing from here to Omaha. Here’s a real quick way to get the bloom off the rose: Crunch the numbers. Flowers for a wedding can run from $2,000 to $20,000 and beyond. The lower-cost ones are not earth-friendly, the environmentally conscious ones cost the moon, and at the end of the day, everything winds up in the trash.
Surprising as it seems, flowers didn’t pass the smell test. The Sri Lankan Kadupul blooms were relegated to the bottom of our priority list, along with six miles of aisle swags, urns of topiary clipped to resemble our favorite Disney characters and ribbon woven from the delicate wings of endangered Bengali moths. My bridesmaids ended up carrying three large, yellow mums each. They looked beautiful, nobody complained, and I didn’t lose sleep over spending six grand on something that I honestly didn’t give a hoot about.
As we were fighting, er, figuring out exactly how the money would be spent, something happened to me and Dave. Our knock-down-drag-outs, er, lively debates were actually long, intense, relationship-testing discussions that ultimately revealed important details about our inner selves to each other. And let me tell you, as uncomfortable as this can be, it’s not a bad thing to make sure you’re on the same page about the merits of imported, jewel-encrusted boutonnieres. In the end, your bond will strengthen as your vision and purpose take shape. Which is a fancy way of saying that Dave and I sort of decided how to spend our budget…and in the process, we laid the groundwork for future financial decisions in our lives together.
* * *
Here are some of the inspiration and reference websites I used to ground the wedding decisions I made—and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Google your heart out, bride!
http://costofwedding.com
http://www.theknot.com
http://www.weddingbee.com
http://snippetandink.blogspot.com
http://www.marthastewartweddings.com
(especially their seating chart tool)
http://www.sites.google.com (for our wedding website)
http://www.theweddingreport.com
http://www.greylikesweddings.com
http://stylemepretty.com
* * *
Note to brides: do not skip this step. Work on your wedding as a couple. It is a microcosm of many discussions you’ll have as a married couple, and you might as well get your differences out in the open now.
I can’t say it was easy, because by the time we got a hard number out of my parents, my heart was already set on some fairly pricey ideas. Still, I managed to fit everything I wanted into the budget my parents gave me.
Let’s get real, people: there’s no unilaterally pleasant way to hash out your wedding budget. If you can pay for it yourself, do it. Don’t stress your parents out about it. And if you need their help, don’t forget to be grateful for whatever amount they give you—even if all they’re able to provide is love and support.
Just make sure you don’t get roped into the conversation before you’re ready with some hard data, a clear idea of what you’re going to ask for and an open mind.
And never forget to heed the immortal words of the Notorious B.I.G.: “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”
SUSAN
When it comes to giving advice about money, I am not the one to ask. Remember, I’m the one in the pink-tinted shades, writing novels that are meant to transport readers to the realm of fantasy. And I’m the person who ditched a perfectly stable and predictable teaching career in order to pursue my writing dreams. “Pursuing one’s writing dreams” is often a euphemism for “being unemployed” or later, once you’ve found a publisher, “living in subsistence-level poverty.”
I have known the uncertain merits of measuring the backseat of the car to see if it’s actually conceivable that a family could live there after eviction. I’ve eschewed entering my books in prestigious award contests because I needed the entry fee to buy groceries. Oh, and those phony-looking blank checks that come in the mail with your credit card statement? Guess what? You really can write them to the IRS.
As you can see, budget and finance are hardly my thing. Passion, not practicality, is the fiction writer’s strong suit.
Long-term survival in this business does, however, train even the most passionate among us to be cautious when it comes to spending money. So when your adored and newly engaged daughter comes to you and says she wants to spend six figures on her wedding day, feel free to take a moment.
Take two moments. Knock yourself out.
Dealing with the wedding budget is a crucible for family values. How much is enough? How much is too much, and how—outside of a small brown plastic pill bottle—do you find the balance?
I don’t recall exactly what my own wedding cost. I do remember that my dad wrote a single check to the Always and Forever Wedding Chapel, and he didn’t even break into a sweat. Our “reception” was a gathering of friends and family at my parents’ home and we had a sheet cake from the grocery store around the corner. However, I do concede that I was not the girl who fantasized all her life about being a bride. I fantasized about writing that bride’s story, again and again. If someone had threatened to take that dream away, she would have had a fight on her hands.
Here’s where I want to remind you—your daughter’s wedding is about her dreams, not yours. And who are you to deny this person her dreams? So what if you want her to spend her wedding budget on a 401(k) plan or a down payment on a home? Take a deep breath, step back, give her a lump sum you’re comfortable with…and let go.
My husband likes to say water finds its own level. You hope that level is not so deep that everyone ends up like the people in steerage on the Titanic. Chances are, you’ll come up with a plan that makes the bride happy. How you get to that point is a mysterious process involving, to borrow an apt phrase, a searching and fearless moral inventory of your finances, your marriage, your emotions and your conscience.
I know what you’re thinking: I’d rather have a root canal.
But I also know you’ll do the right thing. Take a deep breath, take a step back and set priorities.
Warning: the wedding industry is a Vast Dove-Wing Conspiracy that exists in order to shake you down like a two-bit pickpocket. It’s easy to get swept into a vortex of wanton spending in which you—a hitherto reasonable individual—are brainwashed into thinking you cannot possibly pull off a wedding without horses dyed to match the bridal party colors, saffron-infused Kobe beef wrapped in Maine lobster tails and sprinkled with gold leaf and Beluga caviar, matching Louboutin pumps for the bridesmaids, a flyover by the Blue Angels and letterpressed toilet paper.
Do me a favor and stay in touch with your Common Sense Fairy. You know her. She’s that smart Inner Girl who has reeled you back from the precipice all your life. She’ll remind you to take a step back, do your breathing and embrace your right to the line-item veto. Heed her well.
Ultimately, the goal is to celebrate this incredibly happy couple and to launch them into a beautiful new life. Trust me: you’re not doing them any favors by simply agreeing to their every whim. You want to have a meaningful ceremony followed by a memorable party. It’s very liberating when you think of things in those terms.
Chances are, you can just say no to the letterpressed toilet paper.
* * *
CHEAT SHEET
I KNOW, I KNOW, YOU MEANT TO READ THE WHOLE
CHAPTER BUT THEN YOU GOT INTO A GIANT KNOCKDOWN-DRAG-OUT WITH YOUR MOTHER ABOUT YOUR
WEDDING BUDGET. HERE’S YOUR CHEAT SHEET:
No matter how well-off your parents are, compared to you and the rest of the country, any amount of money they fork over for your Big Day is a gift. Treat it as such. Don’t set yourself up for failure by feeling entitled to any sum, however small, from your folks.
You know why you don’t need to freak out if your parents don’t give you much money? Because there’s a lot you can do on the cheap. Sit down with your fiancé, make a list of priorities and figure out which elements you can toss out of your wedding completely. For me, it was floral arrangements. Does music make you go “meh”? Think about replacing your ten-piece band with an iPod.
If you keep your eye on the prize (no, not the $8,000 cake—your relationship with your future spouse), you won’t be thinking about the corners you cut on your wedding day, anyway.
* * *
4
SPACES AND PLACES
Choosing your venue, and why having a simple backyard reception turned out to be the most complicated and impossible idea we addressed in planning our wedding
Mom, how do you feel about having Porta Potties in your backyard?
ELIZABETH
HOMETOWN WEDDING RUMBLE
Mommy really wanted the wedding at home, and even lobbied like a teamster-with-lipstick about it. It didn’t bother her in the least that traveling to the tiny, wet, green island where I grew up was going to be problematic for out-of-town guests unfamiliar with the watery hell that is the Seattle ferry commute. She thought nothing of cramming up to two hundred guests onto the groaning deck in her backyard for canapés of salmon spread and Dixie cups of Cold Duck. She was quite certain that, even though the town rolls up its sidewalks at sundown, we would not hear a peep of complaint about the loud partying until midnight. I might have mentioned this before—my mother spends her days with fictional characters who iron out all of life’s problems by page 386.
Here’s the thing: Dave and I decided early on that we wanted to make our wedding as easy as possible on our guests. Yes, the day was all about us, but our guests were the ones making the hike out to Seattle and buying us extravagant gifts. (Well, MOST of them were buying extravagant gifts. Those who didn’t were permanently put on the “cheap postcard during the holidays” list. Not that I’m bitter or anything.) Essentially, my hometown was difficult to get to and had no easy, affordable and roomy venues. Sound simple? Try telling that to your mother who h
as just offered to shell out the equivalent of the average person’s annual salary on your wedding.
All I can say is, stick to your guns. If you’re adamant, be adamant with a smile on your face, and make sure it’s not a rictus of ridicule. Get married in a place that you and your partner love. Period. Trust me: your mom will learn to love it, too—even if she refuses to admit how awesome it was until the whole thing is over.
Dave and I were devoted to Seattle and had found a venue that we thought was beautiful and fit our budget. Court in the Square was located in a quaint historic neighborhood just south of downtown. It was an entryway between two old brick buildings during the day, but on the weekends the six-story glass atrium served as an event space. Its retractable roof let the sun in, catching an infinity-style fountain at the far end of the room. The two buildings that formed the north and south walls of the venue maintained their exposed brick and lush, green window boxes. Fifteen-foot-tall live potted trees were interspersed around the room, each of them on wheels so they could be relocated to make space for different event layouts.
Oh, and did I mention that it cost only seven hundred bucks to rent?
It was perfect.
More perfect than my hometown.
That was a hard conversation to have with my folks, and in the end we never really did reach an agreement—a few weeks before the wedding, my mom was still saying things like, “Well, if you’d had the wedding at our house, this wouldn’t be an issue…”
But that’s one of the things you learn as you plan your wedding: you can’t please everyone, not even the most important people involved. You have to learn to disagree without having the whole process come to a standstill. The Native American Hopi tribe requires a bride to grind cornmeal for three days in her mother-in-law’s kitchen while the groom’s aunts attack her with mud. I knew my refusal to have the wedding in my hometown was a bit of a slap in the face to my mom (at least, that’s what she thought), so I worked to make sure she had a chance to feel at home during the wedding weekend. The cool thing about a wedding is that it gives rise to ancillary celebrations, like brunches, barbecues and happy hours. They’re entirely optional but a good way to extend the joy beyond the Hi-Bye crush of the wedding reception—and you can use them to throw your mom a hometown bone.