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How to save for the year of weddings
Marketplace Insight producer Angela Kim at a friend's wedding.
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Tess Vigeland: Spring has sprung and you know what that means. Wedding invitations! I've already had two in the mail -- but I'm old enough that they don't involve much more than attendance. Marketplace's Angela Kim, though, is of the age where weddings involve much, much more than that. And she suggests that when brides and grooms are doing their planning, they spare just a thought for their guests.
Angela Kim: I spent more than $3,000 on weddings last year. Six of my friends got married. I spent money on plane tickets, bachelorette parties, travel expenses...
Gretchen Witt: And the hotel, all the gifts...
Lisa Factora Borches: Make sure you can get a dress, your shoes and everything. It's a big chunk of change.
I met Gretchen Witt and Lisa Factora Borches at the last wedding in Hawaii. We exchanged stories about the financial pain involved in being a serial wedding attendee, even if you have a full-time job. Lisa, like me, went to six weddings in a year.
Lisa: It was an exceptional year. All six weddings were "must attend," and that's rare.
Gretchen went to five weddings.
Gretchen: This whole year has been a financial bloodbath because of all the money that's been spent. If I started this five years ago, I could have started a savings account for friends' weddings. But I was out of touch with the reality of the expense.
The thing is, I had saved up. Just not to go to someone else's wedding in Hawaii. I'd been planning to take a vacation in Argentina. So when the invitation came in the mail, I was torn.
My first thought was, "I can't afford this!" But then I thought about it: Argentina will always be there. I can always save up to go there some other time. My friend's wedding, on the other hand... My new friend Gretchen put it this way:
Gretchen: It's the one time in your life that you can have all the people you love in the same place at the same time. And you probably'll never have that happen again until your funeral.
Personal finance is all about making choices in your life. Gretchen, Lisa and I didn't have to go to these weddings, but we chose to.
In some cases, they were hard choices to make. They forced us to compromise. I gave up a holiday, I burned a bunch of frequent flier miles. I roomed with a friend, and I took buses instead of renting a car. I even held off giving a gift until after the wedding. I was inspired by Emily Post, who says giving a gift late "is better than never."
Lisa told me about the ways she makes it work. She and her husband have an annual tradition that keeps their budget on track.
Lisa: Every December, my husband and I do a check-in with one another and we always ask how many weddings do we have coming up? We have a son, a two-year-old, and we decide if we can go together, and then we make out our budget from there.
And she gets creative with her gifts.
Lisa: Because I'm a photographer, I'll bring my camera to wedding. And I'm not shooting officially and I'll try and get a really really great shot that I know a lot of other people can't get. You have to save money in small different ways.
The small things add up. They make it possible for us to share in our friends' happiness without drowning our own happiness in debt. And the good news is that the serial wedding season doesn't last for ever. This coming summer, I just have one wedding to attend.
Vigeland: And by the way a fond farewell to Angela. She's leaving American Public Media after nearly seven years of service. We'll miss her good work and her baked goods.
> The small things add up. They make it possible for us to share in
> our friends' happiness without drowning our own happiness in debt.
I can only say that if you are in debt, I personally would re-prioritize getting out of debt first aside from the mortgage (if you have one). Do you really want debt around as a friend? My wife and I have made sacrifices so we can do whatever we want without feeling like we have something looming over our heads. We also don't want people giving us their opinions about how to manage our finances, if they themselves are in debt and we are debt free. If you want to spend money on wedding expenses as a guest, feel free and do it without guilt. Just be debt free first and you really can be free to spend how you want.
Reimburse me for my trouble!
This is still not a fleshed out idea, but it’s something I think would be great to pass as some kind of law:
I think that if you, the invited guest, goes to all the financial trouble of hotels, flights, gifts, wedding guest outfits for yourself and your family, weddings gifts, in some cases babysitting expenses, sheltering your pets, suspending your day to day personal and business affairs, etc...the soon to be married couple should COMMIT to STAYING married.
I have been too and seen many weddings where the couple divorces within a year.
Except in the case of domestic abuse, I feel that if you divorce within 1 year, all invitees should be reimbursed for 100% of their expenses (Kim Kardashian could afford to do that).
If you divorce within 2 years, everyone gets 50% of their expenses back.
5 years: 25%.
Beyond 5 years – you gave it a good enough shot, no reimbursement needed.
That is my (minus) two cents.
The rule of thumb in the older etiquette books is you're supposed to give the presents back if your marriage doesn't last a year. The same etiquette books say you have up to a year after the wedding to send a wedding gift, whether or not you attended the ceremony. So, if you hold off buying a wedding gift for 6 months, especially if you think the couple's commitment is iffy, you have time to pay off the expenses of attending the wedding before cough up for the gift, and you might be saved the trouble of having to send anything at all.
There is absolutely no such thing as a "must attend wedding" and there is most certainly no such thing as a "must attend wedding in Hawaii." This story does nothing more than fuel stereotypes that women are incapable of appropriately handling money. $6k on wedding-related expenses in a year? You have to be kidding. And you passed up a vacation in Argentina to attend all these weddings? Un-real. It's also inappropriate to encourage bad behavior on the behalf of couples. The only person I'd ever attend an exotic destination wedding for is my only sibling--my sister. If any of my best friends invited me to an exotic wedding, I'd say thanks, send a gift, and wish the best. Exotic destination weddings are nothing more than self-serving, aggrandizing displays of vanity.
"Ms Kim and her colleagues are very good friends indeed to put their lives on hold so that someone else's "special day" can live up to the dream."
The problem is that many to most women think their wedding day will be the greatest day of their lives so if they do not contribute to the "greatest day" of their friends' lives, they won't return the favor.
"Considering that at the same time I was celebrating my 10th anniversary, she was a single mother with an 8 y.o. and a problematic relationship with her now ex-husband, who had moved on to his 3rd wife, I think a longer engagement would have allowed their siblings to afford to attend both weddings, as well as possibly allowed her to get to know her fiance's character better before making a commitment and having a child with him."
How selfish of you to expect your sister-in-law to think of anyone else other than herself. How selfish of you to hope she take things slow and make the right decision instead of making harried decisions and rushing into a poorly thought out marriage because it's the only thing she's ever wanted or dreamed of her whole life. Don't you know it's about HER HER HER at all times? How dare you...
It also would be more considerate of wedding couples if they could be mindful of other family events that require guests' traveling when planning their event.
After my then fiance and I had announced to our families that we had scheduled our wedding for around Valentine's Day of the following year, my soon to be sister-in-law decided to get married between Christmas and New Year's Day, so she and her S.O. could file jointly for that tax year. My new mother-in-law made it to both weddings, but some of my husband's siblings skipped our wedding or attended our wedding without their S.O. or children, because of the travel costs for attending both, which made my husband sad.
Considering that at the same time I was celebrating my 10th anniversary, she was a single mother with an 8 y.o. and a problematic relationship with her now ex-husband, who had moved on to his 3rd wife, I think a longer engagement would have allowed their siblings to afford to attend both weddings, as well as possibly allowed her to get to know her fiance's character better before making a commitment and having a child with him.
I'm surprised that so many people feel that their "dream wedding" at an exotic location is something that all their friends should attend. Ms Kim and her colleagues are very good friends indeed to put their lives on hold so that someone else's "special day" can live up to the dream. The reality of course is that 50% of these folks will get divorced. Send a nice gift and take your vacation to Argentina as planned.
