I’ve heard of wedding dresses costing upwards of tens of thousands of dollars, cakes that must have been frosted with diamond crystals for how much they cost, and flowers that would have fed a small nation for a week, had the price tag gone to rice rather than roses. I have gaped at celebrity fan magazines telling of this celebrity’s wedding that cost a million dollars, or that politician’s daughter who had a fleet of matching limos for her wedding party. We see these stories every day, and we wonder what it would be like to afford to throw a party like that.
And then a year, two years down the road, we see that the happy couple is no longer together. Someone cheated on someone else, or the pressure of a celebrity lifestyle got to them, and they’re calling it quits. And then we think, wow, all that money wasted on a huge wedding to celebrate a marriage that didn’t even last.
When a man and woman get engaged, of course a lot of time goes into planning the wedding, but I wonder how much time goes into planning the marriage. Is all the attention paid to the napkins and the rings, and do the finer points of getting to really know each other fall by the wayside? And does it really matter how much we pay for the wedding, as long as we are there at the ceremony with the person we love most truly in all the world?
When I got married, my husband and I had both recently lost our jobs. We did everything on a super-tight budget. It wasn’t the wedding I’d always dreamed of having, but I had the man I wanted, our family was with us, we were married by someone who had the authority to do so, and that was the most important thing.
If you have a healthy budget for your wedding, there’s nothing wrong with having a beautiful celebration. But if you’re on a tighter budget, there’s no need to feel as though you are missing out if you can’t have the little luxury touches. The wedding is just one day, while the marriage is a lifetime. Keep your focus on all your forevers, and the smaller budget seems to fade in significance.
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