Several weeks I was at a social event, where I saw someone who recently made a wedding for her oldest child. I had heard via my husband via her husband that they had kept it small, so I took the opportunity to ask what having a small wedding entailed. (Hearing from people who have made simple and truly affordable weddings about how they did it is very interesting to me.)
She told me that they only invited 120 people, which I thought was impressive since it’s not easy to whittle down a guest list to that amount. But then she added, “And the other side had 300 guests”, which shifted my perception of the wedding somewhat – 420 guests for a formal dinner didn’t seem very small to me!
A couple of the other women there who were listening to this exchange were quick to fill me in, apparently thinking how obviously clueless I was to what was normal and appropriate. They told me that a small wedding is 300 – 400 people for the meal, and one told me her cousin recently had 2500 guests! (I had to ask how much that wedding cost – 4 million shekels, she said. But at least it was a wealthy family that could afford it.)
I shared my concern that lavish weddings have become the norm in the Orthodox world, so much that we don’t even see the lavishness of the standard wedding as unusual. We’ve lost a communal sense of what simplicity looks like when it comes to a wedding, and we also seem to be communally oblivious to the fat that paying for these fancy weddings is way above the means of the average family.
I thought that was a reasonable thing to say, but don’t worry, there were people there to once again set me straight. “What do you mean? Just the extended family from one side will be 200 people!” I suggested, maybe we need to consider inviting people according to the budget we have to work with, and that might mean reconsidering if every single family member has to be invited to the wedding meal. Maybe if it were normal to just invite the immediate nuclear family, rather than every cousin, aunt, uncle, and person who married in somewhere along the line, then it wouldn’t be considered so unthinkable to not invite all these people. Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to make a wedding within our actual ability to pay for it?
One woman shrugged and said, “So what, so you borrow the money and pay back 1000 shekels every month for two years.” With a family of ten children, that would mean spending twenty years of life with our extra income paying for ten evenings that last a total of 40 – 50 hours. To me that seems wildly disproportionate – the life energy that goes into earning that kind of money is significant. I was feeling such a total disconnect between what I was saying and the responses I was hearing.
Then I realized that I’m looking at the wedding situation as something that I’ll need to deal with in the foreseeable future, as the parent paying the bill, while they (as parents of much younger children) were looking at it as someone who had the bill paid for them. It’s pretty easy to justify spending someone else’s money. But then again, when I speak with people closer to my age group, there seems to be a fatalist attitude that this is the reality, and there’s nothing you can do.
I have to tell you, the entire discussion left me very discouraged. I really thought that a good percentage of people intellectually were able to see the unsustainability of expecting parents of average means to make lavish formal weddings. I understand the difficulty in keeping things simple when there are two different families who need to come to an agreement about this, who may have very different ideas about what kind of wedding their children will have. When you’re making a bris, bar mitzva, kiddush, etc, you’re the sole arbiter of how much you spend on these family milestones. For us, all of these events have been celebrated with much joy but always spending within our means. I realize that I can’t assume it will always be like this. But I thought there were many others who at least wished they could stay within their means. Now I’m no longer so sure about that.
This conversation came shortly after a talk with a friend whose oldest child just got engaged. She was sharing with me the pressure they’re feeling to buy the groom the mandatory gifts, particularly since the other side is financially much more comfortable and has already sent their daughter jewelry that they are trembling about how to reciprocate for. They’ve been working hard for the past few years to get out of credit card debt and live within their actual financial means (using lots of money saving tips I’ve shared here on my blog), and facing the expenses of a wedding (and pre-wedding) are very daunting.
If you don’t know about the insanity of the standards for the mandatory gifts that need to be given to the bride and groom prior to and at the wedding, I don’t think I should enlighten you. You’re just better off not knowing. Because it’s disturbing. Really disturbing. Sometimes I wonder if the central point of getting married is getting somewhat lost in all the materialistic expectation around an engagement/marriage – I thought when I got engaged to my husband that he was the treasure (and the years have shown I was more right than I could have guessed).
When I got home later that evening, I was reflecting on the conversation with these women, and had a sudden realization about a big contributing factor for the disparity in our views. I’ve written loads here about different things I’ve done to live within our means; it’s not a secret that I feel strongly that being responsible means living with what we have and not what I wished we had!
To me, debt is something to avoid and with the exception of a mortgage, have managed to live with the money we actually have our entire married life. Sometimes people make assumptions about the amount of money we must have been making to do this (way over our actual income); I think people would rather think we were really lucky rather than recognize we consistently were willing to make hard choices. Living within our means hasn’t always easy – sometimes we did without, sometimes we had to wait a while until we saved up the money for it. We’ve had to be very clear with ourselves about the difference between wants and needs, though we’ve often marveled at how many of our wants have been provided for.
It occurred to me that if you see debt as a normal tool for everyday living, my position really does seem ridiculous. Why should you deny yourself something as nice as everyone else, if you can borrow the money and pay it back later? If you’ve spent your life living this way when it comes to groceries and clothes, then a wedding is just the next logical step. If debt is normal, then it shifts your entire view of spending.
So what’s the answer to this issue? It’s a lot bigger than me, that’s for sure! And I don’t know what I’ll do when faced with this decision – there’s tremendous social pressures on everyone when making a wedding. I think we live in a world where so many of our decisions are made because we’re worried about what others think of us. If we were able to put that aside and be honest about who we are and what our resources were, instead of pretending to have what we don’t have to impress people who don’t really care that much about us, then the idea of making a simple wedding wouldn’t be such a hard sell.
Did you have a simple wedding? In what ways were you able to cut costs? Do you think that spending less compromised the overall enjoyment you had at your wedding or not?
Avivah
I totally agree with this. My husband and I DEFINITELY had a budget wedding and it was really quite liberating. It let us focus on the real goal of the day, celebrating the beginning of our marriage. I got to oohhh and ahhhh over dresses with my girl friends and he got little gifts for his groomsmen and we invited everyone that we wanted to for a lightly catered reception. But I DIDN’T have a breakdown over the spacing of the fonts on my invitations (which I’ve seen happen) because of the stress and weight, both financial and emotional, of a wedding that was so out of control that the focus stops at the wedding and doesn’t extend to the true point, celebrating the marriage of two people.
Meg, thank you for your comment! (I don’t know if you’re the old Meg with a new address or a new Meg – if you’re new, welcome, and if you’re not, nice to see you commenting again!)
I agree that keeping things in focus is a big key to enjoying the wedding preparations and not getting stressed out.
As a woman who had a very simple wedding by choice – even if I’d had the thousands available I wouldn’t have spent it on a wedding – we had 120 guests for a simple catered supper. We had fruit and veggies/dip for the kabbalat panim then a sit down dinner with salad and schnitzel and I can’t remember which sides. I made my own centerpieces – pint jam jars with a ribbon tied around and arrangements of pink roses and daisies in each – we bought from a wholesaler and a friend put it together for me. For music we had a friend DJ – I couldn’t see paying for a band when I don’t like most traditional chassuna music…I had a fabulous time. Lavish it was not, but we had a good time.
It sounds wonderful, Elisheva! I think that lavish and wonderful are very often not synonymous – sometimes you can feel the joy of the celebration more when not distracted by how impressive and expensive everything around you is.
Trust me, you can never account for what the “other side” wants. I love my husband, but his parents’ (mostly mother’s) insistence on certain things drove me nuts. We had 75 from our side at my wedding; his side was over 300. His family could afford to pay for the extras; I would have been happy with the basics as I felt my family was already contributing what they could. I will always appreciate that my parents went along with what was asked, in an effort to make it easier for me to live with my ILs farther down the road…but I hope never to find out the actual cost (in shekels or less measurable units).
Marion, your parents sound like they really did what they did with a full heart and a desire to make things good for you – that’s beautiful! I know how right you are about not being able to account for the other side, which is why you won’t find me making proclamations and predictions about what I’ll do once my kids are getting married.
We had what was considered a small wedding in frum circles (maybe 150 people to the dinner); my non-religious brother and his fiancee are planning 75 for theirs, and think that’s medium to large! We had a lot of help to keep our costs down; for example we used community resources like the gemach that rents out beautiful, modest wedding dresses (including the accessories) for the cost of the dry-cleaning, and then a colleague at work who’s a fabulous seamstress regularly does the wedding dress alterations as her wedding gift, and did this for me too.
Also, my parents did basically pay for our wedding, but they did what my grandparents had done for them: gave us a specific amount of money, and told us they’d prefer us to save at least some of that for setting up our home and hopefully savings. The only ‘extras’ they paid for after that were their own (and I think my brother’s) clothing and travel expenses. That way there were no surprises, and if we wanted something specific we had to budget for it. Admittedly we were already in our 30s, and logistically I (and the fabulous friends who helped) had to arrange everything, but I can’t help thinking that young people who are old enough to be setting up their own home should also be old enough to be involved in the economics of their wedding, and mature enough not to want their parents to be in avoidable financial and other distress over it.
I hope that by the time our DD (and any other children) comes to that age we’ll be financially able to be as generous as my/our parents, but even if we’re rich by then I doubt we’d encourage her to have pomp and circumstance just for the sake of it.
I’m not Jewish, so don’t know about mandatory gifts, but weddings are expensive! My friends adult children & my ds’s friends are at the age for lots of weddings, so I’ve seen a lot. Most of my friends go to very small churches that are not suitable for weddings. A friend put on her son’s wedding, & said that $1500 was very good for a church rental since that included a hall for the reception & use of the kitchen. Wow! There are lots of beautiful venues here in the NW (US), but they are very expensive. Most of my friends have been putting on very simple weddings outside & at the park. At one wedding they served flat-bread rolled sandwiches, Caesar Salad, fruit & something else. It worked because everything was very good & there was plenty of it. (Of course there was wedding cake & some other sweets, too.) It was very appropriate for an outdoor wedding. Another had a very extensive desert bar after an evening wedding. There were some who had a buffet reception, but they could afford to do it.
All this to say I completely agree with you about doing something that the family can afford, it is just not right to go into debt for this.
I love weddings.
PS Love your blog!
kaet – this is part of what I’m talking about, the difference in sizes between religious Jewish weddings and those that aren’t. The size expectations alone push up the costs significantly, no matter how simple a couple manages to keep everything else.
I love the idea of giving our kids a chunk of money and telling them it’s theirs to use as they want, but realistically I don’t know how much we’ll actually have for them since we liquidated our savings to make the move here. We’ll take it when it comes!
Goldnrod – I love the idea of outdoor weddings! Now to get my kids on board with the idea….
I’m very curious what “mandatory gifts” might be. Dh and I are modern Orthodox, and there was nothing mandatory beyond the engagement ring. 🙂
A few things that you may need to know about weddings in Israel, that perhaps are different than US perspectives: 1. A wedding is truly a communal event, and often the community is invited. The cost for this is offset by the understanding that the guests are going to be paying for their meal… so if the going rate for a wedding meal is 200 NIS, then a couple will gift 400 NIS. There are other considerations (retirees are not expected to give the full amount, people who make more money are expected to give more to offset other losses, etc, etc, etc– there was once an Israeli gift calculator online to work out this very metric!). It’s a very different way of thinking than in the US, but in a lot of ways it’s liberating– the expectations are known and understood, and if you are on a budget you learn to include “wedding/bar mitzvah gifts” right into it.
The other is that a giant wedding extravaganza in Israel is still going to be a thousand times more modest than my New York wedding (and it was modest for a New York wedding) was 16 years ago (and I hear they’ve only gotten worse!). So if for whatever reason you are going to foot the bill, it’s not going to be the same bill as it was back in the old country.
Now, if you are part of a community that buys real estate for a young couple, I can’t help you. Real estate has skyrocketed here over the past few years. Even out in the periphery apartments are outrageously expensive, and we couldn’t do that on our k’ah decent income with “only” four kids. But then, we don’t live in a community with such an expectation. OTOH, there is an expectation of financially helping the young couple as they finish schooling, so I’m not sure that it’s really less expensive in the end, but it’s definitely less expensive up front. Ds is only 14, so I haven’t really thought much about it yet. 🙂
raisingwings – my experience with weddings in Israel is slightly different. (I got married and attended a number of weddings here.) I think what you’re describing may not be the norm in the charedi community – our cash gifts were minimal, and I’d be shocked if most people were giving the kind of gifts you were talking about. In any case, the bill is paid by the parents and the gifts go to the married couple, so it’s not practically going to help with expenses.
I have no expectation of buying real estate though I think it’s a wonderful thing to do when parents can since it’s such a substantial help. Fortunately I’ve spoken to people who have married off kids here who have assured me it’s not mandatory and whose children have made great matches without it.
(Oh, and about the mandatory gifts – I told you, I won’t talk about it! But Rena below commented and you can take a look if you really want to know.)
Some people in Australia invite only family to the seudah and then lots to the dessert and dancing. But I think in Israel that is not the norm, invitations are pretty open and anyone can come to a chassunah.
I had a fairly small wedding, about 120 guests. We were both 20 years old, and we weren’t expected to cover the costs. Our parents came up with a modest amount for our budget (in comparison to weddings where we live). It came to under $15000 Canadian (8 yrs ago). Essentially, I had a budget and I planned within that budget. I found a shul that had just redone their hall, but had not gained popularity yet, so cost half per plate what other shuls cost. I found my dress for relatively little, at a medieval costume shop. I sourced out low cost centre pieces by calling around. Etc. I basically looked for the low cost options that didn’t sacrifice taste ( flavour and otherwise)
Chaya Yehudis – I love the Australian way! 🙂 It’s kind of similar to what I’ve been thinking about in a theoretical way – a meal for the closest inner circle, then a light buffet for everyone else who wants to dance and share their good wishes. Then it could be open for the later part of the evening.
Shira – thanks for sharing your tips!
weddings are expensive! My oldest DS has a large social circle, including many who are not Jewish/Jewish but not Orthodox. He gets invited to a lot of weddings. Even the “modest” affairs are quite expensive. We got a “hold the date” card almost 10 months in advance for one affair. There was the prewedding parties, i.e., shower, rehearsal dinner, bachelor party, then the wedding itself and then the after party, for close friends. Then they went on their honeymoon….The long engagement was necessary in order to plan all this stuff, budget for all of it!. My oldest DD now has friends from nursing school who are planning their weddings for this summer, after graduation. The planning has been ongoing for MONTHS. Contrast this with the way our community does things with just a few weeks lead time (a long engagement if 4 months), and that creates a lot of tension and stress as well as budgetary challenges. One does not have the luxury of time to comparison shop. Add to that the fact that “the other side” may have their own ideas about what they “need” and you have a recipe for financial disaster. One must realize that we, too, have a lot of “parties” involved, the l’chaim (the day of the engagement) followed by the vort (which the rabbanim would like to do away with, have made takanos or edicts about this, but nobody listens), followed by the shabbos kallah party and the aufruf (which by the way “requires” by custom the girl’s family to come to the boy’s family and be hosted for the entire shabbos, as well as a kiddush for the entire congregation as a reward for throwing candy at the chassan during the services). Then the wedding, followed by the week of sheva brochos. Don’t forget “the rules”. Shabbos sheva brochos are “by the kallah”, hence the preponderance of Thursday night weddings for “out of town” weddings, so that travel expenses are cut down for the boy’s side…..As the wife of a wedding musician, who has been in the business for more than 30 years, we have seen it all! Still, when it came time to plan a wedding, we were in for a shock!!! It is VERY EXPENSIVE. Even a “basic wedding” at a “low budget” hall for a “package wedding”, i.e. the low cost package is $10,000 for the hall, catererer for 200 including a cold buffet pre-wedding, 3 course meal, followed by dessert buffet. The band, the flowers, the photographer/video all cost above the $10,000 mark. Don’t forget that everyone has to get dressed and look good, shoes, sheitel/hair, jewelery….etc. That is in addition to the “gifts”….watch for chassan, bracelet for kallah, and then rings for kallah, jewelery for the yichud room gift, seforim, candlesticks, sheitels…..that’s before some people also giving all kinds of other stuff. Good thing we are not Chassidish. My chassidish friends give dining rooms, shtreimels….and on and on.
Start saving your $ now. Even “low cost” is a very heavy price.
Rena, I don’t think I can or want to save money for this kind of thing! I think we need an entirely different paradigm about how a wedding can be celebrated. Otherwise, you’ll just look cheap and you’ll still spend loads of money. So there has to be a way to significantly sidestep or you’re just stuck.
Thank you! Someone needs to say it!
Does anyone ever ask the bride & groom what they want? BARUCH HASHEM– absolutely no complaints of course!!!!— but I have to say that our wedding was fancy in spite of, not because of, our wishes- my husbands’ (very wonderful) parents had other ideas (and they paid for them, to their credit)!(Although I did insist on a few budget-friendly things at our wedding, so it could have been a lot more pricey- but I couldn’t control the astronomical guest list.) I grew up expecting a simple backyard wedding like my parents had. I later heard my FIL complaining about how he has to go to so many weddings of all his friends kids, because they came to his, etc etc. No one wants to go to all these weddings or pay for them, so someone has to be brave and break the cycle!!!!!!!
FORTUNATELY we are also not part of a community which does the “mandatory” gift thing! But I know all about it (shiver shiver )!!
One of the nicest weddings I’ve been to was super-cheap, maybe 150 people in a shul with a buffet table of food platters from the local kosher caterer, a guy on the keyboard, etc etc. It was SO leibedick (how do you translate that– lively?), it was amazing. There was a sheva brachos for the rest of the people who werent invited.
my sister-in-law lives in gateshead, england. the rav there sets amounts that are allowed for different simchas (bar mitzvas, weddings, etc. ) and people cannot exceed those limits regardless of their means. for people who need extra help, there is a community gmach that will provide basics like challah rolls, soups, etc to help offset costs. of course, you can only do that in a community with a strong rav who people will listen to- and someone courageous enough to speak out and put an end to nonsense.
too many people in too many communities are in way over their heads financially in so many ways. what a horrible way to start off such a beautiful thing like a marriage- by being saddled with unrealistic expectations about keeping up some artificial standards…
B”H we lucked out with our son’s kallah and her family, and i think we have done a decent job of giving our children good enough values that they can hopefully withstand the pressure to create appearances when their turns come…
shuli – the nicest weddings I’ve been to have been the simplest – there was something so heartfelt about the way people were celebrating!
Julie – it really is wonderful when there’s a community rabbi who can set standards that are respected. I’d love to hear what you’ll be doing for your son’s wedding!
Thinking about weddings, you really never know what is going to happen. It is always in Hashem’s hands. When our daughter got engaged to a reasonably well established family we thought we would split the bill half half. Then they had a fire in their business and the insurance wouldn’t pay for what they needed to replace, plus they had to fly the whole family to Australia. In short, we will be paying off the wedding for a bit longer. We did cut corners though by doing the centre pieces ourselves (with the help of my daughter’s friends) (cherry blossoms and stones in long elegant vases full of water with floating candles); the photographer had never done a wedding before and charged less, and the band was reasonably cheap as well. My daughter paid for her sheital and her gown (which she had sleves and a top added to in New York), so all in all everyone was happy with the result, Baruch Hashem.
This is a great discussion!
It is well known that the economics of charedi society make no sense whatsoever by the standards of most schools of financial planning!
The missing piece of this picture is the fact that most charedim accept tzedaka in order to make weddings, as well as taking out loans and getting everything at the lowest possible price from gemachs. Many participate in the “gemach hamerkazi” which is a huge free loan fund designed solely for helping people borrow money for making weddings. You make deposits into the gemach every month for each child for ten years, and then, besha’a tova u’mutzlachas, they give you a grant and an interest free loan so you can make weddings. The loans are not long-term, like bank loans, the repayments are relatively high, but at least there is no interest and you get the grant.
I like to think of it in the context of how in the States people save up for years to give their kids a college education, and if the parents aren’t able to save enough, they and/or their kids go into serious debt. All this is because it is unthinkable not to go to college for those people.
In the frum world, it is similarly unthinkable to fail to give your young couple the best possible start in married life.
I’m not a fan of going into debt or accepting tzedaka, and I have lots of ideas for how to keep a wedding simple yet joyous. But when looking at the attitudes of others, I feel that we ultimately share the same values. We all agree that $100,000+ for a wedding, apartment, and all that goes along with it, is a much better investment than four years on a college campus!
Wait, what?
please tell me she was joking…
That can’t be a serious comment…
My wedding cost just over $5000, I had 600 guests who happily noshed on deli trays and brownie bites (not even a cake!) and we had a candy bar (which was awesome). My mom made the dress, a friend (costume designer) made my husband’s white silk kapota, we had the chuppa in a public park ($25) and the reception in a College meeting hall ($500).
However, my college degree was something like $50,000.
Guess which money was a better “investment”?
Naomi – to me there’s a big difference between paying for college and a wedding. My expectation of our children was that they’d pay for college by themselves, that they would have to work hard academically if they wanted to earn merit scholarships, take out student loans, and do work-study or get jobs on the side.
I understand people are trying to give their children the best possible start, but honestly, does a huge party that lasts for a few hours really do that? Of course a wedding is a cause for tremendous joy but I think that we’ve really lost sight of what it means to live within our means.
And since I’m not totally clear on the intent about the $100,000 comment, I don’t want to disagree, but I do want to say that giving children the tools to be financially independent and giving them lots of financial support aren’t the same thing. In general, giving someone the tools to be independent is empowering, while giving someone significant money without any accountability often leads to emotional and financial dependence, and isn’t supportive of their long term maturation.
I really feel that we are all better off understanding the charedi mindset, rather than arguing with reality.
It doesn’t mean that we have to spend $100,000 ourselves. And I totally AGREE about simple weddings. But we come from a different culture and we are better of trying to understand local culture than fume about how wrong it is (by our standards).
The charedi culture is to give all this to your children. like I said, it makes no sense by western standards of financial planning. On the other hand, local charedim would think that saving up or going into major debt for the sake of getting a liberal arts degree is financial insanity. Yet this is accepted wisdom in US.
I run a Yiddish translation business and I am constantly reading stories of the sacrifices Jewish parents made to marry off their children well. It was often their foremost financial concern for their entire lives. This is a deeply entrenched phenomenon and the charedi mindset is flowing from this age-old tradition.
If you want to read about it first-hand, check out this article that we translated, which describes the length that parents in a Polish shtetl went to to establish their newlywed children:
http://yiddish-translation.com/biale-rawska-yizkor-book-translation/
the bit about marriages is half-way through!
Enjoy!
PS. love your blog!
This is such an interesting way of putting it. We’re Irish Catholic, very liberal this generation, and my family is not wealthy. My mom established early on that they helped us pay for college – essentially ensuring that we didn’t have to take out private student loans in addition to the government loans, scholarships, and work study – and we’re 100% on our own for weddings.
My parents gave both myself and my sister 9000 dollars to make our wedding. My husband’s family didn’t really contribute anything other than the cost of the wedding photographer and my rings and the diamond/gold bracelet they insisted on giving me.
My parents said we could use the money how we see fit and save whatever extra we had left over to start off… We made the wedding pretty cheap, had about 150 people in a “bris hall”, got a gown from a gmach/rental (I paid 300 shekel or so including the dry cleaning), got someone to do my hair and makeup combined so the price was cheaper, had no centerpeices, had my husband’s friends brother be a one man band for our wedding, etc, furnished our apartment with all second hand furniture… and we had a lot of money left over, so we bought a laptop with that money, and STILL had money left over. So you can imagine it didn’t cost so much if we started off with 9000 and had left over.
My attitude was- the only thing that remains after the wedding (other than the spouse, of course) is the pictures, so thats the one thing I was willing to splurge on. I got REALLY nice photography, and got videography etc, a combined package, and I don’t regret it- pics made me feel beautiful now even years later and its great to look back at those pics. People who skimped on photography that I know tended to really regret it, but I don’t know anyone who regrets skimping on the wedding hall/food.
It was a great wedding, even though it was cheap.
But…
When I shared details of my wedding with some frugal, not jewish people, they didn’t get why I had such a huge wedding and wasted so much money on nonsense, and I really did… Even the “ultra frugal” frum wedding is so lavish by comparison to the secular world’s frugal wedding.
When my kids get older, I’d love to cater their wedding myself and have an outdoor wedding (in the summer in Israel you don’t need to worry about rain, etc… so no tent necessary). I’d probably do the same as my parents and give my kids a set amount to spend on the wedding…
Ronit, you’re right about the difference between secular and religious weddings.
I think giving a child $9000 is very generous! And if it were my child, I’d hope they’d have a tiny backyard ceremony and put the bulk of it away towards the purchase of a home. 🙂
Oh, for sure, in retrospect, 9000 dollars is pretty generous (especially since my sister and I got married 4 weeks apart, so that was 18,000 dollars on a wedding in the space of a month!)
But people were shocked we got that “little” with which to make our wedding! I don’t know how much we actually ended up spending on the wedding- it was 5+ years ago and I don’t think we ever did the math fully, and it was spent in bits and pieces in getting furniture for our home, etc… but I was proud of myself for not being tempted to spend the lot like my sister did… I know people who spent 40,000 dollars on a wedding, only to cancel the wedding a week before and not getting any of that money back… Weddings are soooo overboard, and I’m embarassed of how much I spent in retrospect. Especially since of the non relative wedding guests, I am still in touch with exactly 5 of those guests…
There’s a fairly recent initiative in Toronto that is advertised as an “at-cost” package. I think you get to choose which level you want, but the businesses that participate have set offerings (menus, flower arrangements, photography packages, etc). The idea is that not only will weddings become more modest, but that much of the stress will be removed from having to plan a wedding, because all the options are put together for you, and there’s less running around.
npl – this sounds similar to something that they’re doing in the Baltimore area, though they aren’t including all that you mentioned. But as someone above from that community said above, it’s still a big bill!
We had a very simple wedding; parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, and 6 very close friends, 25 people total. We had sushi and veggie platters and a store-bought cake, drinks, I made my dress and my mom did the decorations. I believe the entire cost (food, rental, dress, etc) was around $1000.
I would have liked to have more people, in which case the cost of food would have been a bit more, as the space we rented was more than adequate and would have easily fit 100 people. Otherwise, we had a wonderful time.
Nava – I really love this idea! This is the kind of thing I’d like to do (though with more people). It’s hard, though, because the parents on both side and the young people have to be okay with this idea. I’ve spoken to my kids about scenarios like this, but it’s hard because they see what their friends are doing and they don’t want to be different or be seen as having less. 🙁
My MIL made a very simple wedding for my SIL they had the chuppah in a park and the seudah/dancing in a shul (not common in Israel) There were a # of people invited for the chuppah and dancing but not the “simchas chassan v’kallah” (the food). I dont know the #s though. It is common for the dress to come from a gmach and both sides i think were ok going without the gifts. The tradition of paying for your meal is the way its done in Israeli secular society where the parents dont pay anything at all for the wedding and then everyone pays for however many seats they take up. It is however unheard of among diasporah jews.
i was nodding along with every word of this post!! having recently emerged from the “parsha” of friends’ weddings i have been flabbergasted over and over, at how many modest families with modest incomes feel they must spend years’ worth of salary on each child’s wedding… why is this the norm in the frum world? aren’t middle-class families supposed to make middle-class weddings?
we were lucky to be given an approximate wedding budget (with certain non-negotiables) and the motivation to stay as simple as possible because any leftover would become ours for setting up a home. i think if this was commonplace, wedding norms would tone down overnight, because so many newlyweds are desperate for cash!! we had no shmorg or gowns or flowers, just a buffet meal in a shul social hall, etc (and though i had wanted a keyboardist, my family of musicians expressed utter mortification so we ended up with a 3-piece band :-P)… i spent a lot of time planning details (no “factory” wedding for us) because we wanted it as beautiful and leibedig as possible despite our budget — most importantly because many irreligious relatives attending their first frum wedding, and i wanted it to leave a positive impression — but also as motivation for our still-single friends/their parents that simple weddings were worth making.
we had about 200 guests which might be small for a frum wedding, but was large considering our goal of simplicity… but our rationalization was, especially for 2 BT’s whose friends and mentors have become as close as extended family, the guests and their ruach really — more than any course or centerpiece! — increased our simcha tremendously. we had very few attendees whose presence was not meaningful (i guess a benefit of having small and spread-out families). inviting people for chuppah/dancing or simchas chassan v’kallah is also a wonderful option, especially because it alleviates pressure of students or peripheral friends to give a gift, though it wasn’t really an option for us (most of our guests traveled far & if we wanted their presence at all, we felt it fitting to offer a real seat 😛 )
re: going into debt, i can’t fathom why this is the norm in our generation — aren’t so many gedolim opposed to this? i know r’ wolbe is strongly against loans, and isn’t he one of the leading chinuch role authorities of our generation? in our circles everyone follows his every word — except for this aspect — how strange!!
Avivah, I think there’s something you don’t get about frum weddings here in Israel. They are very often not lavish at all – few or no flowers or centerpieces, basic food, simple reception etc. What makes them expensive is the number of people – but you cannot limit that to your immediate family. Because no one does. Actually the cheap-style weddings are because many people cannot afford to make fancy weddings for lots of guests. You have to invite your cousins, the neighbours in your building, the people your husband davens with in shul, the friends of the bride and groom etc – otherwise you will offend people. OTOH, no one will be offended if you serve them a simple, standard meal.
If you move to another country you need to make some effort to adapt to that country’s culture, at least to a certain extent, or else you can upset people.
There are wedding halls in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak which are non-profit or very cheap.
So start saving 🙂
Miriam, I myself was married in Israel and most of the weddings I’ve attended have been here!! And the people I was talking to are frum women in Israel, and my point was that a super cheap wedding at the subsidized halls is about 30,000 shekels (not including other expenses to set up the young couple or provide support) – and that’s a lot of money when you have a few children and are living on an Israeli income.
I hear what you’re saying about participating in the culture in which you live, but don’t you think at some point that all of us decide how much we participate in the prevailing culture, regardless of where we live? I really believe that no matter where you live and what everyone else is doing, you need to be honest with yourself about what your financial limitations are.
I’ve never been so taken with the argument that just because everyone else does something, that ipso facto is a reason to do it. I’ve made a number of decisions, small and large, that have differed from those around me, and the overall feedback I’ve gotten has been positive I’ve gotten plenty of positive feedback and been told by a number of people they wished they had the courage that I did in not needing to follow the crowd. If you want what everyone else has, do what everyone else does, but if you want something more, then you need to do something else. 🙂
I’m not Jewish, so our wedding proportions and perspective may be different- it seemed to be like a reasonable sized wedding! All my friends, my family, everyone whom I could possibly think to invite only came to about 75 people, and my aunt did my catering. My gown was only $99, and my whole wedding only came to a few thousand dollars, well within my budget.
Then I started watching shows on TV about weddings. Say Yes to the Dress? One woman spent more than ten times the cost of my entire wedding and honeymoon on one dress- and then spent more on a second dress for the reception. Somehow, I get the feeling that my wedding is considered ‘small’ by standard practices.
We had become friends with our insurance agent’s family when we moved to the pacific northwest. When their son married a Mexican American girl About 10 years ago we were asked to be Padrinos for the wedding. We had never heard about this custom. We did help them out even though we weren’t able to attend the wedding. I have long thought about it over the years and I have grown to like the concept of it. I don’t know if it will ever take hold in the Jewish frum world, but it is something to think about. Here is an explanation that I googled up explaining that custom:
http://weddingnumberthree.blogspot.com/2008/03/padrinos-madrinas-hispanic-wedding.html
My eldest daughter recently got married (in her 30’s) and they wanted to pay for their own wedding. They wanted it to be small (30 to 50 people) I only had to help set out the food that they purchased at a Kosher deli from their local supermarket. My youngest daughter saved up babysitting money and gave $60 towards decorations for the tables that another family friend found a way to make the tables look pretty. One of my daughters set up the music player and I can tell everyone that Shwekey, Baruch Levine and more famous musicians were playing at their wedding. Sitting around the table, a prominent rabbi’s wife commented that all the weddings should be like this one.
I also did have a tichel party for my daughter that was a great success. Around 30 friends that weren’t invited to the wedding from where we live came and gifted her all kinds of head coverings and gave the story of how they met her and how they picked the head covering that they did. It was a great party and she has many head coverings to choose from to help her get to her personal preference. This was such a help for her as she didn’t have to go to the expense of the many hats and for each person it wasn’t a great expense and gave them a way that they could feel that they were a part of her upcoming married life.
Beth
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