Yes... recently met someone who took out a $150K loan on a wedding. Blew my mind that anyone would think that was a good idea (mind you, the partner who did that didn't tell the other partner it was a loan, so the latter assumed it was their money -- that was a fun conversation to have a few days after the wedding).
I just can't fathom doing something like this (let alone spending anywhere near that kind of my own money on a wedding), but I just never grasped the need for an extravagant wedding so I might be out of the norm here.
I feel the same way; weddings have always felt like an unnecessary extravagance.
Some friends are getting married on the weekend and I was shocked to learn that they're spending close to $50,000 on the wedding, and that's after a raising over $5,000 at their social and getting financial support from both their families to pay for the event. That's like a downpayment on a house! Insanity.
That kind of expense sounds outrageous to me. we married in the czech republic (we lived in austria at the time, now in germany - both border CZ) & I believe the bill ended up being around €5-6k which our parents on both sides wanted to split between them (we could have paid for it ourselves had they not).
partially its because it's just plain cheaper there but a lot of it is just how freaking overboard some people go with weddings!
There's always been a segment of people who would blow way too much money on weddings. In the past, these people just put them on credit cards.
On a broader level, specialized loans are where the money is at for lenders. When lenders know what people are aiming to buy, they can work with cottage industries that sell to that particular market and get kickbacks. I'm sure the next step for this is shit like wedding insurance policies, preferred vendor "discounts", etc.
Wedding insurance is a thing, because, of course it is.
Outdoor weddings prevented due to weather, church or reception hall burns down the night before, father of the groom gets hit by a bus on the way to the wedding, etc, etc.
If something causes the wedding to not happen(someone got sick, weather, flight got canceled...) they would pay all your deposits and refund the wedding so you could have it another day. not a bad idea if you spend 150,000 on a wedding.
Is this not the same as all the 'living far above your means' things? People want to appear more successful than they really are to others? Buying a bigger house, bigger car, bigger wedding, bigger vacations and then showing those off at parties. And the wedding is the biggest showing off as you invite 1000 of your closest personal acquaintances to show how you made it in life.
as an aside, I've been to a few very expensive weddings and one thing that always gets to me is the food. it's usually some very fancy looking steak or seafood dish that tastes totally bland. I can tell it cost a lot of money per plate just to buy the ingredients but it never tastes good. I'm sure if you did something like burgers or pizza, it could be delicious and possibly even cheaper, so why do they do this? is everyone else in on some big game of pretend high cuisine? is it for the pictures?
That, or more of the instagram museum type approach where spaces are created specifically for taking photos that make it look like the wedding is a bigger party/deal than it truly is...
It's kind of insane to me, as a millenial, that chasing the instagram aesthetic is such a thing that people are willing to take out loans to facilitate such events.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. You buy a car or house you can't afford, sure, you can live in it for a while. But sooner or later, that will catch up to you.
"is everyone else in on some big game of pretend high cuisine?"
I'd say, yes.
I think there's two types of "expensive" (for lack of a better word). There's the type of "expensive" that does its best to have the surface appearance of quality, but under the hood it's all as cheap as possible. This is basically a way to con middle-class people by making it look higher class, but in reality, they're not getting that much more, so they can jack the price up a great deal more than the costs would require. (It's not entirely a con, in the sense that the customer is successfully projecting an image of a higher class wedding to their probably-middle-class attendees, but it's still an expensive process.)
Then there's the type of expensive where quality is actually a concern and the money is being put into improving the experience in a deep and meaningful way, tested by many people who have in some manner developed some amount of discrimination in taste by experience over years.
Signs you've got the former include: They're serving a nut/berry salad on a bed of mixed greens, because that's a sophisticated salad. But the sophistication of a nut/berry salad is the balancing of the bitterness of the nut against the sweetness of the dried berry (cherry, cranberry, etc), possibly helped by the dressing (most common with a bit more sweetness), and some of the greens (endive is a nice bitter, for instance). If you buy cheap nuts, they'll often have lost their bitter aromatics. Somehow, you can buy cheap dried fruit that isn't very sweet either. Or you can pair the cheap, not-bitter nuts with dried cranberries, so you're "balancing" bitter with sour, or bitter with "sour except covered over by too much sugar", or other such things. It has the form of a relatively sophisticated salad, but very little of the substance. Another mistake is treating the mixed greens as being all neutral, but including a frisee [1] in the mix, unbalanced. Frisee balanced with sweet is pretty nice; frisee left as the primary player in the dish is awful.
As you say, foods renowned for being tasty, somehow stripped of all taste. It is actually possible to serve a buffet of tasty food, but it is (no sarcasm) a challenge. It is certainly possible to serve plates of tasty food, even at a bit of scale. No sarcasm, at this point in my life I'd rather attend a wedding catered by Chipotle that a standard "we serve a fake-high-class fish and chicken plate with tasteless-pate and capers randomly thrown on things." The Chipotle will taste pretty good! (I actually thought for a while that capers were just useless signalling that nobody liked. Then I experimented and made a couple of home recipes that used them very well. They're still not my favorite, but I get them now, which I didn't after what must be several dozen dishes served with them present.)
The decorations of the hall are regular, mass-produced fittings, but someone came along afterwards and randomly sprayed them with something that looks vaguely like plaster.
The funny thing is that the price difference the two types of "expensive" are often poorly related, and at times they'll even be nearly equal. I know some restaurants where we end up with $25-$30/adult that are frankly only marginally better than Burger King. But I also know some restaurants with similarly-priced plates where all the food is noticeably a true cut above the common $10-15 places. But the former seems to have no problem staying in business. (At least in my area.)
I don't know anyone who took out a loan for a wedding. But I do know a woman, and there must be more of them out there, who took out a loan to pay a lawyer for a divorce. She said she thought it was a good idea, because the amount that she got in the settlement, was more than the amount of the loan. Even when the lawyers took their portion of the settlement too, she figured she was coming out ahead.
It only occurred to her later that the settlement was a one time thing, but the loan she had to pay interest on. I'm pretty sure her ex had done the same thing, because they both talk to us about those payments. So essentially, these two completely destroyed their marital wealth just to get lawyers.
I don't know man? I think it'd be worth just sitting down together and working something out, but I guess a lot of people don't think that way.
But here's the kicker that occurred to me reading this article, just imagine the people that take out loans for the wedding, and the divorce.
That's excellent grounds not to get married at all - at least not to them.
It strongly suggests the other person is more interested in social status signalling through extravagant lifestyle display than in celebrating the partnership for its own sake.
I don't think there is a conversation. A shocking number of people get married without discussing critical things like finances, or whether they want children, first.
I had some difficult conversations with my future spouse. It's not fun to think about money or kids or religion or finances when you are in the honeymoon of your early love.
But it is so important. We talk all the time about company and team alignment, but being aligned with your spouse matters so much more.
I see the word "deserve" constantly in marketing and in people's justifications for the things they buy, and it drives me insane. A transaction is giving something up in exchange for something else. What someone thinks they "deserve" has absolutely no effect on whether a purchase makes your life better or worse.
I'm planning a wedding and we're taking a decidedly non-traditional route. Because we both grew up on the internet, our friends are scattered across the seven continents. Having a wedding would mean most of them wouldn't be able to come.
Our solution: courthouse wedding (cost of, whatever, the cost of a marriage license). Then, three or four parties in different parts of the world. Each one might set us back, oh, $500 or $1000 if we have to rent a cheap space or hire a DJ, but we'll supply some snacks and booze and let friends bring the rest.
Total cost, including travel (because we can crash with friends once we're somewhere) will probably be $5,000 for several parties spaced out over several months, and everyone gets to celebrate with us. We also throw bangers, so this gives all our mates a night to remember, wherever they are.
At what point are we going to stop treating people who take out loans and drive up debt as the victim?
Poor life choices is what causes you to get in debt (with the exception of medical deb, unless well, your poor life choices caused your medical condition).
In place of all these sob stories and begging for loan forgiveness maybe we should go back to the schools and educate all of our next generation about the badness of taking out debt with the same gusto as we did saying how badly you need a degree and to take out a bunch of debt to do so.
Lets bring back "You can't afford it" followed with "It won't be the end of the world if you can't invite 200 people to a wedding you really can't afford".
You must be partially shadow-banned or something, because your comment was instantly faded upon submission (as if it had already been significantly downvoted).
Hooray for completely opaque moderation!
Edit: Boy, you guys sure are committed to strengthening the echo chamber...
I think you can only get 4 down votes... Is it still faded? It has over 20 votes now.
I have bumped into dang a at least once, so I would not be surprised if you were not right.
While I feel like I try to make my points clear on a topic and leave room for discussion, I do find that some topics HN is simply not ready to have open honest conversations about. While I don't want to enforce a echo chamber and often play the delves advocate, I do try to respect the decisions and rules this site has set.
I don't like debt, but I think it is hard to dismiss people's decisions when debt seems to be the basis for the modern economy. A significant part of those who promote "financial responsibility" seem to already enjoy some wealth or decent opportunities. While the rest of us get to choose between life-as-a-service or a limited quality of life. Actually, not going into debt have in many locations unfortunately been one of the most costly decisions someone could make in the last 10 years. Which doesn't mean that it will be in the future, but with that in mind it is hard to join you in your opinion.
There’s a major difference between good and bad debt.
And yes, having a limited quality of life is the consequence of having a limited income. Fact of life that newer generations seem to have no intention of accepting, living inside their means.
Marketing and social pressure are significant factors in people's decision making processes. Our entire society is constructed on the basis of convincing people to buy things and for a long time now whether or not they can actually afford them has not been a significant concern. It is especially callous and ignorant to claim that people are in no way victims of this.
However, I think the solution you propose is generally correct. We need to create a social pressure in the opposite direction of pressures pushing for people to take on debt.
I think you hit the nail on the head—it is a person's responsibility to spend wisely, but they're fighting a steeply uphill battle. I don't know where the political will will come from to help create that social pressure, when so much money in politics comes from those advertising so heavily to us.
This why I try to speak out on this issue when I can.
We can change the social perception by speaking out about it. If we don't speak out about it, its basically giving a pass to a bad social norm.
If marketing still was pushing the issue, but all your friends were like "fuck getting in to deb" and treated debt like the black death far fewer people would find them self's chained to institutional debt.
90% of the things people are buying today did not even exist 100 yeas ago and people got along fine.
So I urge people, when your friends are considering debt, have a serous talk to them about the consequences. And let them know, that new gadget, event, fancy dohikie they will use 3 times before they get board of it is just not needed.
Starting with student loans... Giving $150,000 to an 18 year old is rarely a good risk, and it normalizes borrowing extremely large sums of money with no clear way to pay it back on the assumption that it'll all work out in the end. Higher education should find a different business model.
The problem is most people cannot reasonably answer the question "will I be able to pay off this debt in X years?". They just do it because thats what commercials say, thats what their friends say, thats what the bank says. They don't actually consider do they have the skills to acquire the job to earn the income required to pay off their debts. Most people go into debt without a plan for getting OUT of debt, this is the problem.
FWIW I agree with you--going into unnecessary debt needs not to be treated like it's inevitable, or else people will continue to do so because they'll buy into the belief that "I never had a choice, debt was the only way I could have my wedding because I only had $10k saved" rather than "I can only spend $10k on my wedding because that's all I can afford".
This article doesn't really read like sob stories though. It seems like the opposite with they way they put (arguably) scare quotes around "Instagram-worthy" and have quotes from couples wondering if they should have done things differently. Also:
> “The problem is, you don’t want to rely on a personal loan for something that isn’t necessary — and there is nothing necessary about an expensive wedding,” said Stefanie O’Connell
> “You have to put it in context,” she said. “You could spend $30,000 on a one-day celebration, or you could use it to put a down payment on a house. These loans sound great when you’re planning your wedding, but afterward, I hear a lot of regret.”
In my parent's day a loan was something to be ashamed of, to be avoided. They'd grown up through the depression. A small amount of hire purchase seemed to be just about tolerable. If you needed a mortgage or loan it was personally approved by someone at the bank who would typically try and talk you out of it.
Then banks gained sales departments, quotas and commissions. The world started accumulating selling scandals.
A bit of education does not have a chance of balancing the scale against billions of marketing. "Smoking kills", yet folks still started smoking.
I sincerely believe that my generation (millenials) are radically rethinking the necessity of big weddings. A lot of us would rather have a housing deposit than a swanky (and often gaudy) venue.
Marriage is a highly cultural experience but I think those of us without a strong cultural attachment to American traditions are certainly rethinking it. My wife and I skipped the ring, the engagement period, and the wedding and put the money away to save for a down payment. We're still saving (Big city real estate lol) but we agreed that having a home for our future children trumps having a big party that neither of us were crazy about in the first place.
I am in my mid-twenties and so far it's a split. My friend and I got married around the same time and had similar wedding styles (less then 10k total cost, no more then 50 guests, after gifts my wife and I basically broke even; I am assuming the same for my friend). I've had two friends do traditional weddings (200+ people, large venue, pretty flashy). No clue if they had to take out loans - I just assume their parents paid for it.
This is part of a general trend of outrageous spending on luxury items and experiences, often by young adults. Luxury goods are ascendant. Living within your means seems to be an outdated ante-Millennial concept.
Although there are other factors involved, I think it is a great and unprecedented triumph of modern advertising that they can convince people to go into debt for unnecessary crap. Pretty terrifying, frankly.
Can we please stop this canard? The youngest millennials are in their mid to late 20s, and the oldest are in their late 30s. Please stop generalizing an entire generation that for the first time in American history is expected to be worse off than their parents.
There were many generations that were worse off than their parents in American history. I don't know about you but I'd rather have not fought in a war, so any generation prior to a major war was better off than the one that followed. I think what you mean to say is: it's harder to live up to late 20th century mass media defined standards for individualism and hedonism. It's not really that surprising that such a thing wasn't infinitely scaleable.
That report only looks at the 20th century generations, so I don't know that your original statement holds they're a generation "that for the first time in American history is expected to be worse off than their parents".
It is also very dubious in its methodology. This is as close as that study gets to looking at raw, unmanipulated data:
"To begin, we compare annual labor earnings of full-time workers who worked more than 30 hours per week (or 1,560 hours per year). As shown in the top row of the table, average real full-time labor earnings of male heads of all households declined between 1978 and 1998 and then rebounded over the next 16 years. On net, real average full-time labor earnings for males increased 10 percent between 1978 and 2014. However, younger male workers appear to have been left out of the labor earnings increase. Specifically, the real average full-time labor earnings of a millennial male household head in 2014 were about the same as those for a
11 comparable male Generation X household head in 1998 and over 10 percent lower than those for a comparable male baby boomer household head in 1978."
"For female heads of all households, real average full-time labor earnings increased moderately between 1978 and 1998 and between 1998 and 2014, reflecting, in part, rising female educational attainment. However, the median labor earnings of female millennial household heads in 2014 were about 3 percent lower than those of comparable female Generation X household heads in 1998."
"For families, the data show that real income of married couples grew, on net, from 1978 to 2014; this trend is seen in the sample of all households and in the sample of households headed by individuals younger than 33 years old and likely reflects the rise in the female labor force participation rate and the increase in the prevalence of dual income households. However, the net growth of real family income was smaller for young married couples than for married couples of all ages during this span of years."
Aside from earnings and debt, for massive swaths of Americans there's been no better time to be alive than 2019. Violent crime, racism and sexism are at all time lows. Health care is expensive but much better than the past. Food is cheaper and there are healthier options.
My original point is the strongest though. There are no wars. I'd rather be in debt than have my arms blown off in combat or have to kill people, all against my will because I got drafted.
I think it's much more that the prospect of owning a house in an area which one may want to live has gotten so expensive that many millennials just can't realistically factor in the possibility enough to save for one. And if you don't need to save up for or pay off a mortgage, you're gonna have some extra money lying around.
I think the definition of "an area which one may want to live" has drastically narrowed. It used to be widely known that living in NY was very expensive and not something everyone expected to do. Now that seems to be table stakes. It's as if the image of upper class life got so normalized that middle class people no longer even realize that striving for it will send you to the poor house. I know a lot of people who have spent tons of money on international travel, justifying it in part by saying that housing is too expensive so might as well blow the money on "experiences". Those people live in NY and SF. They could have a bought a house very easily with the money they spent on travel (or a wedding as per the OP) if they were willing to live somewhere other than the most expensive places on earth.
This is more down to globalisation than anything else though, everything has become centralised into very specific hubs because it's more efficient and elsewhere has suffered. As someone who grew up in a pretty rural area in a small country, I can tell you there wasn't that much of a choice to remain there.
A lot of the most expensive places to live are also becoming some of the only places where career prospects seem remotely strong.
I'm sorry, I honestly didn't consider this flamewar material, and certainly wasn't trying to ignite one. As a I described in my comment, I think it is a trend. I'm not trying to suggest that everyone in a generation thinks and acts the same way.
I believe you, and I'm sure that getting a reply like that is a bit of a surprise. It's just that we have a lot of experience with comments about generations turning into flamewars.
I wonder if anyone will try to disrupt the wedding space. As things stand, it's very, very difficult to have a 200 - 300 person wedding under 10K.
We rented a VFW Hall in an unsexy corner of town, did our own flower arrangements, got a dirt cheap but good dj (her website was literally something like cheapdj.com), had a friend make a cupcake smorgasboard, etc etc and I think everything came to around 14K for 250 guests. We have high income careers and had an amazing time, so the expense wasn't any kind of burden, but it's a shame to me that something like even our humble (albeit somewhat big and on a Saturday during peak season) wedding seems maybe out of the reach of a lot of middle class young people.
no offense, but the idea that a 200-300 person party could even be considered a "humble" wedding is part of the problem. if I invited my entire family, my closest friends, and their plus ones, that's forty people (and a quarter of them are underage, so no alcohol). double that (assuming my spouse's friends don't overlap with mine) and you have eighty, which is already a lot of people for a party where food and drink are both provided. how do you even come up with 300 people who are genuinely enthusiastic about attending?
The obvious 'disruption' is to simply not invite 200-300 people. Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty certain I can't even name 200 people that I've met.
It sounds like you approached the wedding from the perspective of "here's the checklist of amenities we need to provide our guests", which you modified by striving to ensure each line item was reasonably priced. Not a criticism - I did that to, and for both of us it seems to have been a financially responsible decision.
However, for people for whom that isn't financially responsible, I'd suggest that that mentality isn't appropriate. The question shouldn't be "what do the guests absolutely require?", but "what can we afford? and what do we want?" In that order!
The bare minimum for a wedding is a court wedding. There are some reasons why that may not be the best idea at scale (that is, it may be individually appropriate but there are social reasons why that's not ever going to be the only sort of wedding). From there, the next thing you need is somewhere to gather some people. Are you really obligated to feed them? Depends on the time you pick. Are you obligated to rent a hall rather than find somewhere you can go for free? I'd say not. Do you need flowers scaled to the number of guests? Not really need, no. etc.
Given the ability of money issues to tear marriages apart, I'd say a new couple should strive quite hard to avoid debt for their wedding, and I'd say, get brutal with those costs. If social conventions are driving you into debt, screw social conventions. They were not, in the past, built for that purpose. To a non-trivial extent, they are built in the present for that purpose, and the answer to that is to not just decline to play, but to be angry at the people manipulating those conventions to put you in debt, just to ensure you stay in the right frame of mind. Plus if enough people do that, we can take them back.
"If social conventions are driving you into debt, screw social conventions." has application well beyond this particular matter, too.
> but "what can we afford? and what do we want?" In that order!
I'd switch the order. Once you decide what you want, then you cut or adjust expectations to fit your budget. Just make sure to set the budget before making decisions. For example, if you want live music at the reception, you find a musician(s) or band that fit your budget, without simply deciding you can't afford it.
Having 250-300 people around for anything would be an expensive undertaking by any measure! Affordability is one thing, but should holding an event for a large group inherently become a race to the bottom?
Hosting an event isn't simply like making a big purchase either, for most weddings there are a lot of staff involved (cooks, waiters, flower arrangers, cleaning staff, etc). Should their wages be cut in order to facilitate someone's dream wedding at a discount?
"Couples are getting married later, so they are more willing to pay"
Yet the example in the article is 26
I wonder if this increase is largely in people who in the past would've gotten married in their teens. By those people not getting married until they're in their mid 20s, they have access to the kind of debt that can blown on a fancy enough wedding. In lieu of feeling like you'll ever have access to the means to buy a house, you might not care too much about racking up 10-15k on a wedding.
I think this has to do with ongoing costs and upfront costs. You can't get a home without SOME upfront cash, and it's known that you need money to pay the taxes, additional utilities, maintenance, etc after you purchase the home.
The comparison between a $50k loan for a wedding vs a $50k downpayment on a home is that they never had that money to begin with, and the payments on the wedding are just another expense vs buying into a mortgage with all the extra costs alongside it.
I'm not claiming a loan for a wedding is a good idea, in fact I think it is a terrible one. But building off what you've said, that they're older and can make bigger financial choices, I can see how a loan for the wedding can seem like a viable option to someone.
If it's important to you, and your family can't help out, and you don't have the cash on hand but will in the future, why not take out the loan? I don't see how this is different from financing a luxury car.
You have a lot of stipulations in your question, and I think those exact things should be closely examined when the decision is made. And it should be a decision (not an assumption.)
Do I value having a huge, extravagant party for one day over starting out my marriage on a solid financial foundation, or other expensive items like childcare and housing?
Will I have the cash in the future? Will my earnings dwarf this expense and the additional interest I accrue while I work hard to pay it off?
Did I figure out for myself that this one-day event is "truly important to me" or do I just think it's something everyone does, and I have to do as well? Why is it important to me?
Honest question: is it arrogant or pretentious for me to think those people are stupid? It just seems like such a woeful decision to make. The oily loan sharks are indeed partially responsible, but it's like blaming the sharpness of the knife after you stab yourself.
It is at least ignorant and dismissive to think that.
I've met a few people who face social pressures from their family, who number in the dozens, to do things that appear extremely financially irresponsible from my perspective. If you have to choose between being responsible and not infuriating the 40 most important people in your life, I don't think that would be an easy decision to make. Go against the grain too many times and you risk having the family turn their collective back on you, which might be the best thing financially, but is still a terrifying prospect.
I think this just illustrates how different social worlds are for different people.
For me, having 40 family members (especially the ones whose opinion you'd care about) just sounds made up. And having family members pressure you into things you don't want sounds like a great opportunity to learn how to tell people to mind their own business.
Please note, I'm not judging. I can't even mentally put myself in that situation, so how could I judge? But also, it's hard not to notice that if somebody's 40 family members turn their back on them then their life would just become similar to the lives of mostly everyone I know (i.e. having 0-5 family members that care about you and that you care about).
No it's not arrogant or pretentious, you're actually helping the situation. People who are easily swayed (aka stupid) might as well encounter some negative societal pressure to not make horrible financial decisions. If more people felt like you, the people who feel peer and media pressured into living beyond their means might think twice about making decisions like this.
One very important caveat is the culture of which these weddings are styled. By this I mean, are the couple getting married in a traditional Chinese or South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangledesh) wedding? If so, taking out loans and having very extravagant weddings would not be abnormal nor an unwise financial decision. Typically, weddings in these cultures will pay for themselves and have a fair bit left over as a gift to the couple from the invited guests. The 'aunties' are tasked with making sure that invited family and friends are paying up!
Couples could really cut down on costs if they apply this criteria to choosing people for the guest list: would this person be genuinely saddened if they heard I was getting divorced?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadI just can't fathom doing something like this (let alone spending anywhere near that kind of my own money on a wedding), but I just never grasped the need for an extravagant wedding so I might be out of the norm here.
Some friends are getting married on the weekend and I was shocked to learn that they're spending close to $50,000 on the wedding, and that's after a raising over $5,000 at their social and getting financial support from both their families to pay for the event. That's like a downpayment on a house! Insanity.
partially its because it's just plain cheaper there but a lot of it is just how freaking overboard some people go with weddings!
If they borrowed it against an asset, fine...but no bank is going to approve a loan for that amount for “a wedding”.
The main point I was getting at was that the scenario isn’t likely to be a pattern among people.
Taking out a $150,000 loan for a wedding describes the purpose of the loan, not the collateral.
On a broader level, specialized loans are where the money is at for lenders. When lenders know what people are aiming to buy, they can work with cottage industries that sell to that particular market and get kickbacks. I'm sure the next step for this is shit like wedding insurance policies, preferred vendor "discounts", etc.
Wedding insurance is a thing, because, of course it is.
as an aside, I've been to a few very expensive weddings and one thing that always gets to me is the food. it's usually some very fancy looking steak or seafood dish that tastes totally bland. I can tell it cost a lot of money per plate just to buy the ingredients but it never tastes good. I'm sure if you did something like burgers or pizza, it could be delicious and possibly even cheaper, so why do they do this? is everyone else in on some big game of pretend high cuisine? is it for the pictures?
It's always for the pictures.
It's kind of insane to me, as a millenial, that chasing the instagram aesthetic is such a thing that people are willing to take out loans to facilitate such events.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. You buy a car or house you can't afford, sure, you can live in it for a while. But sooner or later, that will catch up to you.
I'd say, yes.
I think there's two types of "expensive" (for lack of a better word). There's the type of "expensive" that does its best to have the surface appearance of quality, but under the hood it's all as cheap as possible. This is basically a way to con middle-class people by making it look higher class, but in reality, they're not getting that much more, so they can jack the price up a great deal more than the costs would require. (It's not entirely a con, in the sense that the customer is successfully projecting an image of a higher class wedding to their probably-middle-class attendees, but it's still an expensive process.)
Then there's the type of expensive where quality is actually a concern and the money is being put into improving the experience in a deep and meaningful way, tested by many people who have in some manner developed some amount of discrimination in taste by experience over years.
Signs you've got the former include: They're serving a nut/berry salad on a bed of mixed greens, because that's a sophisticated salad. But the sophistication of a nut/berry salad is the balancing of the bitterness of the nut against the sweetness of the dried berry (cherry, cranberry, etc), possibly helped by the dressing (most common with a bit more sweetness), and some of the greens (endive is a nice bitter, for instance). If you buy cheap nuts, they'll often have lost their bitter aromatics. Somehow, you can buy cheap dried fruit that isn't very sweet either. Or you can pair the cheap, not-bitter nuts with dried cranberries, so you're "balancing" bitter with sour, or bitter with "sour except covered over by too much sugar", or other such things. It has the form of a relatively sophisticated salad, but very little of the substance. Another mistake is treating the mixed greens as being all neutral, but including a frisee [1] in the mix, unbalanced. Frisee balanced with sweet is pretty nice; frisee left as the primary player in the dish is awful.
As you say, foods renowned for being tasty, somehow stripped of all taste. It is actually possible to serve a buffet of tasty food, but it is (no sarcasm) a challenge. It is certainly possible to serve plates of tasty food, even at a bit of scale. No sarcasm, at this point in my life I'd rather attend a wedding catered by Chipotle that a standard "we serve a fake-high-class fish and chicken plate with tasteless-pate and capers randomly thrown on things." The Chipotle will taste pretty good! (I actually thought for a while that capers were just useless signalling that nobody liked. Then I experimented and made a couple of home recipes that used them very well. They're still not my favorite, but I get them now, which I didn't after what must be several dozen dishes served with them present.)
The decorations of the hall are regular, mass-produced fittings, but someone came along afterwards and randomly sprayed them with something that looks vaguely like plaster.
The funny thing is that the price difference the two types of "expensive" are often poorly related, and at times they'll even be nearly equal. I know some restaurants where we end up with $25-$30/adult that are frankly only marginally better than Burger King. But I also know some restaurants with similarly-priced plates where all the food is noticeably a true cut above the common $10-15 places. But the former seems to have no problem staying in business. (At least in my area.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endive#/media/File:Friseesalat... possibly also known as "endive", though that seems to be a term for several varieties
It only occurred to her later that the settlement was a one time thing, but the loan she had to pay interest on. I'm pretty sure her ex had done the same thing, because they both talk to us about those payments. So essentially, these two completely destroyed their marital wealth just to get lawyers.
I don't know man? I think it'd be worth just sitting down together and working something out, but I guess a lot of people don't think that way.
But here's the kicker that occurred to me reading this article, just imagine the people that take out loans for the wedding, and the divorce.
Ouch.
"Great idea!"
Is that how the conversation goes? I'm genuinely curious...
The priority in this case (for the subset the article is referring to, of course) is always expectations > practicalities like money.
"After all, you only get married once"...
It strongly suggests the other person is more interested in social status signalling through extravagant lifestyle display than in celebrating the partnership for its own sake.
But it is so important. We talk all the time about company and team alignment, but being aligned with your spouse matters so much more.
Whether or not any of these assertions are true is not questioned...
Our solution: courthouse wedding (cost of, whatever, the cost of a marriage license). Then, three or four parties in different parts of the world. Each one might set us back, oh, $500 or $1000 if we have to rent a cheap space or hire a DJ, but we'll supply some snacks and booze and let friends bring the rest.
Total cost, including travel (because we can crash with friends once we're somewhere) will probably be $5,000 for several parties spaced out over several months, and everyone gets to celebrate with us. We also throw bangers, so this gives all our mates a night to remember, wherever they are.
Poor life choices is what causes you to get in debt (with the exception of medical deb, unless well, your poor life choices caused your medical condition).
In place of all these sob stories and begging for loan forgiveness maybe we should go back to the schools and educate all of our next generation about the badness of taking out debt with the same gusto as we did saying how badly you need a degree and to take out a bunch of debt to do so.
Lets bring back "You can't afford it" followed with "It won't be the end of the world if you can't invite 200 people to a wedding you really can't afford".
ELOPE PEOPLE!
Hooray for completely opaque moderation!
Edit: Boy, you guys sure are committed to strengthening the echo chamber...
I have bumped into dang a at least once, so I would not be surprised if you were not right.
While I feel like I try to make my points clear on a topic and leave room for discussion, I do find that some topics HN is simply not ready to have open honest conversations about. While I don't want to enforce a echo chamber and often play the delves advocate, I do try to respect the decisions and rules this site has set.
And yes, having a limited quality of life is the consequence of having a limited income. Fact of life that newer generations seem to have no intention of accepting, living inside their means.
However, I think the solution you propose is generally correct. We need to create a social pressure in the opposite direction of pressures pushing for people to take on debt.
We can change the social perception by speaking out about it. If we don't speak out about it, its basically giving a pass to a bad social norm.
If marketing still was pushing the issue, but all your friends were like "fuck getting in to deb" and treated debt like the black death far fewer people would find them self's chained to institutional debt.
90% of the things people are buying today did not even exist 100 yeas ago and people got along fine.
So I urge people, when your friends are considering debt, have a serous talk to them about the consequences. And let them know, that new gadget, event, fancy dohikie they will use 3 times before they get board of it is just not needed.
Starting with student loans... Giving $150,000 to an 18 year old is rarely a good risk, and it normalizes borrowing extremely large sums of money with no clear way to pay it back on the assumption that it'll all work out in the end. Higher education should find a different business model.
The model in which such few people should be accessing it -> lower demand -> lower prices.
I know, beating the dead horse and such. But that degree in interpretative native dance is doing little to help humanity.
Debt can be a good thing if used in the right manner (borrowing to buy a home you plan to live in the long term is a prime example).
Financing has its place and its role. What's lacking (on top of general financial education) in society is proper decision-making skills.
Fix that, and these sorts of stories will happen less and less. However, getting there is a whole other can of worms...
This article doesn't really read like sob stories though. It seems like the opposite with they way they put (arguably) scare quotes around "Instagram-worthy" and have quotes from couples wondering if they should have done things differently. Also:
> “The problem is, you don’t want to rely on a personal loan for something that isn’t necessary — and there is nothing necessary about an expensive wedding,” said Stefanie O’Connell
> “You have to put it in context,” she said. “You could spend $30,000 on a one-day celebration, or you could use it to put a down payment on a house. These loans sound great when you’re planning your wedding, but afterward, I hear a lot of regret.”
Then banks gained sales departments, quotas and commissions. The world started accumulating selling scandals.
A bit of education does not have a chance of balancing the scale against billions of marketing. "Smoking kills", yet folks still started smoking.
Although there are other factors involved, I think it is a great and unprecedented triumph of modern advertising that they can convince people to go into debt for unnecessary crap. Pretty terrifying, frankly.
It is also very dubious in its methodology. This is as close as that study gets to looking at raw, unmanipulated data:
"To begin, we compare annual labor earnings of full-time workers who worked more than 30 hours per week (or 1,560 hours per year). As shown in the top row of the table, average real full-time labor earnings of male heads of all households declined between 1978 and 1998 and then rebounded over the next 16 years. On net, real average full-time labor earnings for males increased 10 percent between 1978 and 2014. However, younger male workers appear to have been left out of the labor earnings increase. Specifically, the real average full-time labor earnings of a millennial male household head in 2014 were about the same as those for a 11 comparable male Generation X household head in 1998 and over 10 percent lower than those for a comparable male baby boomer household head in 1978."
"For female heads of all households, real average full-time labor earnings increased moderately between 1978 and 1998 and between 1998 and 2014, reflecting, in part, rising female educational attainment. However, the median labor earnings of female millennial household heads in 2014 were about 3 percent lower than those of comparable female Generation X household heads in 1998."
"For families, the data show that real income of married couples grew, on net, from 1978 to 2014; this trend is seen in the sample of all households and in the sample of households headed by individuals younger than 33 years old and likely reflects the rise in the female labor force participation rate and the increase in the prevalence of dual income households. However, the net growth of real family income was smaller for young married couples than for married couples of all ages during this span of years."
Aside from earnings and debt, for massive swaths of Americans there's been no better time to be alive than 2019. Violent crime, racism and sexism are at all time lows. Health care is expensive but much better than the past. Food is cheaper and there are healthier options.
My original point is the strongest though. There are no wars. I'd rather be in debt than have my arms blown off in combat or have to kill people, all against my will because I got drafted.
A lot of the most expensive places to live are also becoming some of the only places where career prospects seem remotely strong.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We rented a VFW Hall in an unsexy corner of town, did our own flower arrangements, got a dirt cheap but good dj (her website was literally something like cheapdj.com), had a friend make a cupcake smorgasboard, etc etc and I think everything came to around 14K for 250 guests. We have high income careers and had an amazing time, so the expense wasn't any kind of burden, but it's a shame to me that something like even our humble (albeit somewhat big and on a Saturday during peak season) wedding seems maybe out of the reach of a lot of middle class young people.
And this in spite of living in a culture where guests are supposed to give gifts that at least cover their part of the bill ;)
However, for people for whom that isn't financially responsible, I'd suggest that that mentality isn't appropriate. The question shouldn't be "what do the guests absolutely require?", but "what can we afford? and what do we want?" In that order!
The bare minimum for a wedding is a court wedding. There are some reasons why that may not be the best idea at scale (that is, it may be individually appropriate but there are social reasons why that's not ever going to be the only sort of wedding). From there, the next thing you need is somewhere to gather some people. Are you really obligated to feed them? Depends on the time you pick. Are you obligated to rent a hall rather than find somewhere you can go for free? I'd say not. Do you need flowers scaled to the number of guests? Not really need, no. etc.
Given the ability of money issues to tear marriages apart, I'd say a new couple should strive quite hard to avoid debt for their wedding, and I'd say, get brutal with those costs. If social conventions are driving you into debt, screw social conventions. They were not, in the past, built for that purpose. To a non-trivial extent, they are built in the present for that purpose, and the answer to that is to not just decline to play, but to be angry at the people manipulating those conventions to put you in debt, just to ensure you stay in the right frame of mind. Plus if enough people do that, we can take them back.
"If social conventions are driving you into debt, screw social conventions." has application well beyond this particular matter, too.
I'd switch the order. Once you decide what you want, then you cut or adjust expectations to fit your budget. Just make sure to set the budget before making decisions. For example, if you want live music at the reception, you find a musician(s) or band that fit your budget, without simply deciding you can't afford it.
Hosting an event isn't simply like making a big purchase either, for most weddings there are a lot of staff involved (cooks, waiters, flower arrangers, cleaning staff, etc). Should their wages be cut in order to facilitate someone's dream wedding at a discount?
Any venue that has room for 250 people + catering should not be doing it for less than $40 a person!
I wonder if this increase is largely in people who in the past would've gotten married in their teens. By those people not getting married until they're in their mid 20s, they have access to the kind of debt that can blown on a fancy enough wedding. In lieu of feeling like you'll ever have access to the means to buy a house, you might not care too much about racking up 10-15k on a wedding.
The comparison between a $50k loan for a wedding vs a $50k downpayment on a home is that they never had that money to begin with, and the payments on the wedding are just another expense vs buying into a mortgage with all the extra costs alongside it.
I'm not claiming a loan for a wedding is a good idea, in fact I think it is a terrible one. But building off what you've said, that they're older and can make bigger financial choices, I can see how a loan for the wedding can seem like a viable option to someone.
Do I value having a huge, extravagant party for one day over starting out my marriage on a solid financial foundation, or other expensive items like childcare and housing?
Will I have the cash in the future? Will my earnings dwarf this expense and the additional interest I accrue while I work hard to pay it off?
Did I figure out for myself that this one-day event is "truly important to me" or do I just think it's something everyone does, and I have to do as well? Why is it important to me?
I've met a few people who face social pressures from their family, who number in the dozens, to do things that appear extremely financially irresponsible from my perspective. If you have to choose between being responsible and not infuriating the 40 most important people in your life, I don't think that would be an easy decision to make. Go against the grain too many times and you risk having the family turn their collective back on you, which might be the best thing financially, but is still a terrifying prospect.
For me, having 40 family members (especially the ones whose opinion you'd care about) just sounds made up. And having family members pressure you into things you don't want sounds like a great opportunity to learn how to tell people to mind their own business.
Please note, I'm not judging. I can't even mentally put myself in that situation, so how could I judge? But also, it's hard not to notice that if somebody's 40 family members turn their back on them then their life would just become similar to the lives of mostly everyone I know (i.e. having 0-5 family members that care about you and that you care about).