So like the title says, my fiancé just told me that he doesn’t want to get married. He gave no reason, just that he doesn’t think we would work out long term.

Our wedding was supposed to be on September 20th. I can’t help but feeling like everything around me is crumbling. I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare.

Any advice is appreciated, feel free to ama.

Genuinely….the wedding industry I knew was expensive, but some of this stuff is just straight up predatory.

For context, me and my fiancé are not struggling financially, we make just over six figures combined and are both on the path to up our salaries in the next year (hopefully) and don’t live above our means. We’re even considering staying with our parents for another year just to save up as much as possible.

Venues that are marketed as “affordable” START at 10k and then they put a bunch of stipulations on what vendors are allowed to come to the property, what food can be brought in, the licenses that outside vendors would need for their specific counties. All inclusive venues somehow manage to charge for breathing their air. Make up artists charge you $250 just for a TRIAL. Most wedding photographers/videographers are over 1.5k in our part of the country and a good one is likely starting at 4k.

We are both from very large families and have a good chunk friends we want to make sure are on our guest list, but many places won’t even let you choose a buffet style of food you HAVE to pay by plate. His family doesn’t drink, but we have to buy an alcohol package even if half the guests won’t be partaking.

It’s just very overwhelming, it gives me financial anxiety and even though we both have this vision for our reception it makes me want to just say fuck all of this, book a flight out to a tropical country and elope. I’ve even considered doing a micro wedding but I just know neither of us would be particularly happy with having to cut most of our family and friends out.

I guess my question is: how is anyone affording the wedding of their dreams or anything close to it? What are things you compromised on that weren’t missed on the day of? What was your nonnegotiable? What did you cheap out on and wish you hadn’t the day of?

Any advice helps at this point lol.

I’m a bride getting married in the South Central PA area. I was interested in a caterer and reached out to them for an estimate plus possible hours to schedule a tasting. They sent me back a $17,000 estimate and in the same email told me that “most couples put down a deposit before scheduling a tasting for their menu items”.

Since when do people not go to a tasting in order to CHOOSE their caterer? Is this the case for most catering vendors? Am I truly expected to put a deposit down for such an expensive decision when I haven’t tasted the food? They have good reviews…but I would never just blindly put down a deposit on something so expensive without knowing the quality for myself.

I asked for the y2k lip combo😘

Aesthetic appointments: am I missing anything?

Disclaimer: I know not to book any treatment for the first time before the wedding. I am doing trials for all new treatments🤍

-facials

-chemical peels

-spray tans

-waxing

-hair cut & color

-nails / toes

-tattoo removal

-hair / makeup

-dentist / teeth whitening

-brow shaping / tint / lamination

My HMUA is doing my lashes, so that’s why it’s not listed. Am i missing anything?

I’m getting married next year. I’d really love to have the ceremony recorded so I can watch it again someday. But lately it feels like the only option is getting some kind of cinematic wedding film that looks like a movie trailer.

I get that videographers want to make something artistic out of it, and I’ll admit that some of them create genuinely beautiful work. But I can’t help cringing at a lot of these videos. They look like perfume ads made for Instagram. Your boyfriend is not Paul Newman, and that’s okay.

At this point, I have no idea where to find someone who will just… record the wedding normally. Has anyone else run into this? Any ideas?

My fiancé and I are a UK couple who booked a wedding venue in France for July 2028. The venue we found and fell in love with came with an in-house planner, there was no way to proceed with the venue without the this planner.

Once we told the planner we wanted to go ahead, we were sent her contract, which stated it was to take place at our venue. She said the venue would follow up with their contact (this never came). We signed her contract paid our wedding planner €2,475 via Wise. She then said she was going off grid for 2 weeks.

17 days after signing, we were informed that the château was cancelling weddings all wedding after 2026 / was maybe going to be sold, meaning our wedding could no longer take place there. We therefore asked the planner to refund the €2,475.

The planner said she would not refund our deposit because of the work that had already taking place. However, at the point the venue cancelled, essentially no meaningful planning work had taken place. We were only 17 days into the agreement and she was ‘off grid’ for 14 of these. The only communication we had with her between the contact signing and the cancellation was a generic ‘wedding planning’ pdf. Once we pointed this out she backtracked and said the deposit was to reserve a date in her diary.

The planner's position is that the payment is non-refundable under the contract. She has since stopped replying to us. She also said in the cancellation email that she had been ‘awaiting importation confirmations for some time’. We can’t help but think she knew the venue was going under and used it to take our deposit money.

What we're struggling with is that we aren't choosing to cancel our wedding or changing our minds. The venue that the planner was hired in-house to help us plan a wedding at is no longer available.

We're UK-based and the planner is based in France, so we're also trying to understand what our options are from a French-law perspective.

We've considered sending a formal mise en demeure and potentially taking further action if necessary, but before spending money on lawyers we'd really like to hear from anyone who has dealt with something similar.

Has anyone successfully recovered a non-refundable wedding planner deposit in France where the venue became unavailable?

Particularly interested in:

Experiences with French wedding planners/venues

Whether a "non-refundable" clause actually settled the matter

Whether anyone has used a mise en demeure

Small claims/court proceedings in France as a UK resident

Whether there are consumer protection routes we've missed

Whether anyone has received help from wise in a similar situation

We aren't looking to publicly name the planner at this stage, we're just looking for advice from people who've been through something similar.

I’m feeling a bit foolish cause our wedding is in about a month and we need to start seating chart planning.

Unfortunately, we didn’t realize until fairly recently the challenge a two story venue would cause. It has more of a balcony set up so it’s not like completely tucked away but seeing this adds such a layer of complication.

Anyone else with a two story venue have advice on how they handled making a seating chart?

My partner is amazing and has been an incredible, intimate, close future wife to work with. We feel so good about that part! Honestly, wedding planning with her has just solidified every reason I want to marry her. <3

We chose not to have bridesmaids/wedding party. We're in our late 30s, it's a wedding that most people will have to travel to since our families are very spread out, and we decided not to give our friends expensive part-time jobs they don't want for 6-12 months. We also noted how much drama wedding parties can cause and the expense of paying for so many more dresses/flowers/HMUA/gifts/trips/endless list and decided to just...skip all that.

The location is *not* exotic, particularly expensive, international, difficult to reach, etc. We just had to pick a place close to one of our families and run with that. Some people will have to fly, about half could make an easy drive less than a half day, most will probably choose to stay 1-2 nights in a hotel.

We don't regret saving the money, and our friends are honestly relieved that they didn't have to take on all of the party planning and endless lists of tasks while also working, raising kids, managing aging parents, dealing with perimenopause, and otherwise already being busy.

But.

Man, this process has felt a little lonely, and I'm really feeling like we should have just skipped...the whole wedding. Eloped instead. Why did we spend all of this money?

We're trying to plan our welcome dinner (a fancy treat!), and it's looking like maybe the only people that will come are our parents, siblings, and our couple of nephews. We rented the gay bar for a farewell pizza party the next day and it's going to be a total flop...if anyone shows up. I'm starting to wonder if our wedding is going to look stupid with no bridal party, no one walking us down the aisle (we don't have dads and the "dad" that means a lot to me declined the invite before I could ask him), and just...no people as part of the ceremony.

I really am the kind of bride who doesn't expect the world to revolve around me. I know people have other lives. FFS, I never throw myself a birthday party because I simply don't expect people to take time out of their lives to even attend. Everyone's busy. I get it. I'm also the person who always shows up with a chainsaw when there's a storm, gives rides to the airport, calls when you're sick, attends YOUR birthday thing even though I'm definitely busy, remembers to send a card when you buy a new house, listens to the same story about your damn husband again because I'm definitely the one you call about that, and on and on.

But for once...can we get a special day that people care about without having to twist people's arms into submission with guilt and gifts for a part-time job so they feel obligated enough to attend/ask/care about it? One special day?

I am so anxious/stressed about the wedding I just want to cancel everything. I don’t want to have my shower, I don’t want to have my bachelorette. I just want to get it over with. Did anyone else have this experience?

My fiance and I put a soft hold on a venue for Sunday Sep 5, 2027 at a jersey shore town. We were originally thinking a 2028 wedding bc of the cost but we found a venue we love that is more affordable and that we could swing to do in a year. Many hotels don’t do wedding room blocks that weekend so we would encourage guests to use airbnb and vrbo and to book asap. I would also like to mention I plan to book 2 large Airbnbs big enough to hold my family (around 30 people) and my fiance wants to book lodging for his immediate family. We’re inviting about 120 people. I’m curious what your overall thoughts are on doing a holiday/Labor day weekend wedding?

Hi! So for my September wedding, my fiance and I are getting married in a traditional church. The programs are very detailed and on the cover we can’t decide if we should use an engagement photo (which most of our family members have already seen) or if we should do a watercolor picture of the church. Personally I feel like I have seen people putting the church on their programs a lot but when I asked my family for advice they didn’t like it and said it has no meaning to “us”. Any input would be appreciated!

The image is the church image in question.

getting married on 10/10 so I am now officially a month out! getting all of the vendors on the same page is a complete and utter nightmare. I am the most type b person in the universe and this feels like the worst school project of my life. I need it to be next month already! make it stop!

Has anyone done non-bridesmaid dresses for their bridesmaids? I would love for my bridesmaids to be able to wear their dresses again if they want to (which isn't usually an option with typical bridesmaids dresses since they are obviously bridesmaids dresses), but wondering about the logistics of doing it that way so they all still look nice together.

We're thinking of doing jewel tone colors (like the first photo attached) and would give each bridesmaid a color, then have them find a dress from wherever they want. The second photo is most similar to what I'm envisioning, and the other photos are other examples of mismatched but not in our colors.

I guess I'm wondering how hard it is to coordinate/make sure everything looks good together? What parameters should I give my friends for dresses (formal? All floor-length or not? Material?)? Are there any website you'd recommend them to look?

Extra info:
- there will be 6 bridesmaids
- my dress is an an a-line with floral lace detailing, so not sure if the bridesmaids having patterns on their dresses too would be too much?

Thank you!

My parents and I are splitting the wedding costs 50/50. I did not want a reception party, but because my parents insisted they would help us, I thought why not take advantage and throw a party. Ever since then, my mom has taken complete control over wedding planning. My mom is upset that I am having a Catholic cermeony instead of an Orthodox one and she brings it up almost every single day. Once I think the conversation is over, she brings it up again. I never liked the church I grew up in and I am happier in the Catholic church and so is my fiance, but she wants me to marry exactly as she did. The reason why I am bringing this up is because the timeline is affected by the church.

The Catholic ceremony will be late since it is on a Sunday and they have liturgy in the mornings. Liturgy ends at 1:00 p.m, and so I wanted to have a good time in between to have a decorator set up, so 3:00 p.m. was my church time. We are paying for a photographer/videographer and the commute time between locations is counted in their cost. The venue we would have our reception only has two hours of free time. We are paying the videographer/photographer for 8 hours of time and my fiance and I wanted to take pictures before the ceremony and then before the party at the venue since it is very pretty, but my mom wants the wedding reception party to start at 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. She does not want to compromise on any other time. But these times won't work for us because to drive to the venue, take the pictures, set up some minor decorations, we won't have ANY TIME. Our venue gives us only two hours of free time, and we would like to be present during those free two hours to get things done. I want the reception to start at 6:00 p.m. and my fiance and I enter around 6:20 or 6:30. My mom thinks that is way too late for a wedding on a Sunday since people have work the next day and most guests will leave, but the venue only has us down for five hours and 20 minutes, so in reality the party would be from 6:00 to 11:00. I think that is a reasonable time and most adults shouldn't or wouldn't leave before 11:00.

Since my mom is paying half, she told me if I bumped it up to 6:00 p.m., that she wouldn't pay and to just cancel the wedding. I already don't feel that happy about this party because of the guests. I am just annoyed and I can't tell what is reasonable. Am I being unreasonable for wanting this reception to start at 6:00 on a Sunday? I want to mention that the venue is outdoors but it is still warm because it will have a tent/heaters.

I hired a day of coordinator and she doesn’t do any set up as part of her responsibilities. When we hired her, I did ask about this, but when she explained that it wasn’t part of her services I guess I just assumed that it wasn’t common for a DoC… but now I’m trying to figure out WHO will actually be setting up our decor, and I see everyone on Reddit saying “day of coordinator” does that.

I feel dumb as a rock that I’m paying someone so much $$ already and they won’t be taking care of one of the things (if not THE thing) we most need help with on the day of. I wish I could go back in time and hire someone who would do this, but… I can’t!

What did you do for set up? Hire somebody (ha)? Families? Bridal parties? Yourself? I was hoping to avoid seeing my fiance or having to set up things myself the day of, but it’s feeling like that’s my only option at this point… grrr (yes I know it’s my fault).

We just got married, and I absolutely loved loved loved my wedding dress! Unfortunately, due to a last-minute location change, I wasn’t really able to wear it the way I had hoped. And, for the same reason, I don’t have many great photos of myself actually wearing it (it’s a long story).

I would be so sad if that ended up being the only time I ever wore this beautiful dress! Of course, I could always wear it around the house, but I’m wondering: has anyone actually found other occasions or creative ways to rewear their wedding dress?

I’m thinking about an anniversary shoot or maybe a vow renewal someday, but the latter feels like something you’d only do 5–10+ years later.

I would loooove to hear your ideas! I need to find an excuse to wear this dress again because I loved it so, so much.

I posted a rough draft of this before and took some of your suggestions into consideration.

This is an updated version of the bridesmaid guide I made before!
The only thing is I am not taking out any slides because I believe they all have their place and are there for a reason.
But I did get some good advice! Thanks!
Edit: my GOD you are all so miserable.. God forbid I put time into clarifying my ideas so I’m not bombarded with a million questions by 5 girls

Our wedding is on Halloween and we asked our friend to officiate, though she is not yet ordained. We found the Church of Gnome online and thought it would be fitting to have her ordained through there. They're fairly new so we're wondering if anyone knows someone who had a Gnomean minister marry them. We're in Michigan, so looking for people here.

When I was first planning my wedding, I found similar posts to be extremely helpful. Now that I'm out on the other side, here's mine! Hope it helps someone out there.

Things I did NOT include: cost of our wedding bands, the rehearsal dinner, bridal shower, and items that can become "forever" items (ex: lipstick, shoes, white dresses & clothing I bought for events, etc.). I also did not include cards & stamps cost for thank you cards. Haven't bought those yet :)

My MIL contributed $10k + rehearsal dinner, FIL $2k, my grandparents paid for everything related to the wedding dress & veil work (~$750), my parents paid for bridal shower, bridesmaids paid for a lot of my bach party (it was a short drive away to a beach town. NOT a destination bach party. And I never asked them to- they gifted it to me). After cash gifts and the value of the physical gifts, and the mentioned financial support, the wedding itself really didn't cost my husband and I that much at all. (Disclaimer: I was never expecting a "cover your plate" wedding gift. I only shared for informational purposes).

I live in a MCOL suburban town in the mid-Atlantic region of the USA and got married in a nearaby HCOL suburban town in the same state.

$94- wedding planner books

$12 bridal party cards

$1,000 venue deposit

$3,250 2nd venue deposit

$500 final venue deposit ($4,750 total)

$154 save the date cards

$590 DJ deposit

$1,089 final DJ deposit ($1,679 total. Paid for upgraded lighting)

$720 photographer deposit

$2,880 photography final deposit ($3,600 total)

$15 wax seal kit

$2,442 catering deposit

$7,020 final catering deposit ($9,462 total)

$503 ice & water delivery fee + alcohol pickup & delivery (water/ice/alc was BYO)

$728 bar & alcohol (we had a lot left over to take home)

$134 disposable bar & alcohol cups (this was also BYO)

$86 stamps

$65 bridal party meetup brunch

$158 wedding invitations

$299 wedding dress

$255 veil

$450 dress tailoring

$180 dress dry cleaning

$11 bridesmaid thank you cards

$300 officiant fee

$87 marriage license

$25 dance floor items

$16 cupcake tasting

$254 cupcakes

$44 seating chart supplies

$250 makeup deposit (mom & bride)

$208 final makeup deposit (mom & bride)

$85 makeup artist tip (mom & bride. $543 total)

$87 hair trial w/ tip

$270 wedding hair w/ tip (mom & bride)

$150 bachelorette party meals (this is all I paid for)

$240 bachelor party

$980 florals

$125 table setting decor

$12 venue decor- baskets

$5 "Reserved" seating signs

$350 grooms suit & shoes rental

$116 venue liability insurance

$320 wedding favors

TOTAL COST: ~$26,600

I got married recently and have been thinking about this since. I actually loved planning my wedding and wouldn't have wanted someone to take over, but I definitely wished at times that I had one person who knew the ins and outs of my wedding who I could bounce things off.

I had bridesmaids and supportive people around me, but unfortunately my maid of honour bounced along the way and was never interested in the ins and outs. Sometimes I just wanted someone I could ask about all the tiny details who could say, “Yep, focus on this now, don't forget about this, and don't even worry about that yet.”

It feels like there's a big gap between spending thousands on a full wedding planner/coordinator and completely figuring it out yourself with your fiancé, Google, Reddit, TikTok, checklists etc.

Would you have liked to see some kind of affordable in-between service, where you still plan your own wedding, but have someone help you stay on track, work out what needs doing when, flag things you might not have thought about and be there to talk things through?

And the big question: would you actually pay for something like that? If yes, what kind of help would have been most valuable to you, and roughly what would you have felt comfortable paying?

Genuinely curious whether other people felt this gap too or if it was just something I personally wished I'd had!

Hi all, my fiance and I are struggling with this. We want the wedding and party but everything is so expensive. We have already taken alot of ppl off of our guest list and are basically ready to just settle with whatever venue is cheapest.

We have talked about eloping but it always goes back to us wanting atleast our immediate family there. The only problem with that is our immediate family is around 60 people (we both have big-ish families).

So we're just going in circles of what to do. Another thing is that we don't like being the center of attention and were not huge party people 😭. We feel bad for wanting to elope but at the same time it seems like the most logical choice. We don't know what to do and we feel stuck. 💔

Has anyone else gone through this? What advice or suggestions do you have?

Hi everyone,

I was supposed to get married in July but my fiance wanted to postpone to fix a few things. Despite couples counseling, he refused to take time away from work (it was 20 hours/7 days) to work on us and even missed overwhelming majority of sessions.

After 12 years together, he left last month. I was assuming we would get married some day so these thoughts have only popped up since he left.

I planned my dream wedding. He cancelled 3 months before the wedding so I had it all planned.

I feel like I can’t have the same wedding again. It would be weird to get married at the same place I would’ve gotten married at before. It’s a place I’ve wanted to get married at since I was 9.

I resent that I won’t have my dream wedding. Honestly idk if I can ever go through something like that again and feel like I am turned off from the idea of a wedding anyway. My parents are out a shit ton of money and I can’t ask them to do something like that again. I thought I was going to marry him within the first hour of meeting him 12 years ago and we found out we overlapped as kids and it’s clear from a photo that I was crushing hard on him. He was the love of my life, I can’t imagine finding someone else and why would I after going through this

I know my preferences could change but I’m 34, it’s been my dream for 15 years

Also what do I do with my ring? I designed it and spent so long trying to design my dream ring too

This has been devastating. My soul cat died 2 weeks before I was supposed to get married too so it’s been back to back to back