It’s true!
They are. They really are.
Why are they so expensive?
Because there are so many elements and professionals coming together to create a very memorable and perfect day for the couple getting married.
Long gone are the days when a wedding was the simple celebration following a marriage in the evening, where an entire village came together to provide their goods and services as a gift to the couple. In those days, some would provide the flour for a cake, others would provide the dried fruit, someone would provide a pig for the meal, still others would provide vegetables and flowers for decoration. If they were fortunate, the village had a musician that would provide the entertainment.
Those were simple days, but today weddings are much more sophisticated and the expectation of couples is much higher than they were a few hundred years ago.
You may be fortunate enough to have some family or friends that can provide some of the elements of your day, but it’s unlikely you will have friends and family to provide all of the festivities and trimmings you are expecting.
As such, you hire professionals to fulfil your expectations.
Professionals are not cheap.
Despite popular opinion, it’s not true that suppliers charge more just because it has the event has the word “wedding”.
Professional suppliers charge according the level of service that a wedding has come to expect. A cake that would have sufficed for 4 year old birthday party is probably significantly different to the cake that is suitable for a wedding. This applies for every professional you are planning on hiring.
It drives me nuts when I see reality shows on television showing how “cheap” people can make their wedding.
It becomes more of an embarrassment than a celebration. (Of course it does, otherwise the media wouldn’t be interested in running a show where there isn’t a bit of a cringe / laugh factor!) Think about it, if there were two shows running on two stations at the same time, one focused on how “cheap” a wedding could be made versus another show of the most “lavish” weddings, I can almost guarantee the one most people would be watching is the one on how “cheap” it could be. People are attracted to watching the train wreck of a wedding over one that goes off perfectly.
This might be a polarising statement, but many couples don’t realise that you don’t NEED to have a wedding!
What? Am I saying that, unless people have a lot of money they don’t deserve to get married? HOW DARE I?
No … that’s not what I just wrote. Read it again. You don’t NEED to have a wedding … but you can STILL get married.
We live in a world where the two have become so intertwined that people almost assume that a wedding is getting married and getting married is having a wedding.
WRONG!
Getting married is the celebrant / minister / priest performing the legally required ceremony to have two people bound in marriage.
The wedding is everything else.
I have personally known and are friends with couples who didn’t embarrass themselves by trying to run a wedding “on the cheap”. Instead, they had a simple ceremony which was followed by a lovely and simple dinner with friends and family at a pub. It was great. It still had all the elements, but without all the trimmings. There were still speeches, there was a great meal, drinks and great chatting with everyone. It was warm and wonderful.
One thing we see a lot is people asking on social media forums for suggestions of a supplier that is affordable, or “doesn’t cost an arm and a leg” etc. This is not helping the person asking, nor those that are providers of that service. Everyone has a budget to stick to, but what is “affordable” to one person might be completely outside the realm of realism for another person.
If you are looking for suppliers for your wedding day, when you ask for a supplier, use a range or maximum you are able to afford. This way you are not going to waste your time with suppliers that you are not going to be able to afford anyway.
We have personally never been hired by any couple that has not thought our services were affordable. If they did, they wouldn’t have booked us! But to others, our prices might not be what they consider “affordable”.
Just remember, no supplier charges what they consider to be “unreasonable”. We all charge based on what we believe presents good value for money based on what we supply.
We would love to chat to you about your wedding day and what we can provide for you.
Warmly,
Nik Reeds
