OV9

This is about standard in my experience - basically when she realises that no-one's really paying her that much attention any more and that life post-wedding is the same as it was pre-wedding, but with less money available

I’ve never been to an open bar wedding. Uncle put a grand behind the bar though, seemed like a nice way of ‘everyone have a drink on us’ without having to take out another mortgage.

Average price of a wedding these days is way north of £25k it seems. License to print money if you’re in the industry. Plenty of gullible brides willing to pay WAY over the odds to make their (her) special day that bit more special

Our wedding cost £1k (which was the cost of the photographer/photos and the guy who did the ceremony), though admittedly we were in New York on holiday at the time.

My mum always used to hint that they’d pay for a wedding if we wanted, but I’m a grown man so would rather pay for my own stuff tbh!

This is bang on

Every wedding I've been to that has had an open bar, has lead to people taking the piss, and people getting hammered.

Best setup I went to involved an honesty box. You put your real notes in a box, at one end of the bar. and took the equivalent in £1 monopoly money (it was pretend money with the bride/grooms face on it) in return. All drink cost 1 or 2 'notes', you helped yourself to drinks then put the fake notes in a collection box based on what you'd poured.
I mean, there was no one there so you could have just drunk and not paid, but they reckon they actually took more money than people actually had drinks...

JLv3.0 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2019 9:53 am The more elaborate the wedding, the shorter the marriage itself seems to last.

I think that was on QI as a "fact"

For legal reasons a quickie wedding is in my near future as unmarried couples can't live together here - I mean, everyone does but it's not ideal. Should discussions of an engagement ring arise, I shall simply point to the black S1000RR parked outside - for the sake of the paperwork, I imagine this will be a quick ceremony with my best mate and hers in attendance. A "proper" wedding can wait.

Just need to agree all the above with her now

Free booze until a certain time and then after X it all costs but is subsidised. Depends on who is coming etc.

No way we could afford an open bar at that time. Guests got a couple of glasses of champers on arrival and there were a couple of bottles of plonk on each table. We also paid for a bus to bring folks to and from the venue so they could have a few if they wanted to.

Clearly we did it wrong. Had loads of people at ours and an open bar. Nobody took the piss, some people got drunk, we've still got booze left over (just had our ninth anniversary, we're clearly bad at drinking) and it was an amazing, fun two-day affair.

My wife made all the wedding favours herself (a crocheted sunflower brooch for the women, sugared almonds for the men), baked and decorated the wedding cake and loads of other stuff.

As for the bar it was slightly easier to manage as we were in a marquee on private land miles from anywhere that could restock. We had what was there and had we run out, so be it.

We panned to go abroad with just two siblings but ended up in Gretna with our parents and my brother. My brother and her father I think split our hotel tab between them which included a few meals and a fair few bottles of wine.

On reflection when people say I got married in "foreign lands" some will always pipe up with some holiday they had there. Nobody does that for a small Gretna wedding.

We thought about a big wedding for about thirty seconds but I picked well. (she on the other hand.....)

I was an Usher at a mate's wedding and his Mrs had a folder before they were engaged on what everything was going to be like, must have cost a bloody fortune but they are still together 6 years later and are pretty happy.

We went on a booze cruise & filled the 306 up to the rafters with red & white wine. We had no idea what we were buying at the time, but the stack at the hypermarket was going down very quickly with the locals, so we took a punt. Turns out it was a very good wine & we bought waaaaaay too much. Add that to the fact that the hog roast was very late coming out, everyone got very hammered, very quickly. I believe my FIL put a few hundred quid behind the bar, but it didn't get used up as everyone was so mashed on the free wine

I've been to a lot of weddings & only remember a few that had money behind the bar. I've no idea whos wedding that was though, so who cares!

Free table wine FTW!