I wonder how much cost plays in, I mean, my fiancée and I are adult middle class millennials and we’ve been saving for two years to have a wedding, and we’re planning a relatively cheap one.
My parents got married in a friend's house and they had the reception in the backyard with friends playing music. I think the wedding cost like $100 or something. Unclear why modern weddings have to be so expensive. Mine definitely was overpriced.
Weddings became a market to manipulate just like any other. From the rings to the honeymoon, everything has been commoditized, including an entire industry that perpetuates the 'ideal' (magazines, pinterest, etc.).
What used to be private, family-only affairs has now morphed into a 'need' to invite 200 or so people you don't know and feed them so they give you gifts.
My theory is large expense is a sign of lack of family and social network involvement. Without a strong support network, marriages will run into problems.
The court house needed $70 for the license. A friend did the ceremony (One benefit of Freedom of religion in the US is there are religions with one belief: people should be married. They will ordain anyone who shared that belief to be a priest to perform marriages for $20, and then help you get certified to perform a marriage in whatever state you want to perform a marriage in). You need two witnesses, and they are traditionally not paid. In short, you need 5 people and $70, and 1 of those 5 needs to do something special that might cost money (but he can do for more friends)
Everything not in the above list is optional. Grandma's backyard is free, or pay for something more if you want. You can invite just the 5, or 10,000 people. You can serve food or not. You can have rain plans or get wet. You can have live music, a dj, a friend with a ipod, or no music. You can have special fancy outfits or whatever you came out of the barn with. You can have photos or not. You can have a nice honeymoon or not.
I set my budget. I stayed within my budget. I didn't have some things most people do. I did some things that most people do not. I spent more on the honeymoon than the wedding and I'm glad I did. Your values and budget will be different, that is your choice.
BTW, for parents I suggest you give a set amount several months in advance and tell the couple "whatever is leftover is for the honeymoon - have you thought about eloping?"
- family and friends helped us with food prep and photography
- in-laws donated food and some drinks
- family friend made us a cake and other baked goods
- borrowed chairs from workplace
- in-laws provided a venue for the after party (their house!)
Now, the expenses
- #1 expense was the officiant
- rented a park pavilion on a hillside overlooking a lake ($125)
- alcohol and drinks
- flowers (low cost) and decorations (local party store)
- some homemade decorations
- custom table gifts
We got lucky on the weather (that's my superpower) - a perfect, dry 80F day. The wedding ceremony was under a tree with chairs for the immediate family, and only lasted about 5 minutes. The reception was in a nearby pavilion with additional tables and chairs added.
We didn't have alcohol at the park - we migrated to my in-laws for that.
Any downsides?
- I wouldn't have minded having someone with DJ experience there to keep things on schedule, and get people dancing
- Along with the above, I would've liked to move to the after-party a little sooner. Drinks help people loosen up ;)
I'm absolutely amazed when people ask this question. Parties are very often held for much less than $1000. When I hold a party I usually spend around $300 and I provide plenty of food and booze that I have plenty of leftovers.
Ever been to a graduation party? retirement party? christening? baby shower? anniversary? birthday party? Those all likely cost ~$1,000 or less.
A wedding doesn't have to be fancy or expensive to be 1) a wedding or 2) enjoyable. It's merely a party! You can do anything! The wedding industrial complex wants you to believe that if you don't spring for the silk chair covers (or whatever) it doesn't "count," but that's just them trying to sell you something.
Venue: Plenty of free or non expensive cost ones. Backyards, friend's houses, park pavilions, VFW, masonic lodge, etc.
Food: Sky's the limit here! It can be costly but it doesn't have to be costly, plenty of low cost options. Plenty or restaurants have a catering menu, if you enjoy cooking you can "cater" it yourself, you can have a cookout, etc.
Music: iPod with good speakers is fine.
Photography: Is this really necessary in an age where everyone has a high-res camera in their pockets? I have friends who didn't even look at their wedding pictures.
When I got married the "ceremony" was signing some papers at city hall and we forgot to take a picture, oh well. After the ceremony we celebrated by ourselves at a local watering hole (would have invited friends to join us if everyone wasn't at work). The party we held to celebrate was the following weekend. It was just a normal party at our house, pretty much the same as any other party at our house. We had a big enough apartment at the time, but we could have used a friend's house if we didn't. We ordered four take home party pizzas, made some side salads, and made a box cake (I prefer box cake to homemade). Nobody, including us, dressed up. We didn't spend the whole day fussing about the color of flower arrangements or something equally entirely inconsequential. The focus was on us and our relationship rather than focusing on putting on a show.
We could afford to spend $10,000 or whatever on a wedding if we wanted to but the wedding we did have is one we could actually enjoy, I absolutely can't stand people gawking at me and my husband hates dressing up with a fiery passion. And it left us enough money to put 20% down on a house and then buy all new high quality furniture. And we enjoy those purchases every single day.
My wife and I had an amazing wedding for $5000. Certainly that isn’t necessarily an easy amount to save for everyone, but a wedding is one (or so) day(s) in a lifetime. Don’t spend much on it. Use your savings for longer term and more impactful things (down payment on a house or car, college education, retirement, etc)
The real racket isn't in ripping people off for services, but that everyone needs these services. Weddings used to be relatively private affairs. Costs were far less. Churches provided services to parishioners and associated gatherings were at family houses. Today we are expected to purchase everything.
Take wedding dresses. They were not always white. Brides bought expensive dresses, but they would expect to use them for many years to come. Even Kings and Queens would use their wedding clothes many times. The recent switch to white made them single-use garments. That freed them to become very expensive and elaborate.
That and there is a huge marketing effort aimed at girls of all ages telling them what a "dream wedding" should look like, and it's not a bunch of lawn chairs in your back yard and a potluck. They're also constantly reminded that the wedding is their day, nobody else should be telling them what it should look like.
The one good thing is that when people get divorced and remarried the second wedding is almost always a much smaller and more intimate affair. Nothing breaks the spell like living through planning and executing a "dream wedding".
> They're also constantly reminded that the wedding is their day, nobody else should be telling them what it should look like.
There is a special kind of (evil) genius in the advertising "Your wedding is your day, so let us tell you what you truly want, and don't let anyone else disagree." (It reminds me of the old "Distrust unsolicited advice. Except this time.")
One secret to getting lower prices is occasionally fibbing about the purpose or just not mentioning it. Tell the baker you need a beautiful... anniversary cake, or retirement cake, and stick the plastic people on top yourself. Immediately cheaper! Same with flowers -- you need a bouquet for... something else. Ok, not sure what. Renting a reception hall for a retirement party is cheaper than renting the same space for a wedding.
Of course, some people enjoy the ritual of the cake tasting and decoration decisions and etc.
> The real racket isn't in ripping people off for services, but that everyone needs these services. Weddings used to be relatively private affairs. Costs were far less. Churches provided services to parishioners and associated gatherings were at family houses. Today we are expected to purchase everything.
I disagree that everyone needs these services, only that, as you say, many people expect to provide (or that their marrying friends will provide) these services. Weddings still can be private affairs, and associated gatherings can still be at family houses. (The bit about churches is outside an individual's control, I agree.) As yters commented (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18068728), some people's weddings are still quite affordable.
I've been to a couple of these. The costs are basically nil and you get some perks (honor guards with swords, flyovers etc) that trump any fancy destination wedding.
"Controlling for a number of demographic and relationship characteristics, we find evidence that marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony."
An upper middle-class wedding on the coasts at any venue goes for a minimum of 30k. A really cheap wedding is just having in your back yard with a keg, but I don't think the OP is talking about that. A nice wedding with all your college buddies, looking at 100k.
Yeah, I dunno about that. I'm in the middle of planning a wedding at a nice theater [1], catered, open bar, with a band, for 150 people, and even if we run 50% over our current expected costs we'll be under $30K. New England if that matters.
An Indian wedding in Southern California can easily cost $120k+ given the number of attendees, the sizes of the venues required, the food, the white horse...
The point of a wedding is to publicly (and legally) commit yourselves to each other - to tell yourselves, and everybody else, that you are now off limits for everyone except each other. Everything else is fluff, and the fluff disappears.
I've been married for 28 years. Much of the fluff is gone. The wedding cake is long gone. The developer lost our honeymoon pictures (28 years ago was still in the era of film cameras). The building we got married in has been torn down. I lost my wedding ring. But our marriage is still here.
Idk, most of the more memorable I have attended were maybe a few grand. Mostly for the venue and bar, with friends and family helping out. The impersonal 100k affairs are embarrasing to attend pesrsonally. I have friends still eatig ramen, living in debt, and fighting bitterly over finances thanks to a 'dream wedding' that a majority of their actual friends couldn't even afford to attend. To call it depressing is to undersell the effect in my eyes.
Karax is very promising to me. The Nim forum was re-built with it recently: https://github.com/nim-lang/nimforum However, it has no totally no documentation, and seems super alpha.
I ride my bike to work every day. It’s a 25 km journey, so with 250km a week I think I ride quite a bit. The fastest I’ve ever gone was 58,8km (ran out of hill before I got to 60) and holy cow that was scary.
I can’t imagine getting to 80, must’ve been terrifying.
Practice, practice, practice. I used to be unable to do presentations, unless I had practiced them out loud twenty times in the days before the presentation.
I wouldn’t write a script and stick to it word for word, I’d make slides and general points and then practice them out loud until I got them right.
After a few years of doing this, I only had to practice a few times.
Today I can stand up anywhere and talk about anything to anyone without notice. But it was a long road getting here.
I still get the same feelings of anexiety, but the way they effect me has changed with the practice. Where they’d once made me mumble and lose my train of thought they now motivate me. I still get red cheeks once in a while, but I’ve learned to laugh it away.
So practice, practice, practice, but it’s a lot of hard work. I mean, practicing a 30 minute presentation 20 times takes maybe 12 hours, and if you’re anything like I was, there is no short cuts.
Very true, and I do still prepare for presentations.
For me though, the side effect of practice has been how I can now naturally put my thoughts to speak and deliver the points I want the way I want. Both of these things seemed almost like magical abilities to me 10 years ago.
A billion is small potatoes to the tariffs being thrown around, and Foxconn could probably fill much of that demand from other IHVs as one of Apples common strategies is fighting competitors by locking down parts of the manufacturing and supply chain.
I think it’s sexists, but I also think that targeted advertising should be allowed as long as Uber hires women drivers who want to drive for Uber.
I think there will certainly be some issues if it becomes a trend though. I mean, most programmers are men, most doctors are women and if you target your adds based on that, you’ll only further increase the current norms.
Frankly targeting sex makes little sense for most jobs, doesn’t it? It’s be more reasonable to target interests, qualifications, education and current job status. I mean, Facebook knows what job and car you have, it might even know how much you drive, wouldn’t it make sense for Uber to target that instead of sex? But maybe they combine it all.
The problem with these American views into Scandinavia is that they are always political. I mean, do you even have non-biased news over there anymore?
I say this, not because the article is wrong, but because the best school system in the world, the Finnish, does exactly the same thing as the Swedes.
It’s a tad ironic that an article so against social constructionism is pretty much constructing it’s outlay of reality. You could look at Finland and construct the polar opposite article, but if you want anything based in realism, you should probably look into why it works in one country and not in another.
Don’t modern mining pools work exactly like coin voting? The entry level is buying hardware instead of digital tokens, but it’s not like proof of work is a democratic process anymore either where every small timer has as much to say anymore.
It’s also a little weird to read about economics from cryptcurrencies that you still can’t use to buy beer.
It's better to think of the node runners as the "coin voters" for anything democratic. Look at the Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash split for instance.
Participants of modern mining pools for all coins are arguably just in it for the money (and likely have subsidized or below average electricity rates).
Proof of work isn't a democratic process at all. The "math problem" that the miners are solving is providing a hash of the next published block of transactions (plus some other things). The protocol doesn't check every miner's solution and democratically choose the correct set of transactions to publish based on consensus. Instead, it's a lottery - it's just that it isn't economically cost effective to "buy lottery tickets" that attempt to publish an essentially alternate "history" to the blockchain.
There are multiple ways to buy beer using cryptocurrency - physical debit cards that draw from a deposited cryptocurrency balance at time of purchase using the current exchange rate, for instance. Kind of like how it works when you use your EU debit card to pay for a beer in the US using euros.
