112 comments

Royal Wedding, Shloyal Fledding

It’s time for Mr. Money Mustache to attack another one of America’s most sacred traditions. Marriage. Well, not marriage specifically, but those fantastic and fancy parties we call weddings.

Now, in case you hadn’t figured it out, from an American perspective, I might as well be from another planet. I grew up in a small town in Canada, in a frugal and somewhat bizarre family where love, rather than manufactured products, was the chief currency. We also missed out on any concept of tradition, religion, and even most of polite society’s Social Norms. We are generally a clan of nerds, reading many books and practicing as Spock-like engineers and armchair scientists, but not often seen on Celeb magazine covers in the grocery store.

So when I came into adult life, I got to learn quite a few new things just like Starman or The Terminator did when they first came to Earth. I learned (or am still learning) that people love to be made to feel special on their birthday, a tradition I heartily accept. I also learned about some very bizarre traditions, like those practiced by the world’s various competing religions, and most significantly for this article, what people do when they get married.

What I learned is that it is entirely common for you humans to spend months preparing for a wedding, including renting special buildings, hiring various contractors to provide exotic services, buying clothes that will only be used once, inviting guests that are not people you speak with every day or even every month, and even trying to create “appropriate” appearances to various branches of the extended family.

Fellow aliens might read that paragraph, and say, “Well, yeah, you’re talking about the wedding ceremonies of the very rich, right? Like the Royal Wedding that happened in England this summer? Don’t try to understand Old Money, they have their own crazy Power Dynasty thing going.”

But no, it’s more interesting than that. Royal weddings started out in the domain of kings and queens, but they have trickled down into the realm of the middle class, such that it is now common for ordinary nonmillionaires to spend an average of $24,000 on their weddings.

As some icing on that wedding cake, I also learned the social norm is for a Man to spend “two months’ salary” for the engagement ring ($10,000 or so!?), and then immediately after the wedding, take off for an international honeymoon at an all-inclusive resort.

Some of these brides and grooms are the same people who have borrowed to pay for their cars, put less than 20% down on their houses, and claim to Mr. Money Mustache that retirement before 65 is impossible.

Like the first person to burp after a serious speech, it’s time for Mr. Money Mustache to be the first to say it: It’s Okay to break this tradition. These Ultraweddings are so ingrained (surely in part by the efforts of the profitable wedding industry itself) that people think they are having a “low-key” wedding if they only have 100 guests or only spend $5,000.

I’ll tell you how to have a wedding.

When my wife and I decided we were adult enough to get married (just before age 30, after 10 years of togetherness), we put on our best sandals and walked downtown. We went to the county clerk’s office, where they record important events like property transactions, births, deaths, and marriages, and we said we wanted to get married. “Congratulations!” said the nice lady there, and gave us a pretty diploma-like document to fill out, with a golden seal in the corner. A marriage license. We filled it out and submitted it.

The total cost was $10.

One of the paragraphs you have to initial says something like “I hereby agree to have a ceremony to declare this marriage effective”. So we hiked to the top of a mountain at the edge of Boulder, Colorado and under a towering arch of rock, declared, “We are married!”

Later we invited all the local friends over for drinks and nicely made food at our house. And the following summer, we repeated the party in Canada for friends and family who happen to live there.

The whole experience shines on as a golden memory, just like the marriage itself. Nobody had any less fun, or got any less married, despite the fact that we spent at least 98% less than the average. Even though we could have technically afforded to pay for even a rather fancy wedding without borrowing at that point in our lives.

In fact, not spending excessive money on a wedding provides a life-changing boost to a new couple’s financial situation. Quite a large portion of divorces are caused by financial problems. So it could be reasonably stated that it is far more romantic to have a low-cost wedding.

So here’s my prescription for marital bliss: Plan your wedding party just like you would plan any other phenomenal bash you would host at your house. That’s right, it will be at your house, or your parents’ house, or at a local mountain, forest, or other natural area. Don’t allow your friends to bring gifts – just as your friends should not ask for gifts from you when they get married. The photographer will be whichever of your friends has the nicest camera. The caterer will be your parents, or a large take-out order from your favorite local restaurant if you can afford it. You can buy beer and wine for everyone, and your heaviest-drinking friend or family member can be the unofficial bartender. Make sure everyone has a great time, and spend your energy talking and laughing with the people most dear to you rather than rehearsing elaborate walking patterns and selecting floral arrangements.

As you say your vows, Mr. Money Mustache himself will be blessing your union.

Further Entertainment:

This amazing video on YouTube summarizes these points with much more style than my article ever could:

 

Amusing Updates:

  • Some kind person published a link to this article on Reddit. The ensuing comments reinforced my suspicion that even though this idea of “don’t spend twenty grand on a party until you are at least a multimillionaire” seems very reasonable to me, the rest of the world still thinks my idea is crazy. Either they don’t like the idea having the option of early retirement, or they have not yet made the connection between firehose spending and financial independence ;-)
  • Today’s automatically generated ads at the side of the article are all for Royal Wedding type services. “Engagement Diamonds!, Bridal Registry! Macy’s! Tiffany! Limousine service!” Very amusing and ironic, but just reading them makes my Money Mustache ache.
  • Because of this article, Mr. Money Mustache is now the world’s #1-ranking search result for the word “Shloyal”. Now that is status.
  • Sherri August 28, 2015, 1:50 pm

    So true in a few week my husband and I will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. My Mother paid for the marriage cert. and Justice of the peace to marry us, Mother in law paid for simple flowers. We went to family’s for a get together and a nice drive the next day for the honeymoon lol. And you are right we are just as married today as we were 30 yrs ago!

    Reply
  • Suhaila September 24, 2015, 11:39 am

    Even though we were still super bad and spending a ton on junk (wised up March 2015 & got married in 2010) I never liked the idea of spending so much on a wedding. I did some research and realized that even with a 10k budget I’d have a crap wedding so I said screw this and got married at the court house which had a nice indoor arbor for a ceremony if you wanted to wait a few weeks for it and we did. Unfortunately only local friends attended because we’re on the west coast and family is on the east. We went out to lunch with the friends who came to see the wedding, were given some low key but awesome gifts, and went home and played guitar hero with said friends. We also had dinner later with a friend who just got into town. We spent almost nothing.

    I do still wish I got my wedding. I’ve come up with a plan though. I’m going to get an inexpensive dress (have hub rent a tux), a photographer, some friends, a bouquet, a lovely cake and maybe rent a place at the beach for the weekend and get some awesome pictures (and enjoy the cake and a weekend with friends) and call it the reception/honeymoon we never got. I’ll also have something to show the kids which is what my mom regretted with her court house wedding.

    I don’t even know if people enjoy going to wedding anymore due to the cost associated with being a guest. It’s just messed up tradition that went insane sometime in the 80’s and really blew up un the early 2000s in my opinion. What’s worse is it gets thrown in my face a lot because a lot of fb friends are wedding planners. Some stuff that’s posted makes me ill. Mostly it’s the attitude that it’s necessary and the hate of those who are “tacky” and cheap.

    Reply
  • Katie October 15, 2015, 9:19 pm

    Hi MMM,
    I just found your blog about a month ago and love it! I just had to comment on this, because this is similar to what my hubby and I did. We don’t make much money but my dream has always been homeownership. At age 23 (we’d been dating for about 4 years at the time) we decided to take the plunge into homeownership instead of plunging into an unpleasant amount of wedding planning.

    We put a 5% down payment (don’t judge me lol!) toward our house and decided to have a “staycation” honeymoon in our new home after marrying 3 weeks later. We had a beautiful courthouse wedding. Our county sets aside the prettiest room in the courthouse for weddings for free- we just had to reserve it 3 days in advance.

    My dress was $14 and afterwards we went to a fancy restaurant downtown with friends, but we got their special for half the usual cost of eating there – about $25 total. We spent about $100 on both wedding bands together because I wanted gold so they wouldn’t ever tarnish, and hubby spent about $110 on my beautifully crafted gold and green peridot engagement ring. Including our $100 marriage license, our total was about $350, so with most of the cost being the momentos (the rings we wear and love every day), we figure it was a good deal.

    There were two extra things that made this an even better deal: we ended up saving money in taxes immediately, which covered our low-cost wedding; and we had a ton of fun decorating our new home and exploring our neighborhood, and we can see reminders of our “honeymoon” (like the curtains I sewed that week or the art we hung) every day. And we still get to look forward to a “real” honeymoon when we can easily afford to travel- we should have the house paid off by 35, so we’re thinking a cruise to Alaska that we’ve always dreamed of will make a great honeymoon at that point :)

    Reply
  • An Asian Perspective November 3, 2015, 8:09 pm

    Throwing in my two cents:

    Partner and I have no issues with having a small, intimate wedding. However, we are both from Asian families (different ethnicities) and the cultural approach is that the wedding ISN’T for the couple – it’s for the parents. There are also these other factors:

    – parents with plenty of business / work connections + huge close-knit external families – bumping up the guest list to 600 (groom’s side) and 350 (bride’s side)
    – different cultural / religious backgrounds – to accommodate both sides of the family, and appease both sets of parents, we have to hold a lunch AND a dinner
    – living in a country which has extremely high rental costs for ballrooms / restaurants (we’re estimating approx. 25k++ for the lunch and 30k++ for the dinner – and that is already AFTER having sourced for mid-ranged options; low-range options are not really feasible – see above re parents’ business / work connections)

    That said, we’re doing away with all the things which we believe are unnecessary – the videographer, the pre-wedding photo shoot (we don’t get it either), the wedding dresses (we’re both wearing suits, which we can re-use for work). He knows I don’t want an expensive ring – no diamonds, no branded over-priced ring. We’ll get just the one photographer to document the day and take group pictures for us to remember family and friends. I’m planning on DIY-ing as much of the invites / decor as possible. I wasn’t planning on getting a makeup/hair artist, but apparently it comes as a package with the traditional costumes we’ll have to rent anyway (because when will we ever wear those again?).

    The red packets (someone else has already elaborated on them above) may help cover some of the costs, but we’re not counting on them as we just want our guests to come and have a good time. Anything we receive is a bonus and will go towards buying appliances / furniture for the house.

    At the end of the day, we’ll be paying everything in cash so we won’t start our marriage in debt. Yes, part of us wishes we could do away with the frills and have a simple wedding. But our parents’ happiness is important to us and so we’re trying to meet them in the middle :-) Still trying to streamline things / find good deals as we go along.

    Wish us luck!

    Reply
  • Jewels January 15, 2016, 3:17 pm

    Triple M!!!

    One of the mom’s in my momma group pointed me in the direction of you website a few weeks ago…I have been binge reading from the beginning, I must admit. Thank you! Thank you for being a voice of reason in a world filled with excess. Although my significant other and I are not legally married, we are very much married and if at such a time we feel the need to make it legal, I imagine we would likely do so much the way you did. People get so wrapped up in what should be, but I think you and your family actually have figured out the answer to living life. We live in edmonton alberta currently, both of us make decent money, even with me only working part time, and we plan to stay here and continue making money for the next 5 years or so. At that time there will be no debt, not even mortgage and we would be able to move wherever we want and my partner wouldn’t have to work if he didn’t want to. I know I would as I love my job as a nurse, but I wouldn’t HAVE to work. Thank you again for giving us the courage to really commit to this and know that we can do it.

    Reply
  • Jamie January 28, 2016, 6:03 am

    Love the blog, reading my way up to today. We were given $10K by my dad and no one else had big bucks to help, including us. I never wanted a fancy dress or anything, and my husband would have loved just a JP. So we did a wedding at a gorgeous place with gardens and a five course lunch for $19/person. I wore a vintage tea dress I bought on etsy for $65. My mom offered to pay for the 20 or so of us, including photographer (friend discount so super cheap) and videographer (a friend). After an amazing outdoor small ceremony, we had lunch. We spent our first night married camping at our friend’s campsite, which they had dolled up just for us! The next day was a gargantuan potluck in a free to us church. We paid for a favorite musician to fly out and give a concert ($500) and my husband’s sister did incredible themed tables with activities. We also had coloring pages and a homemade guestbook written by us and a family member designed it.

    So we spent less than $5K on a wedding where we could invite 200 people, relax and enjoy the incredible creativity around us. It came in closer to $4K as the musician was cheaper than we budgeted. And the other $5K covered an incredible two week honeymoon in PEI and Nova Scotia, mostly camping but otherwise living above our means with nice meals and alcoholic drinks. Leftover money plus gifts gave us more than $5K to kick off our savings as a married couple!

    Reply
  • Mukene February 9, 2016, 1:21 am

    I already promised my parents that when I do get married, I will elope and go the Justice of Peace way. They had aneurysms…of course. Having a big wedding would provide me with little to no satisfaction. Even if it was paid for, I would be like…wtf…the whole time.

    Reply
  • senorgrumpy March 14, 2016, 12:39 am

    Thanks for the article, MMM. While my wedding was not a frugal affair by any means, I realize now that at least it wasn’t “average”. My wife and I had an unplanned but welcome child on the way (who is now 6 and is the light of our lives alongside our 20 month-old son). We decided to get married. We had no money. My wife’s mother gave us the amazing gift of $5000 to spend on our wedding. I borrowed $2000 from a relative to buy a wedding ring for my wife. I insisted that she buy me a tungsten ring. We had the ceremony in a beautiful public park in Philadelphia, and my wife’s uncle presided. We had the rehearsal dinner and the wedding reception at restaurants where I had previously worked and where I still had friends/connections and was able to get a “hook-up”. So in the end we got a lot more than $5000 worth of value. The sad/funny thing about all this is that I look back at our wedding and think that it was an extravagant waste of money (despite spending a fraction of the average you cite above). My wife looks back and thinks that we were slumming it.

    Reply
  • JP May 14, 2016, 5:10 pm

    MMM,
    I am 34, my husband and I got married in this same way 5 years ago after being together for 12 years. We ran away and got married on the lake just the two of us. It was a very special and romantic moment that had nothing to do with pleasing other people. We had a small party at a friends community event center a few months later where we made the appetizers and bought pastries/drinks to serve. I never saw the point in spending thousands of dollars on a dress and all the other crap. Even my ring is very modest from a antique store, it cost less than one months salary for my husband or myself for that matter. I love it. Many people were shocked and a little appalled that we didn’t do the normal wedding. Meanwhile I’m appalled by my friends who have spent 20k+ on their weddings, still paying off student loans, drive ridiculous luxury cars but yet can’t afford to buy a home.

    Reply
  • Ann June 7, 2016, 6:36 am

    Or… Another option… Don’t get married…we are 12 years strong with 2 beautiful children… It was a surprise to my partner that I didn’t want to be married, it didn’t resonate because it was promising something for a future I couldn’t control. For me it is romantic that we are not bound, instead we choose to be with each other each day. He has also changed his tune after talking about it (it’s someone else’s tradition, we’ll make our own). Different strokes for different folks ;)

    Reply
  • Dividend Family Guy August 29, 2016, 11:34 am

    This will be an interesting challenge as I have 3 daughters and 2 sons to educate on what love really means. My wife and I spent 4k on our wedding/honeymoon and another 2k on a ring. We were in loads of debt at the time. Lessons learned. Best article ever!
    Lovin it,
    DFG

    Reply
  • Joeleen August 30, 2016, 3:01 pm

    My spouse and I were married at the courthouse for $105 (included the cost of the license and the county clerk that officiated) after we had been together for 6 years and had already bought our house. We then proceeded over to a home improvement store to pick up some DIY stuff and topped off the day with a meal for the 2 of us at a small Greek restaurant and a hot fudge sundae. We didn’t even bother having a post wedding party, which amazingly only slightly upset 1 of our family members! Here we are 6 years post marriage and I still wouldn’t change a thing. Not only did we save money, but I’ll never forget the tears in both our eyes (and in the eyes of Cliff, the county clerk) as we said the standard vows to each other.

    For the rings, we purchased them online and they cost us about $80 for the pair. I wanted something that was economical since I was afraid of losing it, so the online purchase was perfect. We both wanted a strong metal and went with titanium. I take my ring off when I sleep or do yard work/other chores and even though it was “cheap”, I get a little panicked each time I misplace my ring since it means so much to me!

    Reply
  • Marisa September 9, 2016, 11:27 am

    Just came across YouTube movie, and remembered this blog and thought I’d share.

    Why Weddings Are a Total Rip-Off (on collegehumor.com)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOERpb0MGc8

    Reply
    • Mr. Money Mustache September 11, 2016, 10:38 am

      Wow, that is great Marisa! So great I’m adding it to the article itself. Thanks!

      Reply
  • Be September 27, 2016, 9:04 am

    I was married in MA – the town clerk charged $100 dollars because she officiated. We had 1 guest (parent of the groom) as a witness. I wonder, now, if I was ripped off! You only paid $10 and didn’t need anyone to officiate? Damn…

    Reply
  • Garrett November 13, 2016, 9:35 am

    “They haven’t yet made the connection between firehose spending and financial independence”

    After re-reading through your blog (up till this article), and taking your “$100 Challenge”, I’m really starting to see what you mean. I recently punched myself in the face by debtfully obligating my finances to do a touch of travel & go to an amazing event. Meaning I began stressing about paying for it. While doing the $100 challenge, and STOPPING the gasoline fire that was my out-of-control spending, I saw how much money I had, and how much money I could begin earning. It’s slowed time down, and given me a space to think.

    Phenomenal how ‘not spending money’ makes you a better thinker :) Plus lowers one’s stress levels!! Financial Independence is in range!

    Thank you MMM! :)

    Reply
  • Erica November 19, 2016, 11:59 pm

    I am excited to have a wedding, but we are going to be super weird about it. The total cost will be very small, and the biggest expenses are food and beer which are being purchased from local places.

    I was married once before, I eloped and I was miserable. I did it for all the wrong reasons and when we married it felt more like a shameful secret.

    This time around it’s a party and celebration. It’s also a great reflection of who we are as a couple. We’re using a local park that was once a homestead. The old buildings and plants make a stunning backdrop so no decor. For a small fee we can use the old barn for the party where we’ll be serving an assortment of our favorite local delights. We won’t be having a wedding party, favors, or a registry. We might not have a first dance either because we both hate dancing. We will have lots of great booze and food; in the end that’s all that matters.

    Plus, almost everything we spend is going directly into our local economy. So not only are we spending (maybe) a couple grand, but we are putting that money into a pretty great place.

    Reply
  • Mezzie December 11, 2016, 3:18 pm

    My wedding cost nine times yours, but at $90, I’d still say it was a bargain.

    I’d never wanted much of a wedding to begin with, but after assisting a wedding photographer for several weddings and seeing the stress and drama caused by paying a ton of money for a perfect day that would inevitably be imperfect, I was fully convinced I would elope.

    We did just that and got married atop the staircase in the beautiful rotunda in San Francisco’s city hall. Because the only thing we wanted out of the day was to get married, it WAS perfect.

    Reply
  • Shani April 3, 2017, 12:31 pm

    I am so excited for my Aunt’s wedding this summer. She loves camping and so has rented a group campsite for the weekend. If you’re staying overnight, you pay the cost and show up at noon for the ceremony which my dad will facilitate. All the best of venue, family and friends. And I get to wear my comfy camping clothes!! Seriously the best idea ever :)

    Reply
  • TigerLily April 26, 2017, 7:46 pm

    My husband and I are approaching our 25th anniversary, and our wedding was much like yours. It cost $26 and we got married at the county courthouse with both sets of parents in attendance, and had lunch at our favorite Greek Pizza place afterwards. Very casual, full of laughter, joy and love… and I would not change a thing about that day.

    In stark contrast was my friend’s wedding last Summer. She married a man from an Indian family and they had a very traditional 3 day Indian wedding. It was without a doubt the most fun (and most ornate!) wedding I’ve ever been to but when she told me the total cost, I couldn’t believe it. She said it cost over $100K. (And no, the family is not the Warren Buffett of the Indian community… they are upper middle class and I assume will be “paying off” this wedding for years to come…)

    I’ll take my $26 wedding, Greek Pizza and financial mustache over that any day, thanks.

    LOVE YOUR BLOG! :)

    Reply
  • Martinsays May 11, 2017, 2:19 am

    My wife and I didn’t go fully mustachian but did our wedding for a fraction of the cost of the U.S average. The total thing cost £4000 including venue, church ceremony with vicar, food, a DJ, a welcome drink and toasting Drink first night hotel (oi oi), accommodation for close friends and family, transport for guests from the church to the venue, dress, suit, rings, honeymoon. It’s certainly achievable. One of the main things was getting married in September instead of peak summer. In the UK it can cut the cost of the church and venue in particular dramatically. We also got married in the late afternoon so only needed to provide an evening buffet meal for everyone. This also cut the cost of the church service down massively. The venue quoted us £10000 originally but as we only wanted the main function room from 5-12 and none of the extras including waiting staff for a sit down meal they slashed this to £400! The DJ was someone we knew, the cake was made by my sister in law, we hired out a red London bus to transport everyone which cost £150 but was memorable and people still tell us how cool it was now. We stayed at the venue for the first night so got a highly discounted rate. We took easyjet flights to Barcelona and chilled for a week which cost a few hundred pounds and the dress and suits were nice but not expensive.
    I’m not saying £4000 isn’t a lot of money and we certainly could have done it cheaper if we really had wanted too but it’s nothing like the $24000 average. with a bit of inquiring about prices and not accepting TEN THOUSAND POUNDS for the venue and conforming to the norms we avoided desolation!

    Reply
  • Kiwigirl June 8, 2017, 8:12 am

    We are planning our wedding at the moment.
    The plan is so far, keep saving for a house. Buy the house, have the wedding in our own backyard.
    We bought my moissanite engagement ring, and wedding band (free with the purchase) in an online sale and then found an online code for a further 10% off the sale price.
    Pretty happy about it!

    Reply
  • Kerry Jennings December 12, 2018, 1:58 am

    My wedding was only $25.00 Did pretty much the same thing, and went to eat, and boat tour on our honeymoon in our local area.

    Reply
  • Cormac Friel March 11, 2019, 10:06 am

    I have a personal anecdote on this that goes against the grain of this post and most comments. We had the whole shebang for our wedding. One of the best days of my life and we were completely stress free. However, there was a cultural clash. In Ireland, where I’m from, people spend about three or four years to pay for a wedding. In Australia, where my husband was from, they do it in six months (I gather that substantial borrowing is the norm in both countries). We lived like suckas until that point in our lives and I got the spreadsheet out and established how much each of us would have to set aside to save what we needed in the fifteen months we eventually settled on. We had to make major lifestyle changes. When the wedding was over, we looked back over our engagement and realised we didn’t miss a single thing we had sacrificed and therefore, we decided to simply keep going as if we were always saving for a wedding.

    Thus, we became Mustachians two years before we had even heard the term. Now, we are two years into our marriage and we have had really enjoyable lives since, accumulated good amounts of wealth, read almost all of your blogs (this one just within the last two months) and are on track to retire in the next ten years (a bit later than most because we just adopted two boys which we are imminently moving to Australia so we expect raising them and relocating a family of four might just delay us a bit (we are in the UK at the moment so we are moving in the middle of Brexit, to a country where the economy is looking set for a stutter, so we have a lot of uncertainty at the present and don’t feel we can commit to a seven year retirement just yet)).

    Even though I loved our wedding, and got about 50% off every quote from aggressive negotiation (and around 100% off some items by simply realizing that we don’t need a cake, and we could print invitations from the HP in the attic), I do still look back and see it as a waste. However, the culture shock and sudden realignment of our finances showed us, with great clarity, just h0w little we need to spend to be happy and exactly what is actually most important to us. So for us, having the low key wedding, which would have required no saving, would probably mean we would have just remained as suckas for the last two years and continued viewing all that pre-engagement wasteful spending as necessary consumption. Thus, it may turn out to be some of the best money we’ve ever spent.

    Reply
  • Tikky Sue August 22, 2019, 12:22 pm

    Great article. Expensive weddings always seemed like a waste to me. My husband and I got married about 10 years ago in the common room of our condo clubhouse. We borrowed nice linens and rented plates and glasses (cost was $125, I hate disposables). My mom made the food as our gift, my sister was the officiant, a family friend bought the flowers. We had punch and ice tea. It was a small group, probably 25 people. I did buy a nice dress (on sale) and shoes. One of the guests described it as “simple and elegant.” That was exactly what I wanted.

    In contrast, about 8 years prior to my wedding, my sister had a blowout wedding at a fancy hard-to-get-to resort area in another part of our state, at the height of summer. The wedding couple didn’t have the money to pay the caterer that day, so my dad had to step in. The event was beautiful, but hugely stressful. They went into a lot of debt to have the wedding of their dreams. Afterwards, they continued to make poor financial decisions, spending unwisely and taking on more debt, and buying a house they could not afford. This all ended in bankruptcy and foreclosure. Not surprising, but sad. And they are still in debt today. I just don’t get it.

    Reply
  • Thomas B! September 25, 2019, 1:42 pm

    We are from Germany. Great Blogg, our story:
    Great article. We did our honeymoon, just after 30 years together with our 2 kids aged 19 and 14 in California BEFORE wedding in Reno! We married only because of taxsavings of more than 8000 Euro(9000 $ yearly) AND monthly healthinsurance-savings of 140 Euro (1700 Euro yearly, 1800 $). No partying around, cost 350 $ including a drive with a stretchlimo (Unfortunately) to the city-office for signing the documents. That was, how we did it. Since then, every vacation is pays by taxmoney spared….
    Years we build a house and paid it off after 5 years due to layoff-compensation from 2 german banks – that was 20 years ago. Since than, we are both at home, working as a internet-newsletter-writer 2 days a week. At age 39 and 37 in germany not usual, because everybody is in a hurry.
    Our car ist 15 years old and our neighbors, driving porsches and other cars, think we are living on social security. Thats fine for us, so we can do whatever we want without to prove what others think….

    Again:
    Great blog

    Greatings

    Thomas

    Reply
  • Randy January 5, 2020, 1:52 pm

    Wife’s first wedding, her parents spent $10,000 (1970). After the honeymoon, they moved into a rented mobile home/trailer. That would have made a huge down payment on a house. Marriage lasted a few years.

    A few years after that, we fell in love. We refer to this time period as “when we were poor”. We went downtown, filled out the paperwork and since justices of the peace were being fazed out, had a judge come to our apartment. We were married in the living room. He charged $15 to perform the ceremony. I wore my only suit, she wore her previous wedding dress. The already paid for ring ($300), was from a previous engagement where I wised up before it was too late. An aunt made the cake, friends brought the munchies. We have been married 42 years.

    Reply
  • cstesprit March 14, 2024, 5:22 am

    We had our wedding in 2013. $8,000 cash. No borrowing money. Invited 100 people – no A list or B list. Homemade foods (soups and salads). Bartered with a photographer friend for wonderful photos. Wedding at a small church near our house and a friend did the ceremony. It was a beautiful wintry day in Ohio.

    Reply

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For more casual sampling, have a look at this complete list of all posts since the beginning of time. Go ahead and click on any titles that intrigue you, and I hope to see you around here more often.

Love, Mr. Money Mustache

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