It's an interesting range of perspectives. For me, a wedding is part of the slightly awkward processes you are expected to navigate in order to actually marry the person you want to spend your life with. In many ways it's a darn nuisance, but socially it has to be done in order for the good stuff to become even better. When you're young, as a male I think you just do it because that's what people do, and as you get older you realise the party is just trivial because it's the commitment that actually matters. So many spend huge amounts of money for something they'll walk away from in a couple of years because they thought the party was the reality, rather than the day to day life with someone.
It's not the external stuff that matters in the end, but only the real things. I'm forever grateful I didn't marry a Disney princess.
I am honestly surprised there are so many jaded people here I guess this thread has sort of turned into a more if couples should spend money on their wedding type thread which is grand.
As a photographer of course we see a lot of different types of wedding some were people go all in for both what I would personally consider right and wrong reasons. While others go for much more intimate weddings. It's all good.
From a personal point of view when we got married it was important for both me and wife to have as large a celebrations as we could afford without getting into debt and we did. We didn't have a huge wedding in terms of the amount of people there, with less than 100 guests. We did however have all of the important people there plus some great uncles and aunts of mine who were important to me. I don't regret a penny of what we spent and my regret is only that we couldn't spend more. We had a crap D.J because that was what we could afford and our photographer was not great either. My parents paid for photography and I made the mistake of just telling them to sort it as I wasn't sure how much they could afford to spend. Those are the two things we would both change. A much better D.J and a much better photographer. Even though our photographer was not great, our photos are one of our most important possessions. Both of our dads have since died, my wife's grandmother has died and all of my great uncles and aunties have died, the photos from our wedding are some of the few that we have of them.
The party was important to us, we were party people.
It remains one of the very best parties I have been too and people still talk about it now even though our D.J was not the best. So many great memories from that day, yeah there was all the romance, like the beautiful outdoor ceremony. We have been married nearly 20 years and people still tell us it was the best wedding they have ever been too. There was also some great memories like how we went to bed, then later in the night I went back down to the hotel bar at about 3 a.m and met up with my mates and we partied all night, through to the next morning at breakfast. Stuff that wouldn't be important to some but things getting threatened with getting thrown out of the hotel as we had like 40 people in a room partying hard at 5 a.m and were smoking cigars and got fined by the hotel. Silly stuff like my cousins shoes going missing, the bar running out of Jack Daniels, one of my cousins running around licking womens feet
, and a ton of stuff that I just can't mention here. Was an amazing day we will both never forget.
In regard to if photography is worthwhile investing in or not you could say being a wedding photographer I am biased but I am biased for personal reasons not business. As well as for my own reasons, before my Dad died, in a temper my my brother tore my parents wedding album apart and attempted to burn it. After my dad died I spent a long time carefully photographing all of the images and repairing them digitally before eventually having a brand new album reprinted. I gifted it to my mum on their next wedding anniversary. As I wanted it to look as close as possible to their original album and I had to pay someone to help with some of the editing it came in at around the cost of a mid price point wedding photographer. It was some of the best money i have ever spent. my mum cried, I cried, the wife cried. It is far and away my mums most prized possession. Memories are important and anything that gives a little nudge to remembering them are important as well for me.
