My wife and I were discussing the other evening the whole idea of the cost of a wedding. We have two daughters, and it is quite possible someday we may have to pay for two weddings. We keep asking ourselves what the cost may be in the future for a full scale wedding. She was telling me about an old tradition during the conversation called a breakfast wedding.

Weddings seem to get broken down into two different directions today. First, the traditional wedding generally has a ceremony followed by a reception and day or evening of fun. When you start to add up the costs for that type of wedding with catered food, band, flowers, photographer, clothing, lodging, etc. it can run more than $100 per head at the snap of your fingers. The second type of wedding is a destination wedding. This is having a bunch of your friends and family come to some exotic or intimate location for a beach or resort type wedding. While costs can be cheaper to do this (sometimes not), it can also be very expensive for guests from both a money and time perspective. Sometimes people will do a mini reception at their house or a local restaurant for all of the friends and family who couldn’t make the wedding.

In England, there is the tradition of what is called a ‘wedding’ breakfast, but it isn’t really a wedding breakfast. The bride and groom get married to my understanding, and then the bride and groom’s family, friends, etc. stay around for dinner after the bride and groom are married in the morning. They still have the dinner, the band, the dancing, and the fun but on a smaller level. This makes sense as we took that concept and just Americanized it by super sizing the wedding breakfast into the weddings we see today.

So what’s the ‘real’ breakfast wedding idea? Parents who want to save money, you’ll love this. Get these kids married in the morning, get the car with ‘just married’ sign, and then get them on their way to the honeymoon. Truth be told, most of them want that anyway and couldn’t care less about meeting Edna who is your cousin’s third cousin. Set up a cool brunch with an omelet station, Belgian waffles, fresh fruit parfaits, and let people enjoy a cool relaxing brunch. Gift them all a small gift and send them on their way. By the way, Uncle Mel will be thanking you because he won’t have to get too dressed up, and he’ll still be home in time to catch the afternoon sports games. The kids? In my mind, they will remember much more how important the head start you could give them with a down payment on a new home or paying down their debt rather than a glorious party.

As I write articles for Your Smart Money Moves, I think about these types of ideas all the time. I wonder if I can convince my daughters that this is the way to go… What do you think?

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Ted Jenkin, CFP®, AAMS®, AWMA®, CRPC®, CMFC®, CRPS®
Co-CEO and Founder oXYGen Financial, Inc.

Phone 1.800.355.9318or 770.777.0427

oXYGen Financial, Inc. co-CEO Ted Jenkin is one of the foremost knowledgeable professionals in giving financial advice and Smart Money Moves to the X and Y Generation.

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