Lately, I've been experiencing a good bit of guilt about our wedding. Not only are we spending a lot of money on things I would usually find frivolous, we're also asking our guests to spend money on presents, on top of all of their travel expenses. This makes me feel as though I come across like this:
I wouldn't go as far as to say that I had a humble upbringing. Especially when I compare my parents' background to that of Mr. Lion's parents, who came to this country with very little, I feel incredibly fortunate. My parents were comfortable, but not nearly wealthy. Even if my parents had been well-off, I think Sister Lioness and I would still be raised with the same morals and values when it came to money. My parents prioritized travel and education, but they were pretty thrifty with everything else. As soon as I was old enough to work, I did. My parents were more than happy to give me everything I needed, but if I wanted something, I worked for it and bought it myself. This taught me to spend conservatively and carefully consider every purchase.
I now have an internal conflict brewing between the usual scrutiny that takes place over purchases and the more liberal spending I've been doing with our wedding. This makes me feel guilty/sad/awkward/bad. Like this:
We're spending $20,000 on our wedding, which, according to Cost of Wedding, is below the average cost of an Atlanta wedding. But to me, it seems like a fortune. My car was $8,600 when I bought it at age 16. Mr. Lion and I do not own our home. I've just never spent that much money on one thing! So when I look at all those zeros in our budget, I feel a little overwhelmed.
I know what you're thinking: "Sooo don't spend that much money. Tah dah! Problem solved!" Well, the issue is that I want certain things for our wedding...certain things that end up adding up to about $20,000.
When we first got engaged, my parents offered to contribute $8,000. Anything beyond that was up to us. Could we have a wedding for $8,000? Of course! I've seen some beautiful weddings that end up costing even less than that! But, it's not what we wanted. We made a list of everything we wanted, we researched to determine approximately what those things would cost, and the figure we ended up with was $20,000. After the $8,000 contribution from my parents, we were left with a $12,000 contribution from our own savings. Given our 20-month engagement, we decided that saving this amount was doable. Doable, but still not necessary ethical in my mind.
After over a year of wedding planning (and wedding purchasing), I still have moments where I feel incredibly guilty for the amount of money I'm spending. For example, when we decided to have cupcakes at our wedding, we decided to top those cupcakes with little pinwheels.
Cute, right? And they match our whimsical theme, yes? The only problem was that there was no way I was DIY-ing hundreds of these. I don't have the patience of Mrs. Guinea Pig :) I found an Etsy seller who made pinwheels like these at a price that fit within our budget. Still, I debated about buying them for an embarrassing amount of time. It just seemed so silly to spend money on paper that would attach to a toothpick, stick into a cupcake for a couple of hours, then get thrown away. After a ridiculous amount of discussion with many people, I finally sucked it up and bought them.
I feel the same way about wedding gifts. Mr. Lion and I were thrilled to create gift registries. We greedily ran through Bed Bath & Beyond with our registry gun, zapping everything in sight that we even slightly liked. Then, our friends (who are also engaged) told us that they are not registering for their wedding. "We've lived together for a few years already," they said. "We've already built our home. We already have everything we need." Well, when you look at it that way, I suppose we have everything we need, too. Sure, our kitchen is full of hand-me-downs from the 1970s (and not in the cool, retro kind of way), but everything works. I was instantly transformed from greedy to guilty.
The guilt is something I'm continuing to work on. The good news is that the people who will be attending our wedding would never even think about passing judgment on us or on our spending. They love us, and they support us. I take solace in the fact that this is only an internal conflict, not an external one. I've been feeling better about my spending lately, but the idea of so many people spending money on us still makes me slightly uncomfortable. It's new and foreign to me, but I'm sure that when the time comes, I'll just be happy to have received so much love from our guests!
Has anyone else felt this way about their wedding spending or their wedding gifting?
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