Lest @exitrowiron and @runs4donuts  think that I’m a spoiled brat who expects people to shell out thousands of dollars to attend her wedding I want to clear some things up related to the wedding.

Location, location, location

I’m from southeast Nebraska, south of Lincoln. My fiance is from Buffalo, New York. Either way we do this, it’s a destination wedding for one group of people. We initially were going to have it in his parent’s backyard for “free”. The costs began mounting; tent rental, chairs, tables, dance floor, BATHROOM rental, DJ, food, drinks, photography, decorations/flowers, parking issues, shuttles, etc. It became an expensive nightmare.

I have always dreamt of having a destination wedding and getting married on the beach. I didn’t figure this would EVER be able to happen due to expense for those involved so I left it as a daydream and figured that was that.

Dolla, Dolla, Bills, y’all

We went back and forth on where to have the wedding; Buffalo or Lincoln, or maybe Mexico or Jamacia? What would ACTUALLY be cheaper? The average cost of a wedding now days is something astronomical like $26,000 to $45,000 and I am NOT about going into debt for one day. My parents like many others do NOT have some sort of magical fund out there just waiting for me to use when I get married. (Instead, they financed most of my undergrad education, so I can’t and won’t complain, I managed to graduate with only about $16k in debt that I had to pay. That money was MUCH better spent on my degree than a wedding, in my opinion). 

But I digress.

I did a lot of research and found that we could pay for this wedding ourselves by each saving about $5k in a year. And honestly? It won’t even cost that much. For the two of us to go to Mexico to an all-inclusive resort for 10 days it is $2975 TOTAL for flight and hotel. That’s $150 per day each for EVERYTHING, including getting there. The wedding that the resort gives us, which is on the beach, includes decorations, flowers, and a reception with food and drink is $2750. The photos will be around $1900 (basically the same everywhere!). So we will pay about $7500 for a vacation and a wedding. I think that’s win-win.

SO. What upsets me most about ALL of this is that my besties told me, when I first broached the subject of a destination wedding to them and asked if they thought they could go and be a part of it, they both said. “Melissa, we’ve known since FOREVER that you’ve wanted a destination wedding and we have PLANNED for it. Don’t worry, we’ll be there.”

Tit for tat?

Is it fair to expect your best friends to do the same that you did for them? I threw and attended showers for both of them, I bought my dresses and paid for travel and hotel rooms for both of their weddings as well. In fact, for one of them, I had to buy a plane ticket, rent a car, and pay for lodging and food for 5 nights for her wedding because she got married on Memorial Day and the rehearsal was the Friday prior. In Denver. That wedding ended up costing me about $2000 for that weekend alone and I NEVER complained about it once. Right now, they don’t even appear to want to do a shower for me with the help of another friend. So you can see why I feel so hurt.

What is all comes down to is this: I feel like I’m in a bad spot because I planned on having them as my matrons of honor and now it appears that they are going back on their promise. If they would have said in the beginning that they couldn’t make it happen I would have understood.

The Real Cost

ALSO, it would not cost them $2000 each. They only have to be there for 3 days (resort rules) and the prices vary from $800-$1150 for the entire package. 

So, the tl;dr is this: This wedding will be a destination for at least one group of people and honestly, I didn’t want to get married in Buffalo. If they couldn’t do it I wish they would have told me that from the beginning because false hope really hurts.