Marriage a la carte
Lee Dunham, a bankruptcy attorney in town (and my former landlord) recently got engaged and she and her fiancé Mike Hickman are in the preliminary planning stages of their wedding. The hefty price tag attached to having a wedding in Charlottesville has caused Dunham and her fiancé to consider other towns for their ceremony and reception.
“It’s amazing how incredibly expensive it is, just for the venues, without including the catering or anything like that,” she says. “It’s $6,000 just to have a pretty place for your wedding.
“I like Charlottesville, but I’m not tied to having a wedding right here in Albemarle County,” she said. “We ruled out Charlottesville, pretty fast, honestly. If that’s what the price is to rent the barn, I’m not going to check into hotels.”
Dunham, who went to college in Lexington, has been looking at venues in that area and said it’s more appealing for them to get married there as opposed to Charlottesville, because it’s half to a quarter of the price for a similar venue. And, it’s just as beautiful.
Dunham and her fiancé have a large guest list of 150 to 200 people so they can invite all their family members. “It’s not like we are trying to do it on a dime,” she says. “Once you got a wedding with 150 people it gets out of hand really fast.” According to The Wedding Report, a single guest adds an average of $186 to the cost of a wedding. So, I certainly see where Dunham is coming from monetarily. Also, she is a bankruptcy lawyer, so I take her perception of money seriously.
After speaking with local brides and wedding professionals, I have come to the conclusion that the majority of brides who are getting married in Charlottesville aren’t locals. Several wedding professionals in the area have told me as much as 90 percent of their clientele is from out of town. The Charlottesville brides I spoke with have smaller budgets and are willing to put a little elbow grease into their weddings to make it all come together. They aren’t going all out with the big, expensive venues and wedding planners.
I hear price points of $50,000 to $70,000 from bride-to-be friends across the country and can’t justify the worth of it all. Their weddings have a planner, catering, live music, a photo booth, hors d’oeuvres and specialty cocktails, three-course sit-down meals, and a videographer capturing every smile, every person, every moment. I can’t afford that, and I certainly can’t imagine asking my parents or grandparents to pay for that for me. If I did have that money, I’d much rather put it in a mutual fund for my future child’s college education or into a mortgage for a home with my partner.
Fariello and I had a frank conversation about today’s bride. She said that 10 years ago, the moms were doing all the planning and now my generation of brides is sophisticated and savvy and knows what it wants. She also said that brides are paying a lot more for their wedding than they were a decade ago, and their highest priority is the photography. This idea of buying and photographing the best possible wedding is what feeds the competition.
“It’s a little bit of a bummer. So many brides are obsessed with having their weddings published,” she said. “…It’s not going to happen. Editors are very savvy. They want something new and that’s going to excite readers.”
Fariello’s wedding photography has been published in big-name national publications such as Brides magazine and Martha Stewart Weddings, as well as the hugely popular blog Style Me Pretty. Searching for Fariello on Style Me Pretty, nearly 20 blog posts pop up with her name and photographs. My generation of brides is shifting from print publications to blogs as their wedding inspiration go-to. “The audience is going to the blogs,” agreed Fariello. “As a vendor, you are where your audience is. The prestige is always highest in print, but there is much more opportunity in the blog world to reach so many more brides.”
Sure, I want a gorgeous wedding with delicious food, a lot of champagne, good music and dancing, and a beautiful dress. I want a picturesque outdoorsy venue and I also want a photographer who can capture the beauty of the ceremony and the special moments between my partner and I. And I know I’m going to have to spend money on these things. But I need to be sensible and realistic when planning my wedding. I can’t go bananas.
My friend Lauren Denise Rogers is a wedding photographer in the area and got engaged to her fiancé, David Parker, in May. The couple is planning a DIY-heavy wedding. “There are some things that I am doing myself because I know that I would have to pay a lot more for someone else to do them for me,” she said. Rogers has been photographing weddings for the past decade, so she is well aware of the price points attached to wedding planning. “I also really enjoy making things and having a level of control over the quality and consistency.” Rogers has a degree in fine arts and is a naturally crafty person anyway.
Rogers and Parker knew that venue (Wilton House Museum in Richmond) and photographer were the most important things on the list, so they are putting their money toward those aspects, and the rest is all going to be done by them. Parker and his guy friends will be handling the setup of chairs and tables and all the heavy lifting the morning of the wedding. Rogers will be hand-making invitations and other paper goods, such as programs and placecards, as well as other decorative elements and special touches. She also will be building a website with travel info for guests and a self-hosted registry. Friends and family will help with flower arranging and they are iPod DJing the reception. Rogers will also be making crème brulée in place of cake. Through their DIY projects, Rogers and Parker are eliminating costs for a wedding planner, day-of-wedding coordinator, florist, graphic designer, musical entertainment, baker, etc.
I’ve always thought of frugality with a negative connotation, but in the case of Dunham, Elton, Rogers, and Yeamans, it seems that it’s a sign of not only maturity, but control. Each couple is creating a wedding that fits the budget with crafty hands-on projects while also adding a personal and memorable touch.