When Debbie and I got married nearly 15 years ago, it was in a time when paying a few thousand pounds had become the norm for the wedding day and a honeymoon in some Caribbean island retreat. We were in our early 20’s, had just bought our first house and had just started to experience the pleasure of monthly bills landing through the post box almost every day it seemed!

Although we were desperate to get married and seal our relationship we started to dread the financial implications of what a wedding would involve. Both our parents were from working class backgrounds and although they said nothing I am sure that both sets of in-laws must have been feeling the same dread as we did, as several thousand pounds was a huge amount of money and would have meant going to the bank and taking out a loan and paying it back over maybe 10 years.

Undeterred we set about visiting all the dress shops in the area and started browsing through honeymoon packages to places I had never even heard of. The initial enthusiasm of planning the wedding day and honeymoon is so infectious and nothing seems too much to add to the already spiraling costs. The companies specializing in catering for weddings and honeymoons leave no stone unturned in what they can offer you for the special day, even glitter to place in the invitation cards all at a price though!

It took a month for the realisation to slowly sink in that the financial cost of a wedding and honeymoon would makes us slaves to the banks for many years as we looked to finance the cost through loans. We had a choice to make and neither option was appealing to us. We seriously began to worry that the cost would create pressure on our relationship as we would need to be extremely careful for many years after our wedding on what we spent our money on. We didn’t have any children yet either and as we both wanted children we wondered how we would cope when the children come along. So we came to the painful decision to call the wedding off.

Debbie went to see her parents and I went to see my Mother and Father to break the news. At first my Mother and Father were quite surprised that we had come to this decision as they had seen our relationship grow over several years and were so glad when we announced we were getting married. After explaining why we had decided to cancel the wedding both my parents looked really shocked. When I tried to explain about the finances a little more they stopped me and my Father asked me if we loved each other? I told him of course. “Then no amount of money large or small spent on your wedding is going to change that” was his reply.

I sat and listened as they talked about their own wedding day back in the early 60’s. With no money in the family their wedding consisted of a visit to the church in the morning and a reception in their local bar in the afternoon, which went on long into the night. They spent very little money other than what they would have normally on a Saturday night out, but the most important thing was that they were surrounded by family and friends. That in itself was worth much more than spending money on glitter placed inside invitation cards or traveling half way round the world to sit on a beach for a week.

When I met Debbie back at our own house I told her what my parents had said and she recounted the same kind of advice from her parents. The excitement which we felt at the start of planning our wedding returned ten fold as we realized that we didn’t need to spend thousands of pounds to prove we loved each other. We spent the rest of the day arranging our wedding, reception and evening entertainment all in the space of a few hours, after we had taken a month to organise very little.

The wedding day itself turned out to be perfect for both myself and Debbie as we went to church in the morning and returned for our reception at our favourite restaurant and then went to our local bar in the evening. We had a fabulous day surrounded by family and friends and learned two very important lessons. You should always listen to your parents and no amount of money can buy you love.

Wayne
Ashington, Northumberland.

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