Many couples have a dream wedding in mind, but high prices mean that dreams cannot always become reality. The average cost of a wedding today will set you back from around £18,000 to a steep £32,000. For partnerships across the UK however, this is merely the price which comes with commemorating your love for one another.
If you’re planning on proposing this Christmas, make sure it fits the magic of the festive season. Considering the cost of the wedding itself, your proposal doesn’t have to be anything extravagant or too expensive. Instead, you may want to get creative. For example, you could go for an advent calendar proposal, which ends in your engagement on Christmas Eve – watch your partner’s face light up as they open number 24 to find a beautiful engagement ring. When you exchange gifts, you may wrap up the ring, put it in a card, or hide it in a Christmas cracker, all of which will ensure your engagement will be unforgettable.
These types of creative proposals often come from television and film influences, and do not stop at dream engagements. The big event, the wedding itself, is also known for creating some of the most memorable and iconic moments in TV history. Watching your favourite characters elope in a beloved TV show can encourage you to fantasise about how your own wedding could be similar. However, the picture-perfect on-screen weddings can often break the bank.
Successful New York professionals, Carrie Bradshaw and Mr Big are estimated to have their wedding day totalling around $181,365 (£130,900) if it happened in real life. With a combined salary of over $1m, it is expected that the Sex and the City author would don an iconic gown. For Carrie, her Vivienne Westwood wedding dress would have cost $25,275 (£18,504.46) in the real world.
‘Friends’ favourites, Monica and Chandler arguably spend a little above their means, with an estimated wedding cost of $62,950 (£45,434) and a combined salary of $180,000 (£129,879). Splurging on the beautiful location of the Pierre Hotel in New York City means the couple would take 2 years paying off their wedding bill.
If the life of upper middle-class New Yorker’s seems too far away from your reality, take for example EastEnders’s star’s Mick and Linda Carter’s big day. With an estimated combined salary of £53,630, the pair opt for a wedding in a beautiful country manor. Cutting down on their expenses significantly, is Mick’s wedding outfit – a pink dressing gown! Experts say that their wedding would have cost around £20,243, which may be a more realistic budget for the average Brit.
A big extravaganza or a small intimate marriage with your nearest and dearest? How you choose to get married should be uniquely ‘you’, and no TV show can come close enough to having an authentic wedding.
