Friday Frivolity: How Much Would You Pay to Attend a Wedding?

I learned recently via Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me about a new trend. As Sadiba Hasan reports in The New York Times, weddings have gotten so expensive that people are asking their guests to pay to attend. Ms. Hasan’s reporting begins with the story of Houston man who has already shelled out $100,000 for his wedding, including deposits, and is asking his 125 invited guests to contribute $450 each to attend. His friends pay more for concert tickets, he reasons, but the RSVPs have been slow to arrive. 

Wedding costs are up generally, and the cost increase has been rapid. The average wedding cost $30,000 in 2022 and $35,000 in 2023. The cost of attendance is also increasing, up to $580 in 2023, up from $460 in 2021.  Your guests are already shelling out money for gifts, clothes, travel and accommodations. If they have to choose between your wedding and that Beyoncé concert, you may be a few hands short when it comes time to play Texas Hold ‘Em. 

On Wait Wait, guest Dulce Sloan (right) suggests that if you charge your guests to attend your wedding, that constitutes an implied contract. If the couple then gets divorced, the guests are entitled to a refund. Host Peter Sagal suggests a more formal contract would be appropriate, perhaps a marital warranty. I think the warranty should not be of unlimited duration. After five years, I think the couple should be free to divorce without incurring the costs of refunds. We wouldn’t want people staying together simply to avoid penury.

The New York Times story also provides a different way of looking at this. Some people do not charge their guests because they need help covering the costs of the wedding. They charge their guests as a mechanism for limiting the wedding guests to those who really want to attend, kinda like asking people to donate $1 million to pay for a Presidential inauguration, which you then hold indoors, so that only power brokers and members of the broligarchy can attend. One couple had a list of 350 invitees, but they wanted to incorporate a bus tour of Manhattan into their celebrations, and the bus only held 60 people. But once they charged their guests $333 each, they whittled down their list pretty quicky to those who love them so much they could forgive them for being, as Peter Sagal put it, tackier than a cash bar with a three-drink minimum.