I'm poor. How much can I expect to spend on a cheap wedding?

Life Dating & Relationships
21

Get the lowest priced photo set. I think we spent 12k on 17 pics, a big book, a poster and a large framed pic.
Don’t do it in a hotel. The nicer ones start at 15k per table up to 30 or 40k. We had ours at a banquet hall in Zhong He. 10k/table.
I can’t remember the cost of the invitations, but they weren’t much.
The cookies were a lot, but only the girl’s side gets them, so if she’s got a small family, you’re good.
Depending on how traditional the girl’s family is, you may not need to get all that gold and da ping/xiao ping. (brideprice?)
Provide your own booze and candy for the banquet. The restaurants will try to jack you.
Get someone trustworthy and responsible to take care of all that cash. Someone who’s not drinking that day. They have to be on their toes when it comes time to settle the bill with the restaurant.

I think I spent 500k for 300+ guests. But after the hong baos, we came up 100k? The final figures may be completely wrong because I didn’t do jack shit and the wife took care of it all. I do know we made a little.

22

Yeah get a couple of people to look after wedding details on the day. There’s a lot going on and you will need help.
My wedding was out of control with over 600 guests (whole village) and not enough people to help out. The cookies alone cost me a fortune even if I used a cheaper one which is also a charity.

Keeping it small , doing it your own way and planning ahead well in advance is all good advice.

23

The wife and my kid just went to a huge super fancy wedding yesterday and amah said they only spent 1 million so apparently is was super cheap, but I can’t tell, I wasn’t there, I had an excuse.

24

Oh I remember wife insisting on a big wedding in excess for the counterpart of 12.000 Euro or so, saying the guest’s donations would make up for it. Yet I remained skeptical and made that a loss-of-face wedding for a fraction of it with 6 tables or so. Well, people donated more than the cost was, but mother-in-law took the box with all the money in it while we were at breakfast. A lot of shouting in the kitchen later between daughter and mother, yet the box or its contents never returned.
How glad I was not to have spent a lot on it. I guess the justification was a foreigner is always rich (I certainly was not) and does not need the donations of the locals.

25

Some people make money throwing a huge wedding party, think generous hong baos … don’t do the ridiculous priced cookie thing … that cost us in 1997 80k NT$

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26

Yeah I think I paid 100k in cookies. What a Waste. But there wre serious expectations for that.
Some of the families will keep the hong baos if they pay for the wedding.A lot of them see it is as money owed back to them. Some parents will share the money with the daughter , some not.

To be honest the whole hong Bao thing is really annoying.

My in laws kept the hong baos but so many people turned up and so much whiskey was drunk I doubt much ‘profits’ were made that day!

27

[quote=“bob_honest”]Oh I remember wife insisting on a big wedding in excess for the counterpart of 12.000 Euro or so, saying the guest’s donations would make up for it. Yet I remained skeptical and made that a loss-of-face wedding for a fraction of it with 6 tables or so. Well, people donated more than the cost was, but mother-in-law took the box with all the money in it while we were at breakfast. A lot of shouting in the kitchen later between daughter and mother, yet the box or its contents never returned.
How glad I was not to have spent a lot on it. I guess the justification was a foreigner is always rich (I certainly was not) and does not need the donations of the locals.[/quote]

Same here. Plus, I never got the chance to see how much was donated by the guests, except that I have this mental image of my mother-in-law counting the money again when she got home. Then, when I made the second celebration in Barcelona (since only my parents and brother were able to come to Taiwan), I had 40+ people coming from Taiwan which didn’t donate anything just because “they were coming from so far, plus they had already donated in Taiwan”, so I had to pay for them. Again. Lucky for me, my family and friends in Barcelona almost covered for everything there.

My recommendations for these situations are: plan a ceremony with your future wife. Just the two of you. Don’t let your in-laws anywhere near the money. Make sure everyone confirms they’re coming at least a week or two before the event (my wife went last weekend to a wedding with 17 tables, and almost half the chairs were empty, so, big waste of money). Get someone both you and your future wife trust completely to take care of the donations, and have him/her give that money to you personally. Also, try on cutting the showoff factor (the presents between the groom and the bride exposed for everyone to see, etc). As for the food, have the restaurant give each person his/her ration, instead of putting huge helpings. Many times, restaurants just put large helpings and then a lot of food is wasted. If the family is giving you a hard time with the kind of ceremon you want, just threaten them in skipping the stuff and burn all the money going to Bali (or Hawaii) with your wife and having a wedding on the beach, just the two of you. That’s a kick-ass plan that your wife can agree to, and your in-laws will probably stop bitching.

28

You might end up in a place like this … for cheap … in Taoyuan county

29

[quote=“headhonchoII”]Yeah I think I paid 100k in cookies. What a Waste. But there wre serious expectations for that.
Some of the families will keep the hong baos if they pay for the wedding.A lot of them see it is as money owed back to them. Some parents will share the money with the daughter , some not.

To be honest the whole hong Bao thing is really annoying.

My in laws kept the hong baos but so many people turned up and so much whiskey was drunk I doubt much ‘profits’ were made that day![/quote]
I insisted on not having a huge party … in the end my wife’s mother paid for it, over 100 guests from her side, just 6 of my only friends in Taiwan on my side. And they did it in a Japanese restaurant. I didn’t care about the hong baos.

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30

Just read this: economist.com/news/china/215 … ddings-two
What an interesting way of spreading wealth around. Glad I don’t have these kind of obligations as a stupid foreigner (though I did give a hongbao at my boss’s wedding).

31

[quote=“Belgian Pie”][quote=“headhonchoII”]Yeah I think I paid 100k in cookies. What a Waste. But there wre serious expectations for that.
Some of the families will keep the hong baos if they pay for the wedding.A lot of them see it is as money owed back to them. Some parents will share the money with the daughter , some not.

To be honest the whole hong Bao thing is really annoying.

My in laws kept the hong baos but so many people turned up and so much whiskey was drunk I doubt much ‘profits’ were made that day![/quote]
I insisted on not having a huge party … in the end my wife’s mother paid for it, over 100 guests from her side, just 6 of my only friends in Taiwan on my side. And they did it in a Japanese restaurant. I didn’t care about the hong baos.

Responses to dumb posts were sent from my Nexus 7, I hate Apple BTW, with Tapatalk 8[/quote]

This is what happens when you marry an only child. Only one chance at a show-off wedding and to get all the hongbao back from the last 20 years! What with the usual pressure from the parents, to extendend family expectations and being unfamiliar with how everything works and lack of siblings to help out…it was pretty stressful all round. Loads of business people and people hovering around looking to make their cut. Marriage is HUGE business here…the make-up people, the photos, the dresses, the cookies, the dinner, the whiskey, the flowers, and the HONG BAOs. Sure it’s similar overseas too I guess but in Taiwan the hong bao thing (who owes who what is meticulously calculated and recorded…). You got to pay back the guests who gave you hongbaos at your wedding and they will search the earth to send you that invitiation even if you haven’t seen them in 10 years (that’s the money bit again… it kind of pollutes the whole gift giving idea).

In my case my wife’s family paid up front and kept the money. I kept the girl, I guess that was the deal. :astonished: We haven’t even discussed ‘ping jin’ here. That’s still a big thing in Taiwan, sometimes millions of NTD could change hands. Otherwise there’s the car and the house expectation, which most foreigners can’t match anyway.

To be honest I’d like to do something more personal in the future…one of those cheesy renew marriage vows thingies on the beach and cocktails for afters :cactus: . Try to get away from the Chinese overbearing marriage style (which is just a big dinner really) and do something more interesting.

32

Oh no, not an only child at all, there where 6 children … but she was the youngest

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33

Enter, pay your dues (hong bao), sit down and eat about 12 courses … leave, all in a little over two hours. Yeah!

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34

I’d forgotten about this thread! Thanks for the resurrection. I have a lot of updates.

We found a place that I find acceptable, though not ideal. It’s called 青青食尚花園會館 (simply Chin Chin in English) and it’s near the National Palace Museum. The upside is that it’s partially outdoors and gives the feeling that you’re actually at a wedding, not a company casual drinks Friday sort-of-thing. I was partially won over by a very enthusiastic and nice sales lady, compared to the other places I had viewed.

The downside is that it’s made for weddings, and there are five venues… meaning that on the date of my wedding banquet, there could be four others at the same time! In other words, if you look out the window during dinner, you’ll see other happy couples eating away. That really upsets me (oddly, I’m the Bridezilla in my relationship), but we ended up choosing a weekend that’s no good for getting married (忌嫁娶) since we’ll be doing that ahead of time at the courthouse anyway, so hopefully there won’t be too many people there.

In the end, we’ll be hosting around 150 people, and doing it buffet style (though it’s still Chinese-style food. Still, everyone there except for the maybe 10 people from my family is Taiwanese, so no harm no foul.).

It’s set for mid-next year, so we still have a lot that we haven’t even begun to figure out. Here’s what we have no and approximate prices.

[]VENUE: For 150 people, around 210,000
[]PHOTOS: Yes, we’re doing the cheesey pre-wedding photos. Around 40,000 including clothes rentals.
[]XIBING (喜餅): I hate these, but the misses insists. We’ve budgeted around 20,000 based on the cheaper ones we’ve seen.
[]XITIE (invitations): Likely under 10,000.
[]XINNIANG MISHU (make-up artist): She wanted to skip this part and do her own make-up. I insist we hire a professional for around 15,000.
[]WEDDING RINGS: 38,000.

The total comes to 333,000 for the basics. We’ll have to spend some money decorating the place and may get a nice cake (still thinking about it), and we may also rent a liche (禮車 – one of those black sedans with wedding decoration stuff), which will push costs up a bit more.

Overall, I’m happy to say I can just narrowly afford this. Well, assuming I continue getting paid for the next several months, that is.

I’m planning a lot of unique things for the dinner so it’s not boring. I hate boring weddings. We’re going to be sort of rolling the ceremony and dinner into one event, so while people are sitting waiting for their food we’ll be reading our vows, etc. I insist on largely hosting the event myself, but I haven’t decided yet if I want to do it in English, in Chinese, or bilingual. There would be another MC to announce generic things when I’m busy with other, more entertaining activities.

We wanted to put a dance floor, but we’re afraid nobody will dance, so… :ponder:

Anyway, thank you everyone for the suggestions!

35

True. Unfortunately we did not have our own apartment yet and I was staying with wife in her apartment. Years later mother-in-law payed 0.8 Million NT to a telephone gangster. Well, nice to know my money was put to good use.
:sunglasses:

36

True. Unfortunately we did not have our own apartment yet and I was staying with wife in her apartment. Years later mother-in-law payed 0.8 Million NT to a telephone gangster. Well, nice to know my money was put to good use.
:sunglasses:[/quote]

Seriously? WTF? How does that work? “Hey, I’m so gangsta you hafta gimme your money, LOL!” “K, help yourself to my savings!” :astonished:

37

[quote=“headhonchoII”]
To be honest I’d like to do something more personal in the future…one of those cheesy renew marriage vows thingies on the beach and cocktails for afters :cactus: . [/quote]

I think that’s really frowned upon here. Why do it a second time? Was the first time a failure?

38

Getting married early is the key to making money at a wedding.
When you get married in your twenties, you get a table with 6 single friends and 3 friends with a date. (9 hong baos)
When you get married in your thirties, you get a table with 3 friends with their husbands/wives and kids. (3 hong baos)
Now you would think that people would give more when bringing the entire clan, but it doesn’t always work that way.
On the other hand, I think you tend to get more from your parents and grandparents the older you get. (phew, they thought they’d never get rid of their 38 year old daughter.)

39

[quote=“kaikai34”][quote=“headhonchoII”]
To be honest I’d like to do something more personal in the future…one of those cheesy renew marriage vows thingies on the beach and cocktails for afters :cactus: . [/quote]

I think that’s really frowned upon here. Why do it a second time? Was the first time a failure?[/quote]

It’s not a failure, but it wasn’t romantic or personal enough.
A failed marriage is divorce!

40

I hear ya, hh. I’m pretty sure my family here would be horrified if I ever tried a vow renewal.