A Wedding Too Far

I’m slightly obsessed with wedding costs at the moment. You might recall I’ve mentioned before that my daughter’s getting married next February. As anyone who’s ever sat on the sharp, pointy, “paying” end of a wedding will tell you, this is not a cheap hobby. But lately I’ve started to wonder if the wedding supplies industry has lost its mind.

My daughter lives in London, marrying at home in Ireland. That means all the long-distance logistics funnel straight through us, specifically through our front door, courtesy of the bride-to-be. We’ve been given strict orders: open every delivery, inspect the contents, confirm it’s all shipshape and ready for deployment on the big day.

I have never taken orders so seriously in my life. I’m reasonably sure I’m not enjoying it — though I’ll probably remember it fondly in a few years.

The stuff arriving is genuinely blowing my mind. Socks for the groom’s party, each pair stitched with the wearer’s designated wedding duty. Mine say “Father of the Bride.”

Then came the suit hangers, same moniker, this time burned into the wood, one for every single member of the wedding party. So now there’s no possibility I’ll try to slip into my wife’s mother of the bride outfit by mistake.

But the delivery that finally broke me was a colossal bale of tissues, individually wrapped in dinky little plastic packs. Each one was embossed with the bride and groom’s names and a printed message urging us to use them for “happy tiers.”

Tiers. Like the cake. I see what you did there, wedding industry, I see exactly what you did there.

You’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with money. I think it has plenty of financial implications, actually. We set ourselves a ceiling early on and have already blown through it by 15%, and there’s the added joy of tax-inefficient withdrawals to fund the whole circus. But at the end of the day, I can afford it.

A lot of people can’t, and unfortunately keeping up with the Joneses is alive and well in the wedding world. There’s usually a hefty side order of emotional baggage about giving your little darling daughter the wedding she’s always dreamed of.

So here’s my financial advice, freely given and worth every penny you haven’t paid for: work out what you can actually afford, write the number down, laminate it, and staple it to your daughter’s forehead before you go anywhere near a bridal show. The wedding industry has clearly identified that emotionally compromised parents will pay almost anything for a pun about tiers, and once they’ve got you, they will not stop.

Today it’s tissues. Tomorrow it’s possibly monogrammed confetti. By next January they could be seriously considering a bespoke ice sculpture of the dog.

As for me, I’ve accepted my fate. I am now the proud owner of socks, a hanger, and a box of tissues that all agree I am the Father of the Bride, which is more confirmation than I’ve had for any other job I’ve ever done. Thirty-one years of fatherhood, and it seems all it took to make it official was some embroidery, courtesy of the wedding supply chain.

I’ll take it. Bring on February, and send reinforcements, and possibly a second portfolio withdrawal. Memo to self: stop posting about weddings.