The Rise of the $100,000 Wedding
The numbers have changed for weddings, and it didn’t take long.
When The Wedding Report famously put out their estimated 2006 average of $27,490, with numbers expected to rise to over 30K in four short years, it seemed to occasion some surprise … at the start of 2006. But as we near the year’s end, not so much.
In late 2005, M&M sponsored a “win a free wedding” contest. In return for the tough requirement that the lucky winners slip an M&M endorsement into their vows, Mars Inc. underwrote a ceremony for 50 in NYC plus a six night honeymoon in the Bahamas. At the time, they managed to keep lucre out of the equation. Instead of relying on the power of raw digits, they lured couples with the honey of David Tutera’s party planning expertise.
I’m not sure a major brand could get away with that from where we stand, 14 months later. When it comes to second-half weddings, the number of zeros involved seems to steal the show. Magazine and television editors troll wedding forums, eyes peeled for the really opulent shindigs. VH-1 is on the hunt for “over the top” weddings with fresh-faced couples and a 500+K budget. The various Win a Free Wedding contests floating around the Internet know that a $25,000 giveaway isn’t going to raise eyebrows or inspire clicks — it’s officially below average. Brides magazine understands that if they’re going to run a “win a free wedding” contest and keep their pride, they have to suck it up and make it a $100,000 wedding, which probably doesn’t mean stumping for change around the editorial office but certainly means corraling and cajoling an awful lot of vendors.
So where does this leave the average American couple, who, as the numbers tell us, are a little older and wealthier than they used to be, but not that wealthy?
One couple filled the gap between expectations and empty pockets by putting on a sponsored $100,000 wedding in Brooklyn earlier this summer. As MultiChannel Merchant tells us, 1-800-Flowers contributed heaps of blooms, and at least one vendor described the event as “viral.” That’s a happy phrase, and I’ll bet a Big Mac it showed up in the couple’s original query letters, which were probably actually emails distributed with the net equivalent of a semi-automatic … but I digress.
Other couples basically seem to hold their breath, jump in the deep end, and pray for lots of cash donations.
No one really knows where it’s going, but for the time being, the $100,000 wedding has quickly morphed from an object of shock and awe to the next stop on the tracks. If $30K is average, $50K is pretty darn close, and that leaves $100,000K and up for serious events, dahling … and brand promotions.
$100,000 weddings even have their own chick lit. An entry titled Whose Wedding is it Anyway? follows the ups and downs of two fictional women offered a free $100,000 wedding by their employer, Wow Weddings magazine … but chafe under the inevitable strings attached.
It won’t be long before the smart moms and dads start opening a wedding fund for their tots the same day they open the college account, and leverage the power of compound interest. Hopefully, they’ll have their own weddings paid off by then.
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