If you’ve just congratulated one of your best friends for proposing or accepting a wedding proposal, don’t be surprised if people start offering you sympathy. If it hasn’t happened already, your friend may be about to ask you to be a bridesmaid or groomsman, or play a supporting role in the wedding party.
Being asked to take part in wedding festivities is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it’s an honor, but if you say yes, you may experience some financial pain (or at least discomfort). Being in a wedding party probably won’t destroy you financially, but if you’re taking part in multiple friends’ weddings, you may start wondering if being the maid of honor is really such an honor.
While there’s plenty of data on how much the average wedding costs — $29,858 in 2013, according to TheKnot.com — there are fewer figures detailing how much it costs to be in a wedding party. It can get expensive, however, and $1,500 is a common figure bandied about on various wedding forums and surveys.
“I added up the totals just yesterday after seeing my dwindling bank account and realized I’ve spent between $1,700 and $1,800 on the wedding,” says recent bridesmaid Hollie Smith, a Chicago-based lifestyle blogger. She is also a wedding coordinator, and she admits: “It has been a struggle dedicating so much money to the wedding, and I can honestly say I don’t know if I’d be able to afford doing this again in the near future.”
Not only can being in a wedding party be pricey — it can be prohibitively expensive. Hilary Kennedy, a TV host and lifestyle blogger in Dallas, says a few months after graduating from college, she was asked by a sorority sister to be a bridesmaid. Kennedy was not pulling in much income in her budding television journalism career, but she told her friend she’d love to be a bridesmaid. Then Kennedy started crunching numbers and realized she had to spend $400 on a dress, throw a bridal shower and the bachelorette party and buy a wedding gift. She figured that her bridesmaid role would cost her around $1,000.
“I told her my financial concerns, and she refused to speak to me ever again,” Kennedy says.
So if you’ve just been asked to be a bridesmaid or a groomsman, consider the financial implications before accepting. Here are just some of the expenses you may encounter.
Clothing. In most cases, taking part in a wedding means buying an outfit, unless it’s a really casual wedding. Generally, bridesmaids will have to say yes to the dress, and men may need to rent a tuxedo. According to WeddingStats.org, members of the wedding party spend an average of $141 on attire.
“In general, I spend around $200 just for the dress,” says Hilary Young, a communications manager in Philadelphia. “It’s usually chiffon, which means an additional $100 for alterations.”
It gets even more expensive if you’re pregnant and your dress needs alterations, Young says, and, yes, she is, and hers did. She was in her brother’s wedding a few weeks ago and will be in her sister-in-law’s wedding in a few weeks.
But wait, there’s sometimes more: shoes. “In one case, the bride was specific about the shoes we had to wear, and I bought a pair of $185 shoes just for her wedding,” says Young, who doesn’t mince words: “I have been in multiple bridal parties, and I can’t tell you how much I do not enjoy the experience. I hate being a bridesmaid so much, in fact, that when my husband and I got married, we chose not to have a bridal party at all.”
Hair and makeup. David Neuman, a social media manager in New York City, observes that it’s women who especially get creamed here. Not that men shouldn’t visit a barber beforehand, but as he says, “I’ve been in a few bridal parties. I think guys have it a bit easier than girls, since we don’t have to pay for hair and makeup.”
Here’s an example of what you might be in for, and the costs are often dictated by where you live: Katelyn Holbrook, based in Boston and vice president of Version 2.0 Communications, says she was in weddings in September and November, and in each case, she spent $180 on hair and makeup — plus a 20 percent tip.
Bridal shower. If you’re in charge of throwing a bridal shower, the cost will depend on how many people you invite, among other factors. According to the consumer information site CostHelper.com, a typical bridal shower costs $15 to $40 per person. You can go lower or higher, of course. Holbrook says the two bridal showers she recently threw ran a little over $250, and her brides were price-conscious.
Holbrook adds that mothers sometimes host bridal showers, so you may be able to avoid spending money on a shower — except for the gift.
Gifts. There’s the bridal shower gift, and then there’s the wedding gift. Of course, you aren’t obligated to give anyone a gift. But you probably will. Holbrook says she spent $50 each on her recent bridal shower gifts, and she and her husband spent $250 per wedding gift. Smith recently spent $100 on a wedding gift. Obviously, there’s no right or wrong here — you can spend whatever you can afford.
Travel. If you’re lucky, your soon-to-be-wedded pal will wed somewhere nearby, and you’ll save on travel costs. For instance, Nicole Nelson, an account executive in Delafield, Wisconsin, says her sister-in-law’s wedding several weeks ago was in the same state, and her total costs for being in the wedding were about $650.
“With dress, plus nails, plus hair, plus shoes, plus jewelry, the total was roughly $268,” Nelson says. “If we’re counting gas money to get to the bachelorette party, bridal shower, rehearsal and wedding, plus the money spent on gifts for the bridal shower, bachelorette party and wedding present, then we’re looking at more like $650 total.”
Not cheap, but not bad. On the other end of spectrum is Allison Brady, who works in communications in San Francisco. She attended five weddings this year and was asked to be a maid of honor in one of them. She knew that since the bride lived on the East Coast, it was going to be an expensive proposition for her, and she was right.
In fact, at the beginning of the year, Brady says she made a spreadsheet with her anticipated costs to make sure all of the weddings would fit into her budget.
Not surprisingly, Brady spent the most on the East Coast wedding, held in early November, in which she was the maid of honor. A thousand dollars went to a bachelorette party in Miami, and she spent $1,400 on airfare for herself and her boyfriend to attend the wedding in Philadelphia. Attire cost $400, and she spent $200 on a shower and wedding gift.
Brady isn’t complaining. “I would do it all over again,” she says. “It was my best friend, and my other friends from college were also in the wedding party, so we got to spend lots of quality time together as an added perk.”
But running down the numbers for that last wedding, which cost her $3,000, Brady says what almost every member of a wedding party thinks at one time or another: “Yikes.”
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The High Cost of Being in a Wedding Party originally appeared on usnews.com
