Today, Explained - The cost of “I do”

Episode Date: May 3, 2026

Love is in the air, but only if you’ve got thousands to throw at it. How couples are navigating the pressures and expenses of planning their perfect wedding. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Avishay Artsy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Brandon McFarland and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Photo of an October wedding by Alyssa Neely. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail]. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and now with a boost of energy. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. It seems as if there is an automatic surcharge as soon as you say the words wedding. Is 30,000 kind of the norm now? I joined a subreddit group that was weddings under 10K when I first joined it, and then they kept updating the description to eventually be weddings under 20K by the end of it. I'm really good at being a bridesmaid. There was my cousin's wedding, my college besties wedding, my other college besties wedding,

my work besties wedding, my other work besties wedding, and then the wedding of the bestie I met at a random party back in my early 20s. It may not be 27 dresses, but six dresses is a lot too. Being a bridesmaid is expensive, but it pales in comparison to the actual nuptials. Last year, my husband and I probably spent, oh, almost. almost 60,000. Could have been a little bit less, which was way more than we wanted to spend. Our place type for our wedding was $100,000. My husband and I were sitting around because we just had a baby being like, well, they got, where did all of our money go? And the answer is like to the wedding. Spending without dress honeymoon minimum of $40,000 in Detroit. So that's what we're doing.

It makes me want to vomit. I'm John Gulen Hill, and this week, unexplain it to me from Vox, we're going to the chapel or the courthouse or the winery, or wherever it is you want to say I do, and we're breaking down the cost of the modern wedding. Wedding planning wasn't always this intimidating. Karen Dunnick is a history professor at Muskingham University and author of As Long as We Both Shall Love, the white wedding in post-war America.

It was very much like a local, a community kind of thing, even sometimes just like your immediate family and that people would have sort of, I think actually traditional celebrations where it would be relying on the local landscape or flowers were available in the yard or the community. If it was fall, like whatever sort of foliage and those things would be brought into a home.

I did some research at the University of Iowa and reading people's diaries where it would be rained this morning, married this afternoon. But that the weather was the first thing that was referenced, and then the wedding was sort of the second most important thing that happened that day. Okay, how did we go from these modest productions to these even bigger productions that we have now? I would, like, really go into the 1920s as this moment of, like, advertising, and it becomes a much more democratized sort of celebration that has all of the things that I think a lot of people are familiar with,

that there would be a white dress, that the groom would wear formal attire, that there would be attendants who are wearing a particular kind of clothes. Wedding showers, wedding registries, all of this sort of stuff, is very much a thing that becomes much more mainstream in post-World War II America. There really is a leaning into consumer expenditure, consumer display, and being part of an America that's very much about prosperity and plenty,

and the wedding is a location where Americans are able to display. that. What about the media at the time kind of lent itself to that? You know, like these people were getting these images from somewhere, right? Oh, yeah. They were getting these images from everywhere. Brides Magazine, when it is first published, 1934, is like a New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, like a tri-state area kind of thing. Expands then to become a nationwide publication. But that's, that's a magazine for people who are going to get married. If you open up Life magazine, there is a Pyrex advertisement, and it is a woman in a wedding dress putting her Pyrex dish into the oven.

And we're selling you the dish. We're not selling you the wedding, except guess what we're selling you both of those things. That everything that is sold can possibly be sold by attaching it to a person dressed like a bride. I think in movies, when Elizabeth Taylor stars a girl. in Father of the Bride, like that wedding dress is the wedding dress that everybody wants. A wedding, a church wedding. Well, it's what every girl dreams of.

A bridal dress, the orange blossoms, the music. It's something lovely to remember all the rest of the life. There are all of these ways that media can capitalize on an expanding marriage slash wedding culture. There are even ways that they can say, you know, okay, here are all the all. the ways you cannot make mistakes for your wedding. Playing on people's anxieties, like the idea that this is, again, post-World War II America, this is a new place. Like, yesterday's news is yesterday's news and you don't want to get caught up in it. Marriage in most of America today is a little different from what it was yesterday because the people are a little different. Your parents don't

know what they're talking about when it comes to getting married now because they got married in the 1930s and that's, you don't want a depression wedding. You want a 1950s wedding. So just sort of like laying a foundation for this is new and this is modern and previous generations couldn't possibly understand so you better rely on the expertise that's available to you. During the 1960s and into the 1970s with the advent of the counterculture, with the origins of women's liberation and a women's movement, feminists are still getting married. But when they get married, they're like, I will keep my own name. I will not be given away by a man at this wedding.

I will be the decider of my own fate and walk myself down the aisle. Or, you know, this sort of traditional love, honor, and obey. Let's get the obey out of there. Every woman gets to choose, and that is women's live. 1960s into 1970s, you have people who are moving away from the sort of reception hall and saying, let's do it outside, let's commune with nature. people go wild because like some very few but some brides are like yes I'm going to wear some pants. Ooh, getting wild.

Yeah, exactly. What will happen next? What was the wedding of the 80s? Was there like something that it was like, hey, y'all, this is the 80s and this is what wedding should be? Oh, yes, there was. And it's when Diana marries Prince Charles and people have like special English tea parties and get up early and watch the tea parties. TV and look at her coming in like her, her carriage. And she is in an enormous white dress. The wedding dress of Lady Diana. It's in ivory, pure silk taffeting. And look at it, isn't it,

fairy tale? She's going to be a princess that there is definitely like this sense of this is a fairy tale wedding. So my early ideas around weddings were in part going to them with my family, but also, shows on TLC, what were those and how did they have an impact on what we expected from weddings at the time? Yeah, I think that's sort of like late 90s, early aughts were really influential for people, like a kind of reality TV that people really watched it, like loved it. Emmanuela, are you saying yes to the dress? Which of these brides will see her groom step out of the prize winner's limo? Find out. After four weeks.

And I think it was sort of part and parcel of the media of that time period, too, when, like, glossy magazines were still all over the place. That in style had in style weddings, in style celebrity weddings. Like, I think in some ways, too, like, teaching them what they should be doing, like, we're all going to go to a David's Bridal. If you're getting married. Creating a kind of, like, we all know what it looks like, and we all know what this process is. And we all know what to expect when we go do it. I would also say that people sometimes behave poorly on those shows. And there was a kind of enjoyment or like voyeurism.

But I'd still think also think enjoyment and like a superiority in being like, I would never be like that. Or can you imagine somebody is like that? Yeah, like Bridezilla. Yeah. And I would say like early 21st century, Bridezilla is definitely a language that like everybody is using all the time. So we've talked about magazines, movies, reality TV, but I feel like the internet really supercharged the wedding's arms race too, right?

I think in like a lot of different ways, online registries, Pinterest, of course, to be like, oh, I'm going to take these ideas. Who needs a wedding planner? When I can, like, find this and, like, sometimes, like, do it myself. And then, like, very clearly what's going on with, like, Facebook or Instagram or are we going to, like, hashtag our wedding or. or ask people not to post any pictures of it because we want to have some like autonomy over that or like what is the timed release that I think it's it's opened up. Did you use the word supercharged? Yeah, absolutely. And I think also like presents a lot of different ways that people can navigate what they want their weddings to be and or say about them.

It really is staking a claim on where you're. you are and who you want to be with. And for me, that's the ongoing appeal of it. Because otherwise, why would you be like, yes, I could put a down payment in a house where I could have this party? So weddings are a way to broadcast who we are to people. And that audience goes way beyond who's on the guest list. That's up next. Support for Explained It to Me comes from Starbucks. There's a papable energy to storytelling, and it's an energy we harness to bring you a special series like this one.

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an edit of maybe about 40 to 80 photos from the wedding, this beautiful mix of images that really capture the essence of the day, the details of the day, tell the story. And then we also have a wonderful feature where we talk about your love story, the entire process of planning the wedding, those details that go into choosing the fashion, your experience, and how you felt on the day. And I love a rom-com, and I'm like, I'm just telling a love story here. So we're talking about how complicated and how expensive weddings have gotten through the years. Does a wedding need to be super expensive to get into Vogue territory? Like, I don't know.

When I think of Vogue, I think of glamour. And glamour is often expensive. Well, okay, weddings especially these days are so, so expensive, but at the same time, it's not always the ones that spend a lot of money. Sometimes the ones I see that spend a lot of money are really not of the certain caliber I want to feature because it seems like they're just throwing money at something and it doesn't feel intentional. My biggest thing I always think is when I look at these photos, do I want to be a guest at this

wedding? Ballpark, what's the average cost of a wedding these days? Let's say, you know, we're having 100 guests at this imaginary wedding. I would say, like, in New York City, the average wedding is probably $100,000. Wow. Like, just based on the costs and how much it is for 100 people, yes. Like, the cost for catering, the cost for photography, flowers, food. You know, say if you're somewhere in the Midwest, I would say the average cost is probably close.

to 30 to 40,000. It just really depends on the scale and also the vendors are choosing. You know, some of the top top wedding photographers in the world charge $100,000, but there's other ones who charge $5,000. And that's a very big difference in your bottom line budget. You know, I talk to friends getting married and all that. And I would say every single person I go to. And I'm like, so how much over budget are you right now? And I've never heard someone say they were under budget. Wow. I want to get into the trends of it all. So we have an idea of how online trends move and how quickly they come and go. Things move a lot faster now. But how do wedding trends pop up? Does it come from somewhere like Vogue? Like, I don't know,

is there a bridal version of the cerulean sweater monologue from the devil wears product? And it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when in fact you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. Oh, for sure. I mean, I think the wedding trend cycle has moved so, so much faster in the past few years, mainly due to social media. I would say there's now very much like, oh, this is the trend of the year, and your wedding's going to feel dated if you're, you know, doing, like this year,

everyone's talking about, chartreuse and burgundy is apparently a very big color. palette trends that's going on. Is anyone else getting attacked by the violent Chartreuse and Burgundy wedding content? You chose Chartreuse and Burgundy for your wedding colors thinking that it was going to be timeless. I want whatever you're on. It can be a bit of an issue, I think, these days too, because I hear from planners, people are, especially a lot of their Gen Z clients are so focused on the social media and that aspect of performance a little bit. that they're really wanting to be on top of the trend cycles. And then they're saying, well, I want to do this brand new thing. And I saw this thing via chat GPT that I pulled up. And a lot of

times their planners are like, well, first off, this isn't in your budget. This isn't even possible because this was AI generated. Or it just becomes something that's so overdone at a certain point. You think the thing that feels original is going to be everywhere because that's what's being blasted all over your Pinterest page. Yeah, when it comes to weddings, I feel like there are two things I hear. Like, one, people being obsessed with being original. And then on the other hand, it's people obsessed with like, I don't want it to look like a trend.

It needs to look timeless. Listen, I know that there's some people that say that there's no such thing as a timeless wedding. But truly, there are things that just, like, never go out of style. I was told by our guests quite a few times that our wedding was timeless. And that was my number one goal when designing my wedding. Right. I think it's, well, the timeless thing is just see.

I think there's a degree of tradition that comes with weddings and something classic about them anyway. So I think that's where people harken to the idea of, I want it to be timeless. This is something we're going to be looking at generations ahead, and I want it to still feel cool and beautiful and something that I look at the photos and don't cringe at. I understand it from like more that perspective. But you know what? Everything is a time capsule. I mean, there's a degree of, you know, people wanting to feel original and unique, but original and unique can often go along with what is popular at the time. As someone who writes and consults in the wedding industry, I don't know, have things gotten

too extravagant and over the top? Have we kind of lost sight of what's important? Yes and no. I think, you know, I'm a very big proponent of due you. And if you, and if you want to have a very extravagant wedding and you can reasonably afford it and, you know, make it work. Great. Go for it. I think a degree of extravagance is okay on your wedding because when else are you going to have this big party and, you know, all the people you love there.

But at the same time, you know, do it within reason and. You know, keep it authentic as well. Sometimes when you want to go big on authenticity, you have to go small. That's coming up. This is advertiser content from Starbucks. Johnclan, I think of you as the queen of answering questions. Oh my gosh, thank you. What question do you have for me today?

Okay, talk to me about energy levels. Why is it that it's sometimes I feel total ways of exhaustion? So, like, you can't focus, you're falling asleep, that kind of thing? Exactly. And then at some points I'm just totally fine. Why is that happening? And is there anything I can do to help it? Yeah. So the peaks and slumps throughout the day. We have all been there. So that's mostly because of our circadian rhythm. It's basically the cycle our body goes through in a 24-hour time period. And it controls things like metabolism, hormones, and energy. So that's like the reason I feel tired before bed and well-rested in the morning. It's our circadian rhythm. It's a totally. totally natural biological response. So when I want to just close my eyes

and put my head down on my desk, what can I do about that? According to my research, one of the best things you can do is get up and walk around, get your blood flowing, maybe call up a friend and grab a coffee or a tea.

That sounds really nice right now. You want to go do it? Yeah. Yeah. Long story short, we all need moments throughout the day to refresh and Starbucks has you covered

with their new energy refreshers, your go-to lift to help you stay energized throughout the day. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. I'm getting married pretty soon, so I love of my life. It's fantastic. It's really great. And we're both on board with small weddings.

We wanted to spend about 30,000, and then realistically realized it was going to be about 60,000. Before we called it and decided to do a micro-wedding near to home very last minute instead. HJQ, back with Moore, explain it to me. Lauren Miller is the founder of the Tiny Wedding Collective. which, you guessed it, specializes in tiny weddings. We define a tiny wedding or a micro wedding as 50 guests or fewer. I'd say our average guest count that we work with is somewhere around 30, 35 guests. I'm curious why couples opt for it.

Is it about price or is it about something else? So for some couples, it is about budget. But for a lot of couples, we find that it's more so about not wanting to be the center of attention. You know, some couples say like, hey, like, I don't want to be surrounded by 200 people, you know, a quarter of which maybe are my parents' friends or people that I've never met before. And then the other reason that we get a lot is being busy professionals, especially here in D.C., and not wanting to spend all of their extra time and money planning a wedding. We hear the phrase decision fatigue all of the time. And I think something that micro weddings can relieve is decision fatigue. We got calls from a few listeners who said they were fine with a small wedding,

but their families are the ones who wanted the larger ones. And we were lucky enough to have our families help. They each gave our $20,000. But those $20,000 also came up a lot of expectations and guestless. We wanted to keep it small, but after a... fairly large financial help from some family. They had requests to go big, and so we had to kind of honor that request. We always do get couples with parents who I think are not as thrilled that their children are choosing this path for their wedding.

But I will say that after the microwedding is over, what I hear a lot from parents is, oh, that was still, really monumental. That was still really special. You know, thank you for including XYZ traditions. So I think people are surprised at how beautiful and, you know, still important and monumental a micro-wedding can be. That's what the Lawton's experience. They're a couple who lives in Washington, D.C. I'm Maris Lawton. And I am Michaela Lawton. So we met on Hinge. Oh, an actual Hinge success story. Okay. Yes. We, yeah, our first date was out of beer, garden. We just kind of fell for each other really fast, um, got married after dating for 18 months. And, you know, the rest is history. So we got married on October 12th of 2025, which was a Sunday

of last year. Our wedding was very small. It was 18 people, including us. So it was really just immediate friends and family. Everyone traveled in. And, um, Our wedding was at a really cute bed and breakfast here in D.C. So all of our guests and us stayed at the bed and breakfast. We all slept there for two nights. And then our actual ceremony and reception were held there as well. And it was just a really wonderful and intimate time that I don't think bigger weddings typically get when you have, you know, 100 plus people. Yeah.

What were some of like the little detail? and, like, activities or, like, what were some of the things that you all think made the wedding y'all's wedding? I would say Maris and I are not very, like, traditional people. So we were not going to have a traditional wedding. We weren't going to go to the church. We weren't going to have, you know, a random person officiate us. Something that we both really wanted was we had personal officiant. So my sister and then Maris's cousin, who were very close with, officiated our wedding. And that was really beautiful because they were able to share like a story about each of us and just kind of made it a lot more personal.

I think we picked really fun music to walk down the aisle to. I walked down to an instrumental version of Pink Pony Club by Chapel Rhone. Maris walked to Noah Kahn. And then when we finished the ceremony, we walked out to Hot to Go by Chapel Rhone. So that was super fun. And then we also included a surprise drag queen performance by Miss Saratonin. That was a really hard surprise to keep for so long because we were so excited. And on top of that, at the end of the wedding, we ended up jumping in the pool in our dresses.

Did you all always want to have a tiny wedding? How did you come to that decision? So Michaela didn't want a wedding. And if I could have had it my way, I would have had hundreds of people. Like, it would have been ginormous. But also money played a factor into that. So our compromise was the small wedding. And it turned out to be literally the most perfect day ever. I wouldn't change it for a thing. There's no doubt in my mind. I wouldn't go back and have a big wedding if we redid it. Okay, so you all did this tiny wedding, and weddings tend to be expensive. What did this run, y'all? Our wedding was around 30,000. Everything included, like including our dresses, our wedding planner fees, photographer, the B&B, everything. Our tiny wedding was a little more expensive, I would argue, because we did it in Washington, D.C. proper, more expensive than it would be in a more rural area. So I would consider what is a special place that you would want to get married at? I think that is probably one of the first things. Second, I would say, what's going to make your wedding you? All of our little details that we did, the drag queen, the jumping in the pool, the, you know, I made our centerpieces for our table. Like all these little details, what is going to make the wedding you and how are you going to kind of shine through on? that special day. Like, there's no wrong way to do a wedding.

Every single wedding you go to is going to be different. Like, yes, there is the, like, stereotypical things people do at American weddings. And I think the ones that people enjoy the most as a guest are the ones that are so authentic to you and are so special. Like, just make it such a fun experience and make it whatever you would like because, you know, you want it to be the day that you remember. member and it's just have it be a party. I don't even know how I could follow that.

Yeah. That's it for this week. Thanks to the Lottins and all the couples that called in to tell us about your weddings. Wishing each of you a long and happy marriage. If you're into a more low-stakes commitment, consider supporting the show by becoming a Vox member. Members can listen to this podcast with no ads. Go to Vox.com slash members to learn more. We would also love your help on an episode we're doing about prepping.

How ready do you feel for disaster? Do you have a go bag? If you do, what's the most important item in it? Maybe it's something super practical, or maybe it's personal. Tell us. 1-800-618-8-55 or email AskVox at Vox.com. This episode was produced by Ariana Spurro. It was edited by Avashai Artsy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch,

and engineered by Brandon McFarlane and David Tattis. shore. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and I'm your host, John Glenn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Support for Explained It to Me comes from Starbucks. Burnout can happen to anyone, but there's always a way to get your flow back. Take your afternoon slump, for instance. It's a phenomenon we all know too well. Sometimes all it takes is a reassuring word from a friend or a sip of a refreshing drink. So the next time you're looking to refocus and re-energize, you can hit up a friend and grab a Starbucks new energy refresher together. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks.