It's Her Wedding but I'll Cry If I Want To

By Leslie Milk

Published by Rodale

February 2005, $15.95US/$22.95CAN; 1-59486-001-7

When you think "mother of the bride," maybe you picture a proud, serene woman, pulling a neatly folded hanky out of her purse to discreetly blot proud tears from her welling eyes. Well, perhaps this is what you see at the final stages of Operation Wedding, but underneath that tasteful-but-not-too-flashy-and-certainly-not-white dress is a guerrilla deal maker/politico who's been to the edge of madness and has the battle scars to prove it.

Leslie Milk has been in those shoes (and that dress), and now she's written the ultimate survival guide for other mothers of the bride. Packed with hilarious stories of weddings gone awry and rescued from the point of disaster by quick-thinking moms, this book will prepare you for all the emotional, logistical, and financial challenges of being the second most important woman of the big day.

Author

Leslie Milk is the lifestyle editor of the Washingtonian, a monthly magazine covering the nation's capital. She has written about subjects ranging from caring for aging parents to Washington's most powerful women and from climbing Mount Everest to losing weight.

In the interests of full disclosure, Milk admits that she wrote about someone else's climb and, judging by the results, she probably should have written about someone else's weight loss.

Previously, Milk was a columnist for the Washington Post and the Journal newspapers. She has also written for Glamour, Shape, and Woman's Day magazines. She has appeared on Nightline, ABC's Turning Point, Entertainment Tonight, CNN, and BBC News.

Reviews

"Leslie Milk knows that every mother of the bride is like a four-star general. She plans the strategy, defends the deficit, dispatches the troops, and negotiates the peace. For any mother of the bride who wants to declare victory on the day of the wedding, this book is MUST reading."

--Kitty Kelley, New York Times best-selling author of The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty

Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the book It's Her Wedding but I'll Cry If I Want To: A Survival Guide for the Mother of the Bride

By Leslie Milk

Published by Rodale; February 2005, $15.95US/$22.95CAN; 1-59486-001-7

Copyright © 2005 Leslie Milk

For Love or Money

And they lived happily ever after . . ." That's the ending you envision for your daughter and the love of her life. The last thing you want is for the newlyweds to return from their honeymoon to a stack of unpaid wedding bills. Many couples spend the first year or two of their marriages paying down their wedding debts.

But what about you? You want to live happily ever after, too. It is easy to get so consumed with wedding planning that you lose sight of the mounting expenses. However, before you've brushed the birdseed -- or whatever politically and ecologically correct wedding toss showered the bride and groom -- out of your hair, a mountain of bills may be landing on your doorstep.

The average wedding in the United States costs $22,000. Since that average includes the couples who couple-up at city hall and head off for lunch with a few friends, there is a good chance that the cost of your daughter's wedding will be way above the average.

Why do weddings cost so much? A friend of mine attributes it to the "Ralph Laurenization of weddings." Middle-class brides now expect nuptials with a lavishness once confined to the aristocracy.

Benjamin was stunned by the modest budget that I prepared. "That's more than we spent on our first two houses," he said.

"When your daughter gets married, you've got to figure the wedding will cost the same thing as a year in college," a friend told Benjamin. "When your son gets married, it's only a semester."

Or, as another father of the bride put it, "It's like buying an expensive sports car, driving it for five hours, then throwing it over a cliff."

The wedding day has grown into a wedding weekend with multiple events to be arranged and hosted. Rehearsal dinners have been "upgraded" to include all of the out-of-town guests as well as the wedding party. One Florida bride had four parties leading up to her wedding in Jacksonville -- including a Mediterranean rehearsal dinner for 117, a Friday night dinner for 70, and a Middle Eastern buffet luncheon for 375. The morning after the wedding, she had a Sunday brunch.

"Stay and play" weddings, whether far afield or close to home, reflect another trend. Now that more couples live together before the wedding, the novelty of the wedding night is less compelling. Rather than "alone at last," it's "alone again." So it is not surprising that couples see their wedding weekends as a chance to spend time with families and friends rather than going off by themselves.

One Minnesota couple got married on Maui and took both sets of parents along on their island-hopping honeymoon. The bride filled every day with sightseeing excursions. By the third day, the father of the bride was begging for mercy and hoping the newlyweds would want some alone time so that he could take a nap.

The bride and groom may welcome multiple wedding shindigs and activities as more opportunities to interact with every one of their guests. However, each additional event can approach the cost of the wedding itself in some cases, other friends or relatives host the "warm-up" parties. The uncle of a New York groom ferried 185 guests to a party on Ellis Island. They were served a 10-course dinner while a band played.

With a warm-up like that, who needs a wedding! Imagine the pressure that mother of the bride must have felt!

Even without such posh preliminaries, there is pressure to ratchet up in every area -- more courses, more flowers, hand calligraphy on the invitations.

Caterers even claim that people eat more at weddings. This makes no sense. Everyone is wearing fancy, formfitting clothes that discourage overeating. The guests don't get to order what they like. The wedding feast is constantly interrupted by dancing and other rituals. And, if you dare to leave the table, a waiter whisks your half-eaten plate of food away.

What caterers really mean is that brides are conned into ordering more food at weddings -- much of which is wasted.

Weddings also inspire a lot of nonwedding expenditures. It isn't fair to include them in the wedding budget, but you're bound to incur some additional expenses like the cost of your personal trainer for six months, the price of a new tuxedo for the father of the bride, or your dancing lessons.

That's fine, if you can afford it. But now that brides are marrying later in life, parents of brides are more likely to be nearing retirement age when their daughters say "I do." Do you really want to keep working well into your 70s to pay for your daughter's dream wedding?

There are alternatives. If they are willing and able, you can split the cost of the wedding with the groom's parents and the couple themselves. You can offer the couple a hefty sum to elope. It's bound to be cheaper than an actual wedding. Or you can work with the bride and groom to create a budget for a wedding you can afford.

There is an assumption that, when it comes to weddings, common sense flies out the window on wings of love. Many mothers of brides seem to believe that weddings always operate like the Pentagon -- cost overruns are inevitable.

It ain't necessarily so! You can make a wedding budget and stick to it, as long as you estimate costs realistically and operate on a zero-tolerance rule. That means "just say no." Draw a line in the sand. Pick the tough cliché of your choice and stick to it. Once you exceed your agreed-upon budget in any way, it is easier to justify the next splurge and the next splurge and the expense after that.

Start with your mother-daughter prenup. That agreement spells out who is going to pay the bills and what the grand total will be. Then you and your daughter should use the budget sheets in a bridal magazine or on a wedding Web site to create a preliminary wedding budget. These worksheets help you cover all of the bases. But don't trust their estimates on the cost of photography, flowers, and other services. Unless you live in Timbuktu, you'll have to pay more for everything associated with the wedding.

For example, theknot.com estimated that Meredith would need $1,658.18 for photography. In the Washington, D.C., area, many photographers charge triple that amount. Some of the well-known shooters won't take off their lens caps for less than $7,000 to $10,000.

The wedding industry breaks down the typical wedding budget this way:

• Reception -- 50 percent

That includes the site, catering, bar and beverages, wedding cake, parking, and transportation.

• Music -- 10 percent


• Flowers -- 10 percent


• Wedding attire -- 10 percent

That includes only clothing for the bride and groom.

• Photography -- 10 percent


• Stationery -- 4 percent

That includes invitations, announcements, thank-you notes, postage, programs, and placecards.

• Extras -- 6 percent (at least)

That includes attendants' gifts, favors, rehearsal dinner, wedding rings, marriage license, officiant fees, and church or synagogue fees.

These allocations may not mesh with the bride's priorities. What does she care most about? Food? Music? A place big enough to accommodate all of the Tri-Delts from University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh?

My daughter put the setting at the top of her list. She wanted to be married in a garden. We paid more than we planned to rent the atrium at the botanical gardens operated by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority. The gardens were beautiful and the atrium has trees and flowers growing inside, so weather would not be a problem. We also saved on flowers because there was no need to decorate the room. The park authority had planned the facility for weddings. It was equipped with tables, chairs, and a catering kitchen, which saved us the cost of rentals.

We also splurged on photography and food. That meant economizing on reception music - hiring a deejay instead of a band. We had a simple wedding cake, baked by the caterer. The invitations were printed, not engraved, and the envelopes were addressed by machine. I would have shot the first person who dared to mention chair covers.

"Spend money on memories," one wise wedding planner advises her clients. "A fantastic photographer is your best investment." After that, she stresses the site and the music. Food is less important, she believes. "Most people come to a wedding to party. They are drinking. As long as the food is good and beautifully presented, it doesn't have to cost a lot."

Once you get estimates for the things that matter most, plug those numbers into the budget and see how much money you have to spend on everything else. You'll soon find yourself over budget -- on paper, at least. That's when you and the bride have to start paring down the low-priority items and eliminating nonessentials.

Your daughter may say that everything is essential. But if you show that you are serious about sticking to a budget, the two of you will find ways to cut.

For example, favors aren't essential. Ask the bride to think of the favors she's collected at the weddings she's attended. Weren't they all impractical, insipid, or fattening?

Food is essential. Regardless of the hour of the day or night, wedding guests expect to be fed. If you are serving anything stronger than lemonade, you want to feed them. Otherwise they begin to teeter, bellow, and commit unsocial acts. These can result in damage to their reputations and, more important from your perspective, damage to property for which you can and will be held responsible.

However, you are not required to serve food in such quantities that guests have trouble getting up from the table or to offer a midnight snack when the final dinner course was served after 10:00 p.m. This is a wedding, not a cruise!

Chairs are a necessity. Chair covers with bows that match the bridal color scheme are not.

Invitations are a necessity. Engraved invitations in double envelopes and protective tissue are not.

The groom's family is a necessity, even if they are not contributing one dime toward the cost of the wedding. The groom's father's business associates are not.

Reprinted from: It's Her Wedding but I'll Cry If I Want To By Leslie Milk © 2005 Leslie Milk. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher by calling (800) 848-4735 or visit their website at www.rodalestore.com.