Passing The Hat To Attend Friends’ Weddings

One woman needed $3K to attend 6 occasions. She got creative.

Last year, American Express released a report on the cost of attending a wedding, which pinpointed the average expense for a guest, per wedding, at $673. A flurry of articles followed, some noting that fed-up invitees were starting to throw in the towel, adopting no-travel policies or swearing off wedding attendance altogether.

A friend of mine recently hit this financial hurdle hard. She has been invited to six weddings that will take place between now and next June, a number she expects to rise. Several involve travel, some involve bridesmaids’ duties, and all involve close friends.

These weddings are important to her, but she knew it would be a stretch to fund on her nonprofit salary. Rather than opting out of some or all, she decided to crowd-fund the total cost of attendance, with a fundraising goal of $3,000.

I called her up for a chat about how she came up with this campaign and her expectations for it. Our conversation is below. Full disclosure: again, she’s a friend of mine, and I donated $15 to the campaign. The following has been edited for clarity.

How would you describe yourself?

I’m 26 and I live in St. Louis. I looked up one day, and all of my friends were getting married. I am somebody who also plays ultimate [Frisbee] and improvises, so I’m pretty involved in the community. Basically, I like being busy and doing things and I’m just trying to figure out what I’m doing just like everybody else.

So how many weddings are you invited to at this point?

Well, one just got added the other day, and there was another engagement last night. So between now and June of 2017, at least six.

How did you get the idea for this crowd-funding campaign?

I was sitting on my couch, trying to budget out flights for one of the bachelorette parties. I was looking at the flights and I was looking at all the other things I’d have to spend and I sort of leaned over on my computer, like, oh my god, I can’t believe I’m spending all this money on all of this. I sat back and was like, what am I going to do?

I don’t know where it clicked. All of a sudden I had this stupid idea: what if I made a [crowd-funding] page? That would be silly. And then I started talking about it a little bit.

How did people react?

Some people said, that’s stupid, I would never give you money, because I’m going through the same thing. I don’t have that kind of money to give you. Other people were like, I’d probably throw you five bucks.

One day my friend — who, actually, I’m in her wedding — she came over and we wrote it. We brainstormed. She sat there googling “Bridesmaids” quotes, basically. We looked up different registries and tried to think of things that were really relatable to people and drank some beers and laughed and threw it together. Then I showed it to people and said, “What do you think about this?”

We originally had a sentimental piece in there, and my friend from work said no, we just want it to be punchline after punchline after punchline.

My thought was, [one,] I’ve been wanting to write more. Two, I just think it’s funny. And [three], if I can make people laugh and if somebody laughs and relates to it and wants to give me a dollar or two, then that’s two more dollars than I had before.

I didn’t realize it’s sort of transactional for you. You wrote and even workshopped this funny campaign page, and you’re hoping people will enjoy it and contribute in return.

The idea is, I just wanted people to laugh at it. If they thought this is funny [and] if you relate to the struggle that I’m in, then throw me a bone. And that’s kind of the reaction I’ve gotten from the people who’ve donated.

You set a fundraising goal of $3,000. How did you come up with that number?

It was completely arbitrary.

Oh, seriously? It’s actually not that far off from estimates of what you might end up paying.

The goal was higher initially, but then I lowered it because I was like, that just seems outrageous. The point is to show this is a lot of money — I’m not spending a tiny amount of money on these weddings — but I didn’t want to be in everybody’s face. I didn’t want to come off greedy.

So what would be your elevator pitch for supporting this campaign?

This wedding season is kind of crazy. It’s crazy how much money is involved, but at the same time, these people are really important and I do want to be able to spend that time with them. If you can laugh about this and if you think what I wrote was funny, just feel like you can throw something in there. Anything helps.

When you say, “This wedding season is crazy,” what do you mean by that exactly?

We’re spending all this money to go fly around going to bachelorette parties out of town, we’re paying for hotels, dresses, makeup, hair, gifts. At some point it becomes less about the fact that two people are getting married and more about this whole industry. It’s exciting and it’s fun and a lot of it is great, but I think there are so many people that are our age right now that are experiencing this. If you’re not getting married right now, you feel like, hey, don’t you recognize that all of my friends are getting married too? I know this is your special day, but I’m also having to do this for five different people.

With this crowd-funding campaign, do you feel like you’re pushing up against that wedding culture, or leaning in to it?

I think it’s jumping in; it’s fun. I’m leaning in and laughing at it.

I’m not trying to make a stand. But I am poking fun at the industry.

What are the costs this is going to cover?

At this point I’m at $300. Which is awesome! $300 is a couple different things. It’s a round trip flight to one of the bachelorette parties I have to go to, it covers hotel rooms, it can cover a lot of different things. At the very least, though, it’s a flight, and that’s big.

If you don’t hit your funding goal, will you still go to all these weddings?

Yes. I’ve missed maybe two weddings I’ve been invited to and I definitely feel like that is hard. I don’t like to do it.

I think people put a lot of work into their guest list and making it a good day for everybody, so I feel like if you make that list, you’re important to them and you should be there to support them.

One thing that I think is particular to you is that you have pretty wide-flung social circles. So far, who has been contributing? Is it mostly people who will be attending these weddings with you, or people from completely different groups?

Only one person that has donated as far as I know will be in any of the weddings that I’m going to.

It’s people that I’m friends with and see, but people that [aren’t] in my super close friend group. I’ve had a couple people from ultimate and improv that have donated a couple bucks just for fun. The biggest donation did come from a very [good] friend of mine, and my roommate, and my parents.

Have any of the brides contributed?

They have not. They’re going to all the same weddings that I’m going to so I think it’s less about, they’re throwing a wedding, so much as, we’re all going to each others’ weddings this year.

Is this experience going to color how you might throw your own wedding?

Definitely. I wouldn’t want it to be something that’s focused on the money. I would want it to be something that’s focused on people being together and having everybody be supportive about it and laughing — that’s the fun part.

I think I would make it a low commitment: come if you can, it’ll be really fun. And that’s totally the mentality of some of these [upcoming weddings] as well. I mean, all of them, really; I don’t think anybody would be upset if somebody couldn’t make it. But it’s very much, We all want to be together.

So what exactly might you do differently?

I don’t really put a lot of thought into what my own wedding would look like.

Just on a general scale, even without all this, I would want it to be something that people didn’t feel like they had to go too far out of their way. If people want to go out of their way or want to be somewhere, awesome. And [with these weddings], I don’t feel like I have to go out of my way — this is something I want to do.

Jackie Strawbridge is a writer and editor based in Florida. She Tweets sporadically @JNStrawbridge. She will come to your wedding if there’s an open bar.

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