Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Bryan today. Now we'll wrap today's show by looking at a rising gripe among wedding guests. Have you ever been asked to pay to attend someone else's wedding? Summer is peak wedding season. Surely many of you are getting ready to attend someones special day, or maybe it's even your turn to tie the knot this weekend. While weddings are a celebration of love and union, they can bring out the worst in some of us. Sure, theres arguments to be had over cake flavors and venue locations, but often the main source of wedding tension is the cost of it all. While some couples are turning to their guests as the solution to the high costs of getting hitched nowadays. The New York Times has an article about the rising trend of people selling tickets to guests to attend their weddings, citing costs as high as $450 a head. Listeners, have you ever paid to attend a wedding? Did you know exactly what you were paying for? Were you given an itemized list of the cost of your attendance? Did you know in advance that youd be paying for the wedding, and of not, would you still have attended? If youve charged people to attend your wedding, how did your guests react? What kinds of social dynamics did this introduce into your wedding planning? To expand this a bit, what other kinds of costs have you incurred an order to attend someones big day? Did you have to book travel and accommodation for a destination wedding or buy a particular outfit to fit with a specific theme? Full disclosure, I had a "destination wedding in Albany, New York."

Travel had to have all our guests go there. Wedding guests, now is your time to share costs related to your wedding gripes. Give us a call. The number is 212433 WNYC. That's 212-433-9692 and joining me now is Sadiba Hasan, weddings reporter for The New York Times and author of that piece in the Times on this topic, Would you pay to attend a wedding? Sadiba, welcome to the Brian Lehrer show.

Sadiba Hasan: Hey, Bridgid. How are you?

Brigid Bergin: I'm great. I want to start by giving couples some grace here. We know wedding planning is a costly affair, and with inflation being one of the top issues concerning Americans today, I'm wondering if costs have gone up in this area of life as well. How much are Americans spending to tie the knot nowadays?

Sadiba Hasan: Yes, it is true that the cost of a wedding has been increasing drastically. According to a study by The Knot, which is a wedding planning website, the average cost of a wedding in 2023 in the US was $35,000. That's an increase of $5,000 from the year before. The costs really do add up. I've had a lot of readers email me and tell me that when they got married 20 years ago, they only spent a couple thousand dollars, but it's not 2004 anymore, and the costs really add up, especially in larger cities.

Brigid Bergin: Yes, that is definitely for sure. Sadiba, how did you first catch on to this trend in couples now trying to supplement their wedding expenses by actually charging their guests to attend? Is it really happening that often?

Sadiba Hasan: First I actually saw guests complain on Reddit, guests who were sharing that they were invited to a wedding and they were being asked to pay to attend. Then recently, I actually started seeing the couples themselves share why they're doing this. The couples who are doing this share why. One man, for example, went on TikTok and said he was charging guests $450 to attend his wedding in Houston in 2025. Next year in 2025. He told me he spent over $100,000 on his wedding already, which sounds like a lot, but when you add up the venue and the photographer and the DJ and the florists, it really does add up.

It's not a lot like every couple is not doing this, but we are seeing more couples doing this.

Brigid Bergin: Well, not surprisingly, some of our listeners are already responding to that call out. Let's go to Phoebe in Brooklyn. Phoebe, thanks for calling the Brian Lehrer show.

Phoebe: Yes, sure. I was literally shopping for wedding dresses to attend a wedding while this segment came up, so I knew I had to call in. Yes, I'm 29. I've been to like, four weddings a year for the last few years. I'm in that stage of life. I think part of it is that people live so far away from one another now. Our communities are way wider than they were maybe 50, 60 years ago.

I have friends all over the world, and so the destination wedding is kind of the default now when you want everybody to see one another again. I never regret going to the weddings, but I do have to say my biggest gripe is when I have friends who are in their 30s and they're already married or they're already living together for whatever, 10 years, and then they have their registry, and it's just a bunch of stuff that I think they should already own. They'll put a spatula on their registry and I'm like, "How do you not have a spatula?"

I don't know. I haven't been asked to pay for a ticket, but between dressed and travel and hotel, it usually ends up being at least 500, $600 per wedding, which is-- Take the hit.

Brigid Bergin: Yes, absolutely. Phoebe, thank you for that call. Good luck. I hope you find a beautiful dress. I think Phoebe there talking about how this is also something that often can happen to a certain-- During a certain period of your life and not always that period of your life when you are making the most money, making it that much more difficult.

Sadiba, making your friends and family pay to attend your special day seems maybe like a social faux pas. How have wedding guests reacted to being asked to pay? Does this go against the ethos of what a wedding celebration should be?

Sadiba Hasan: Right. Unsurprisingly, this has really upset guests who feel that it's in poor taste for guests to have to pay because the couple can't afford their own wedding. Couples are hosting guests, they feel that guests shouldn't have to pay. While it is true that weddings are becoming exorbitantly expensive, there are still ways to have more affordable weddings. You can cut down costs in other ways, but this really does disrupt our understanding of hosting, and it disrupts our understanding of community, anyway.

A lot of times guests are going to give gifts anyway. Asking them to pay can feel a little weird. Yes, guests have been invited. You invited them, and from an etiquette standpoint, it does go against the grain to invite people to attend your wedding, and you're making it a ticketed event. You're turning your guests into customers. The wedding planners that I've spoken with do agree that it is a social faux pas. Like Phoebe said, the cost of being a guest is also really expensive. The cost of being a guest is becoming more expensive, too.

In 2023, the average cost of attending a wedding was $580. That's according to a study by The Knot the same wedding planning website I mentioned earlier. That's an increase of $120 compared with 2021.

Brigid Bergin: In the cases that you've seen, how does it actually work logistically, are guests usually made aware of costs ahead of time, or is the bride sending Venmo requests the day after the ceremony? What's the process for collecting.

Sadiba Hasan: For the couples that I spoke with, they are kind of making guests aware when sending out their invitations. While sending out their invitations, they're telling guests, hey, we would like for you to pay this amount to attend the wedding. For the after the fact Venmo request, I have been hearing that more from bridesmaids who are being charged for brunches or dresses or different costs after the fact and aren't being made aware of it beforehand. For the couples that are charging an entry fee, essentially, that typically comes with the invitation.

Brigid Bergin: I want to get a couple more callers into the conversation. Let's go to Barbara in Middlesex County, New Jersey. Barbara, thanks for calling WNYC.

Barbara: Thank you. It's customary in New Jersey that guests give money in a card at the wedding. No one really tells you how much it costs per person, but most people are giving $200 to $300 per person.

Brigid Bergin: Barbara, is that gift the way you think of as paying for the costs of the wedding, or are you thinking you're giving that to--

Barbara: The reception.

Brigid Bergin: You think of it as a gift towards the reception itself and not towards the couple as they are starting their life together, so to speak.

Barbara: Right. Many times you've attended a shower, so you may have given a gift at the shower. Then for the wedding itself, most people just give a card with money.

Brigid Bergin: Barbara, thanks so much for your call and for that view from New Jersey. I want to take another view from New Jersey that's maybe a little more controversial. Frederick, thanks for calling WNYC. What's your take? Frederick, I'm going to put you on pause while you turn your radio down. In the meantime, let's go to Laurie in Nassau County. Laurie, thanks for calling.

Laurie: Yes. Can you hear me?

Brigid Bergin: Loud and clear.

Laurie: Yes. I grew up in Idaho originally, and that would have been a serious faux pas to ask people to give money in any manner to attend your function, your wedding or birthday party, or anything like that. That would have just been embarrassing on your part as the host, but having lived on Long Island for several years, it's quite common. You are told in the invitation usually or some way, how much you need to give. It's for everything. Birthday parties, weddings, retirement parties, you are expected to give a certain amount.

Even sometimes if you don't go, well, you still should help out or give. It's just such a culture shock for me because that would have been just, I mean, it's so embarrassing to ask people to do that.

Brigid Bergin: Laurie, thank you for that perspective. Let's go back to Frederick in Trenton, New Jersey. I think Frederick may be the first person with a real gripe besides Phoebe our first caller. Go ahead, Frederick.

Frederick: Okay. One of my best friends got married, and I gave a very, very expensive gift. I never liked a woman to begin with, to be honest with you, because I knew her background. At any rate, that marriage only lasted about eight months or nine months, and my very expensive gift, I wanted to get it back because I felt I got cheated in the whole thing. I mean, he was terribly demoralized and he's still trying to find himself, but that's another story. Of course, I didn't get it back. Am I wrong to even ask to get it back?

Brigid Bergin: Well, Frederick, thank you for that gripe. Sadiba, you cover weddings. We're talking about new customs, people charging for entrance, people demanding their wedding gift back.

Sadiba Hasan: If you gave a wedding gift already, that is the couples' now. I would say most etiquette experts would agree that you can't necessarily ask for your gift back, but the frustration is valid for sure.

Brigid Bergin: Frederick, thanks for that call and sharing that perspective. Sadiba, in a way, paying to attend weddings isn't completely new. We've had listeners text in saying that and certainly, a previous caller talked about how it's customary to give money as a gift, potentially to the wedding. There's also the idea of the destination weddings where there's flights and airfare. Is that any different than these couples who are asking people to pay to attend their wedding?

Sadiba Hasan: Yes, that's a really interesting question because guests are paying a lot of money to attend a destination wedding. They're paying for their flights and their hotels. Those costs also do add up. I will say I've noticed two differences. The first is that couples are aware of the costs associated with the destination wedding, and they tend to have a smaller guest list. They will tend to have close friends, family, and just keep guests smaller. The second thing is that there's a lot of excitement around attending destination weddings.

A lot of people want to go to them. For me, I'm always pretty excited when I get an invite to a destination wedding because I get to go to a new place. I get to travel to a new place. It's a little bit like a vacation while also celebrating love. I had one, I spoke with one couple who had, they're from New York and they had a wedding in LA, and they thought that a lot of people wouldn't show up, but actually their guests were really, really excited to have this, to go to this wedding in LA and have this fun trip out of it. That being said, guests are more than like-- It's totally okay to say I can't afford it or it's not in my budget and politely decline a destination wedding.

Brigid Bergin: Sadiba, do you get to expense weddings since you report on them for The New York Times?

Sadiba Hasan: Most of the weddings that I attend are in the tri-state, so they're pretty convenient to get to.

Brigid Bergin: We'll get one quick call in. Robert in Columbia, Maryland, really quickly, how did your daughter do her wedding?

Robert: Sure. Hi. She and her husband did a complete do-it-yourself wedding, meaning no minister, no judge, no nothing. Over in Pennsylvania, apparently you can do that. You can create your own vows and take care of it on your own. It was only immediate family.

Brigid Bergin: We have to leave it there. Thank you so much for all of our callers. I'm Brigid Bergen, and this is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Stay tuned for All Of It coming up. Thank you so much.

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