Average Australian wedding costs $65,482

ONCE upon a time, an Australian wedding was a simple affair. But now, the fairytale has been rewritten - and it’s costing happy couples dearly.

Nightmare price of fairytale weddings

ONCE upon a time in towns and suburbs across Australia, couples went to their local church to get hitched.

After the formal bit was out of the way, guests made their way to the footy club, a hall or a house for the reception. It was a pretty simple affair, for family and a few good friends.

But, in 2015, the fairytale has been rewritten.

Personalised websites, planners, champagne fountains, photo booths, lolly buffets, choreographed dances, drone photography, stylised receptions, celebrity chef-designed menus, staff with monogrammed aprons, trendy food vans, fairy floss carts, tailor-made gifts and goodie bags for bridesmaids and even photo shoots the day before the nuptials are all the icing on the cake for this new breed of bride and groom.

The average cost of a wedding for Australian couples is now $65,482, according to the latest Bride to Be magazine Cost of Love survey.

Samantha Amjadali, content manager at easyweddings.com.au, said a wedding was not just an event, but a celebration.

“I think modern couples are very carefree and very much they’re having a day that is theirs,” Ms Amjadali said.

“Every aspect of the wedding, from the scatters on the table to the style of food choices, reflects their likes and personality.”

She said couples felt that their wedding was “their day” and “I will wear what I want, I will play whatever music I want and I will give the bomboniere that I want. I will have a day that reflects me and my partner, not what tradition has dictated”.

“I think in the past, parents paid for the wedding so they had a lot more say than they do now,” Ms Amjadali said.

“(Couples now are) older, they’re savvier, they’re more experienced, they have lived life, they know what they want and they’re paying for it.”

Ms Amjadali said most couples still had simple weddings, there was nothing anymore that could not be personalised about the day: “It’s not just meat and three veg on your menu, you can hire a celebrity chef.”

She said brides flew in flowers from overseas if their favourites weren’t available in Australia, and choose any theme imaginable from cowboy weddings to Harry Potter-themed ceremonies.

Coffee, beer and gelati vans are hired to refresh guests after the service, along with biscuit, popcorn and even doughnut buffets.

And personalisation extends to having it where they want — more than ever, couples are travelling to say “I do”.

“Destination weddings, they don’t have to be in another hemisphere or another country, they could just be somewhere that isn’t your home town,” Ms Amjadali said.

“It’s the whole notion of offering guests a celebration that is truly memorable and having a fabulous time with your nearest and dearest.”

The wedding is being turned into a mini-break for guests and the wedding party alike at locations as diverse as the Dandenongs and Echuca.

The Echuca-Moama area now hosts more than 400 weddings a year, with some venues receiving bookings two years in advance.

And the Echuca-Moama Wedding Expo, to be held on Sunday, May 24, has doubled in size in the past six years.

“A lot of people come here for holidays and then come back to get married,” expo president Tracy Luscombe said.

“Some people stay for the weekend or the whole week and make a mini-holiday out of it. I don’t think it’s a financial thing, I think it’s just the atmosphere. It’s not the city, it’s not rush, rush, it’s a laid-back and country feel.”

But some people go farther afield, and exotic locations are no longer just the domain of the Packers and Clooneys of the world.

Once reserved for those eloping and the very wealthy, weddings in tropical and unusual locations have become more accessible to average Australians.

Sovereign Weddings director Nicholas Damilatis said his business had seen a 20-30 per cent increase in destination weddings in the past five years.

For those trying to save money, the Pacific Islands and Asia were popular destinations. Others were choosing more exotic places.

“People are looking for something different,” Mr Damilatis said.

“People want to turn the wedding into an experience rather than a massive affair.”

Mr Damilatis said one of his clients was married on Santorini, in Greece. “The photos that came back from it were unbelievable — it looked like almost a Hollywood-type wedding.”

Value for money was one of the major motivations behind the decision to take the marriage ceremony offshore, Wedding Destinations owner Angela Woods said.

“What they get, say in Thailand, if they tried to replicate that in Australia that would cost them a fortune,” Ms Woods said.

An overseas wedding also reduced the number of guests, driving down the costs, and newlyweds could tie the honeymoon into the trip.

And, she adds, “the location is just spectacular”.

Wedding Destinations opened 11 years ago when a Dingley travel agency noticed that it had started getting inquiries about saying “I do” overseas.

It was one of the first businesses in Australia to specialise in planning destination weddings and operates nationwide.

“We just rode the wave at the right time,” she said.

Now it accounts for 60 per cent of the turnover, with an average of 10 weddings a month. And the possibilities are endless.

In 2013, Wedding Destinations organised a celebration for a Western Australian couple who wanted to be married in an ice chapel in Finland.

“They wanted to see the northern lights and wanted to see if they could tie in getting married there,” Ms Woods said. They pulled off the icy wedding — the bride was taken to the chapel in a dog sleigh.

“That’s probably the most unusual one,” she said.

“We do cruise weddings, so people get married on shore when they’re on a cruise. They’re a bit different, they’re fun.”

While beachside destinations close to home, such as Bali, Thailand and Fiji, were the most popular, Ms Woods said weddings in Hawaii, Las Vegas, Santorini, Italian cathedrals and Tuscan villas were also popular.

“Sometimes they get engaged there, sometimes it’s somewhere they have always wanted to go or they have always dreamt of getting married there,” she said.

And while value for money was often a prime motivator, Ms Woods said some couples were halfway through planning their Australia wedding before deciding to cancel their plans, lose deposits and go overseas instead. Family intervention is often cited as the reason behind the decision.

“Generally there’s something going on in the family,” she said.

“They figure this way they will go away and do what they want to do.

“For the couple, they feel they can make the day a lot more about them and what they want when they’re overseas.”

MS Woods said with the cost of weddings increasing dramatically in Australia, couples get something a bit different overseas.

This includes a range of extras, depending on the country, such as firework displays, fire shows, hula dancers, drum processions and martial art demonstrations. In Fiji, brides can be carried to their ceremony by warriors.

“We say the wow factor without the price tag is what you get.”

She said a wedding for 30 people in Santorini could cost $12,000, including the ceremony, canapes, drinks, reception, food, hair and make-up, photographer, DJ and Wedding Destinations’ fee.

But a destination wedding usually came with a price tag for guests.

Ms Woods said it could range from a package under $1000 in Bali to up to $4000 per person in places such as Mexico and Mauritius.

“You will have cases where the bride and groom might pay for the family members who can’t afford to come, but generally speaking everyone pays for themselves.”

She said it was a big deal to ask others to pay to go to a wedding and most couples would speak to those most important to them to see if they were OK with it before going ahead.

“A lot of families see it as the opportunity to go away with all your family and friends for a week or so,” Ms Woods said. “There’s not really another event that’s going to do that for them.

“It becomes a week-long celebration as opposed to a few hours here.”

Mr Damilatis said on some occasions, couples paid for some of their guests or would foot the bill for accommodation the night of the wedding, but generally paid their own way.

But couples understood not everyone had the money to attend their wedding.

“In the end, the wedding is not about everyone else, it’s about the bride and groom and their special day. For me that’s paramount and people can choose or not choose to go along,” Mr Damilatis says.

THREE couples whose nuptials were organised by Wedding Destinations described them as fun and relaxed.

For Langwarrin’s Danielle and David Fraser, a wedding beside the Caribbean Sea was the perfect place to “spread the burden of travel” for guests. Danielle, 29, from Melbourne, and David, 30, from Scotland, said Playa Del Carmen in Mexico was chosen as a halfway point to tie the knot.

Ms Fraser said it was the most extravagant thing she had done in her life.

“There were definitely a few ‘wow, I can’t believe we get to do this’ moments,” she said.

The couple had 53 guests at their wedding on April 8.

“We were incredibly lucky to have so many friends and family able to make the trip. I think that was, in part, because we gave people lots of notice,” Ms Fraser said.

“We were surprised but also very, very humbled so many people wanted to be there. I think if you give people enough time to fit it into their lives financially and into their other plans, people do want to be there.”

The couple shelled out $50,000 for the wedding, with the average cost per guest for the week-long celebration, including flights and all-inclusive accommodation, $3500.

Ms Fraser said she knew some of her guests were saving every cent to be able to make it and there were times when she questioned if they were doing the right thing.

But the feedback had been glowing.

Ms Fraser said most guests turned the wedding into a big holiday, heading off to Las Vegas or New York afterwards. “You do feel you are asking a lot of people to travel that far. It made me feel people were turning it into a holiday that they really wanted to do.”

The pair were married beachfront on a rooftop terrace. A mariachi band performed during a cocktail hour and then the party proceeded downstairs.

“We all ended up in the pool at the end of the night,” Ms Fraser said. “It was a big party. Everything was perfect. I couldn’t have asked for anything else.

“I think the wedding was so much fun. I think it was down to the fact that everyone knew each other because we had been staying in a resort for a couple of days.”

CHELSEA Heights couple Ashleigh and Lincoln Bond attended a wedding in Bali and loved everything about it.

When they got engaged, they chose Katatahni in Thailand to get married on March 6.

Ms Bond said they wanted a relaxed and fun wedding.

There were 52 guests and most people stayed seven to 10 days.

Once their parents got their heads around the idea, they relished the idea of a destination wedding, Ms Bond said.

And friends were excited to have an excuse for a holiday.

But Ms Bond said there were some people who couldn’t make it due to other commitments.

“We completely understood that it’s not something you can just go to Thailand when we want them to.”

The pair were married on the foreshore in a secluded area, surrounded by palm trees.

A baby elephant took part in the ceremony, blessing the bride and groom.

“Everyone was just in awe, loved it, just said it was the best thing ever,” Ms Bond said. “Everyone was happy and relaxed and that’s all we ever wanted. There’s no greater feeling than having all your friends and family together on a holiday.”

Ms Bond said the bill was about $20,000 to $25,000.

LOUISE and Daniel Watts hired a private island for their nuptials in September.

“It was amazing,” Ms Watts said. “It was better than perfect. It exceeded all of our expectations.

“It felt like a dream.

“We consider ourselves the average Joe. If we can do it, anyone can.”

The island of Toberua, in Fiji, cost $35,000 to hire.

The Townsville couple had 26 guests, who shared the cost for five nights on the island, where staff catered to their every whim.

The cost of the wedding was $26,000 for everything, down to the dresses.

“The people who make the journey are those that are closest to you, want to support you in the marriage and have a holiday at the same time,” Ms Watts said.

Despite some of the extravagant weddings, Ms Amjadali said most people still had simple weddings.

“At the end of the day, all you need is the couple getting married, the witnesses and the celebrant,” she said. “That’s all it takes to pull off a wedding.”

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