Wedding Expenses - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Wedding Expenses

One of my wife’s siblings found the above pictured envelop recently while going through their deceased father's desk in the basement of their home that is being prepared for sale. Inside were the receipts from our wedding back in 1972. The remnant of the rubber band holding the receipts inside was evident, but the rubber band itself had long ago deteriorated but left its mark, Inflation rates were high then just as they are now at over 6%, and no doubt my father-in-law was pinched for cash so had to keep track of every penny spent on the wedding of his oldest of 4 daughters.. He held down two jobs at the time, as Russia mailman and after delivering the mail, would go to work at his father’s storm door and window business in Piqua, arriving home around 7:00 every night.

My wife loved to tell the story about her father when they were building their home in 1960. The expenses were higher than expected and her dad was commiserating about their finances. My wife then about 9 years old overheard the conversation and gathered her younger siblings together suggesting they each raid their piggy banks to help pay for the new house. After collecting several dollars in changes, the money was presented to their father. He shrugged and made the comment that the money would not even pay for a darn door knob! Her father always claimed he would have never spoken such a harsh words to his children! Check out the door knob circled in blue above.

Looking over the faded receipts yielded some amazing statistics. No surprise, drink expenses were about 1/3 of the total, including $67 for 16 bottles of wine, including Boone’s Farm, Wild Mountain and Mogen David, $514.66 for 16 cases of booze, mostly Kesslers and five 16 gallon kegs of beer for $93, plus $72 for 4 bartenders.

Food was $363, $120 for the band and St. Remy’s hall rental of $369. The wedding cake was $53 and the flowers $7 for a single centerpiece at the wedding table.

Overall the wedding cost $1620.90. The only thing missing was the cost of the wedding dress and the tip for Msgr. Schneider who officiated over the wedding mass.

Exactly 500 people attended the wedding, as the cooks would count the number of plates used at dinner to get the actual attendance. I can recall trying with great difficulty to reduce the invitations to a manageable level before the wedding. Finally to make the count, we eliminated inviting the children of the our neighbors around the farm, a difficult decision since as a kid, I had been included in all the neighborhood wedding and always had a blast. Here’s a previous blogpost on a memorable neighbor wedding.

The cost for the wedding was just over $3 per person. Back then the average wedding gift was about $10 from each family. Heading off to our honeymoon after the reception, we needed some quick cash, so my new wife opened one of the wedding cards we had received. Lo and behold, inside the first card was what appeared to be a folded $100 bill! from my uncle and aunt like shown above.

Cost of everything is going up, but how much since 1972 is really staggering.

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