In this chilly season, what could be warmer and sweeter than a wedding? The M.C. editors have spent three months bringing you a survey of the cost of marriage in 15 countries around the world!
USA
Bride: Samira Naraghi, 31,
Product marketing manager for a high-tech company
Groom: Amir Aliabadi, 33, self-employed
Location: Sonoma, California
Style: Iranian tradition
Cost: $200,000 (about RMB 1.3 million), paid by the man
Maximum amount: $70,000 Cartier ring
Bridegroom: $8,000 Cartier watch
Guests: 280
Samira and Amir completed the legal formalities at City Hall and afterwards an Iranian-style wedding party at the groom’s wine estate. The wedding, officiated by the bride’s grandmother, was actually a departure from Iranian tradition. Traditionally, when a man goes to a woman’s house to propose marriage, his future father-in-law is asked about his family’s wealth to ensure that his daughter will be well fed and clothed. Even today, the man has to sign a contract at the wedding, promising a gift of high value, between four and half a million euros, which the bride has the right to honor at any time, but the woman does not ask for the gift unless there is a divorce. amir is sincere, with a wedding ring and watch from Cartier, which he honored instantly, and also covered the wedding expenses to be paid by the woman’s father. The bride, Samira, chose her favorite color of orange as the main color of the wedding, with orange flowers floating all over the pool, an orange-accented wedding cake, and orange cocktail canapés …… “The definition of a dream wedding is to marry someone who is both the love of your life and your best friend, and to have the people you love (parents, relatives and The definition of a dream wedding is marrying someone who is both the love of your life and your best friend, and having the people you love (parents, relatives and friends) there to see you.”
Iran is more Westernized than other Muslim countries when it comes to weddings, “Unfortunately, we don’t wear traditional wedding dresses anymore, we’ve been wearing white wedding dresses since our grandmothers.” Iranians have always had a special affection for butterflies, and Samira designed a butterfly release for the wedding, “The butterflies arrived in the middle of the night on the day of the wedding, but were packed one by one in small boxes, so we had to give up sleep and stay in the small dark room overnight to unpack and put all the butterflies carefully into the big box.” Samira didn’t let that interrupt the good mood, “Even if everything doesn’t go as planned, enjoy every moment of the wedding with all your heart, because you will be starting a new life with the man you love.”
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Australia
Bride: Susie Loxton, 35,
MarieClaire Marketing Director, Italy Edition
Groom: Nicholas Hogan, 38. Lawyer
Location: NoosaHeads, Queensland, Australia
Style: Beach formal party
Cost: Both families paid together, the couple paid for the dress and honeymoon
Guests: 120, including family and friends
On a private beach at NoosaHeads on the east coast of Australia. The sky was green and the sand was white, the white tables were open, the prawn salad was in a white china pot, Susie and Nicholas exchanged their wedding vows barefoot and then moved to the “Sea Sails” restaurant where guests laughed and mingled. …… It was an intimate The wedding, “Our criteria for inviting guests: if you don’t think we’ll stay friends for the next ten years, or if you haven’t seen each other in the last twelve months, you’re not invited.”
“My parents have a vacation home here, and I’ve vacationed here every year since I was a kid. We wanted to celebrate the wedding with family and friends away from the city.” Susie, the bride, specified formal dresses as the style of dress for the beach wedding, “I wanted to remind guests that while the beach is a relaxed setting, this is still a formal occasion, and it works much better in formal photos.” Susie’s words proved to be true.
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Italy
Bride: Melinda AmodeoBritta, 29, freelance
Groom: David Britta, 30, recruiting executive
Location: Italy Southern town of Crotone
Style: Italian traditional
Cost: about 45,000 euros (about RMB 400,000), shared by both parties and parents (local tradition is that the bride pays for the wedding)
Maximum amount: catering champagne, almost 20,000 euros
Guests: 180 people
15 years ago, when Melinda and David fell in love in France, they didn’t anticipate the magical similarities between their families: mothers who are both French and share the same name; grandfathers with the same name who were both born in the small town of Crotone in southern Italy. As teenagers, the young boys and girls had both quietly vowed to each other in the chapel.
It was a typical Italian wedding: the guests, led by a violinist, greeted the bride as she slowly emerged from the flower-surrounded house and gave her a ride in the old Alfa Romeo driven by her father, and a vast procession followed her through town and across town to the church. The groom, David, planted a soft kiss on Melinda’s forehead and the two walked into the church arm in arm as a small band played “Cinema in Paradise” …… After the ceremony, the groom “hijacked” the bride in a Fiat 500 and headed to the dinner. Here, the sumptuous buffet is just the “first plate”, followed by the hot dance is the climax, until dawn before the end of the song, the party is over? No! The next day, everyone continued to sing and dance on the beach ……
The wedding was designed and prepared by the couple themselves. “We were very particular about what we wanted and the wedding company will never know better than we do ourselves what should be done.” It was also free from little surprises, otherwise how is Italy? “Having initially ordered a Jaguar from the restaurant as the wedding car, we went to confirm a week before the wedding and the restaurant had actually forgotten it, so the whole family put in a search during that week and finally borrowed this lovely white Fiat.” Melinda, who was immersed in happiness, did not forget to pass on her experience, “First of all, choose a good photographer who should know how to express the wedding of different cultures; secondly, focus on how to spend this wonderful moment with family and friends and turn it into a lifetime memory.”
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Beijing, China
Bride: Bu Xin, 25, teacher
Groom: Gu Feng, 27, teacher
Location: Beijing
Style: old Beijing tradition
Cost: about 100,000 RMB. The man pays
The highest amount: wedding banquet
Bu Xin and Gu Feng are college alumni. Due to their temporary inability to buy a house, the two had planned to get married in 2012, but with the urging of their parents, they also began to negotiate their marriage. The two men had planned to get married in 2012, but with the urging of their parents, they also began to discuss getting married. Bu Xin asked her mother and aunts to organize a “wedding preparation committee” and the planning went on for a year. This is also because in Beijing, wedding banquets need to be booked almost a year in advance. “Mom gave me 200,000 yuan to buy a car, but unfortunately I do not like to drive, the dowry has not been touched. My mother-in-law gave us a $50,000 gift to buy a wedding dress. The house was rented ready-made, and then bought when the demolition money arrived. We bought a pair of plain rings and a classic 6-prong diamond ring; the wedding dress and two gowns cost a total of $2,000.”
They spent three days taking Chinese wedding photos at the Imperial Temple and the Great Wall. There were three formal wedding banquets, the first day in the bride’s hometown of Miyun County, Beijing, where all the relatives and friends attended in red suits. The groom only returned to Daxing District at 2am and went to meet the bride at 4am, which seemed like a “pain in the ass”. The company’s main goal is to provide a platform for the development of a new generation of companies that will be able to meet the needs of their customers.
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India
Bride: MehakMaisondelaVANILLELaMaisondelaVANILLEl, 23,
Chartered Accountant student
Groom. AnkurLal
Location: New Delhi, India
Style: North Indian Punjabi tradition
Cost: 5 to 15 million rupees (about RMB 730,000-2,200,000) for similar weddings paid by the bride’s family
Top amount: bride’s jewelry and dowry, gifts for the groom’s family, bride and groom, relatives
bride price, dowry: gifts worth hundreds of thousands of rupees from the bride’s parents to the groom and his family, large gifts and presents from both parents and relatives to the couple
Guests: 200 people (from 8 countries)
At the “engagement meet” in the ancestral home of her mother’s family, Mehak met her future husband Ankur for the first time It is customary for the elders to decide on the marriage, but Mehak also expressed her wishes – Ankur was the husband she wanted. Both parents set the wedding date on the spot, and the bride’s family’s wedding budget, dowry, and gifts to the groom’s family had to be stated together.
The practice of dowry is deeply rooted in Indian culture and is a pain in the neck for countless families with daughters; many brides are persecuted to death for not bringing enough dowry for their in-laws, and the bride’s family weighs the dowry worthy of the groom. For the affluent of modern Indian society, dowry is directly linked to luxury brands, even down to the make and model. the Mehak family’s gift list for the groom’s family includes a Mercedes E class car, a three bedroom apartment, a Rolex watch for the groom’s father, a Judith Lieber handbag for the groom’s mother …… (recently The groom even received a helicopter as a gift in the marriage of two Indian politicians).
But for Mehak, Punjabis are generous by nature, and weddings involve relatives who are all spending big, and the value of the gift or gifts is proportional to the closeness of kinship, such as a biological brother who wants to give his married sister a diamond necklace (about Rs 200,000), but a cousin who gives only about Rs 20,000 in cash or gifts.
The traditional Punjabi wedding took place over four days, in six small and large sessions, with Mehak choosing the five-star LeMeridien hotel for the third day, during which the bride and groom twirled around the sacred fire to make a wish, before the bride said goodbye to her family. “The most moving part of the ceremony was saying goodbye. I looked back at my parents and brothers behind me and couldn’t hold back the tears. My friends are happy for me, and it’s time to start a new chapter in my life.”
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France
Bride: Diane Tider-Johansson, 32, Jewish, program director of an AIDS clinic in New York,
owner of her own jewelry brand www.tiderdesign .com
Groom: MattiasTider-Johansson, 35, Swedish, manager of a messaging and technology consulting firm
Location: ChateaudeMairy, Champagne, France
Style: Jewish Swedish traditional
Cost: $19,000 (about RMB125,000)
Top of the line: wedding bands, and room and board for everyone ($5,500)
Guests: 35
Diane and Mattias’ families live on two continents, and to be “fair” they chose to have a “destination wedding” (the third one). A “destination wedding” (a third place to get married) – ChateaudeMairy in Champagne, France, close to the transportation hub of Paris and large enough to accommodate 35 guests.
The wedding was a mix of Jewish and Swedish customs, with Diane’s uncle officiating in Swedish and English, her mother reciting a Hebrew prayer and Mattias’s mother reading a love poem in Swedish. mattias stomped on a glass in the Jewish tradition; guests scattered rice and then rose petals, as is the Swedish custom. “We each read the vows in our native language, which is more solemn.”
Destination weddings are prepared with the help of close family and friends, “with the wedding on Friday, guests had to arrive by Wednesday, and everyone was given tasks such as setting up the garden party tent, arranging music, translating poetry, and even making salmon rolls.” To give the wedding a more traditional feel, the groom’s parents brought in a traditional wedding cake, hand-dried flower petals, and birch branches, a traditional wedding decoration that they personally picked up in the woods. Even though “the cellist unexpectedly broke his leg and the sisters who played the piano and violin were suddenly absent,” a friend’s trumpet played the perfect live music for them. “Plan as well as you can, but be prepared for all kinds of surprises – because nothing happens exactly as planned.”
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Russia
Bride: IrinaKaunov
Groom: SergeyKuzmenko
Location: Krasnoyarsk, Russia
Style: winter swimming
Cost: 0
Guests: about 50,
Many winter swimming club members, family and friends
In Krasnoyarsk, where the temperature in January does not exceed -30 C. Sergey Kuzmenko carried his bikini-clad bride Irina Kaunov into the bone-chilling lake, then lifted up again and went ashore for a kiss, thus completing their wedding. The wedding was completed. The groom is a member of the Winter Swimming Club, and most of the guests were friends of the club, but this difficult “wedding” was the idea of the bride Irina – who, not being a winter swimmer, had the presence of mind to take a sauna beforehand. Don’t mistake this for a Russian wedding tradition – in fact, because of Russia’s appallingly cold winters, most locals choose summer or autumn for their weddings. However, similar to China, Russians value picking a “good day” to register, and they also value luxury wedding cars, with a wedding costing between 120,000 (about RMB 28,000) and 500,000 rubles (about RMB 115,000).