The rise of crowdfunded weddings

Crowdfunded weddings are also popular with cashed-up couples, choosing to eschew material gifts to help the environment. Photo / 123RF

Going to a wedding is expensive enough: after paying for the hotel, the outfit, the journey and the gift, the average guest forks out £391 ($NZ583), according to American Express. Now some couples are asking guests to go a step further, and pay for the wedding itself.

Kasia Fleming, 41, and Sam Buxton, 42, began crowdfunding for their 2017 wedding after realising how expensive it would be to host 170 guests. They paid for the marquee in a family garden in Essex and bought the meat for a barbecue, themselves, but the rest was up to the guests. Some gave money directly, others gave their time: making desserts and salads, preparing cheese boards, growing and arranging the flowers, taking photos or DJing.

Overall, Fleming guesses that she and her husband saved £5000 ($NZ10,200) by forgoing gifts for donations: "We already had two children and a flat, so didn't need the typical presents", she says. To co-ordinate all the guests' efforts, they used an online platform called Patchwork, set up in 2016 by Olivia Knight, who was inspired by her own experience of getting married.

"We wanted to ask for money [instead of gifts] but it felt weird", Knight says. She didn't want to go the way of some couples who "just put their bank details in the invitation", but wanted to find a way to make people's contributions tangible, so she built a website where her guests could help to fund specific elements of their honeymoon.

Patchwork was born when she realised other couples might also be looking for a way to ask for favours for the wedding itself – so far 80,000 have used it to gather contributions. "One couple wanted a new patio for their front drive, so people bought a bag of cement or a brick for them", she says. Another asked for money towards a new boiler. "It's not greedy, it's saying, 'Don't waste your money on something we don't need.'"

Knight believes that part of the success of the site comes down to couples like Fleming and Buxton, who are getting married later in life, and already have all the household goods you might typically put on a gift list. The average first-time bride is now 31.5, and groom 37.9, according to the most recent figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics.

In New Zealand, the average ages are 29.2 years for women and 30.4 years for men. according to Statistics New Zealand's 2018 data.

Another thing pushing couples to ask for donations is the rising cost of weddings. In 2019, the average nuptials came to £32,000 ($NZ64,000), according to wedding site Hitched; even in the past five years, costs have increased by 50 per cent as couples feel the pressure to host a lavish shindig to flaunt on social media.

But crowdfunded weddings are also popular with couples on the opposite end of the spectrum, choosing to eschew material gifts to help the environment. Zoe Harvey from Bournemouth is asking for money and favours for her upcoming wedding to Lewis Hall in June: "We're into minimalism, I really don't like waste", she says "so the idea of being bought loads of ornaments or stuff is not that appealing."

They are managing to keep under their £3,000 ($NZ6000) budget by asking guests to design the invitations, make bouquets and cook the canapes; there will be decorations made of driftwood, and second-hand champagne flutes.

Not everyone is in favour of asking guests to help foot the bill. "You can put thought into a present, but money is so cold and transactional", says William Hanson, etiquette coach and author of The Bluffer's Guide to Etiquette. "If you can't afford to get married don't get married. You can have a simple ceremony with one or two guests in a registry office and it would be no less valid than a royal wedding."

And if it is marginally more acceptable to crowdfund the time and skills of guest: "Be prepared for people to say no," he warns. "These days [couples] think they're entitled to the fuss because they see it on Instagram, but they need to get over themselves."

Perhaps Hanson should be relieved that he doesn't live in North America, where crowdfunding is even more shameless. Amanda Knox raised ire this summer, when she tweeted a link to a fundraising site to her 40,000 followers, raising thousands for a space-themed wedding next February to her thought-to-be fiancé, Christopher Robinson; in fact, a record search revealed they were already married last December.

Rugie Wurie, a London-based wedding planner, recently worked with a US bride who hosted a bridal shower where each guest was expected to bring cash. "Brides can make thousands of dollars that could help towards the costs", she says.

And in some parts of Canada there is another tradition called "Jack and Jill" or "Stag and Doe" parties, where entire towns are invited to buy a ticket for a 'do with an informal meal and games. Proceeds from ticket sales are used for the wedding a few months later.

Asking for money so directly may not come this easily for most British couples, but the popularity of crowdfunded weddings shows that when it comes to asking for financial favours, fewer brides are blushing.