What It Actually Cost to Be a Guest

I kept the receipts, which in retrospect was either diligent or a cry for help, and this month I finally added them up in one column.

Eleven thousand four hundred dollars. Flights: $4,180, of which the destination wedding in Portugal was $1,240 by itself. Hotels: $3,100, in four cases at a “room block” rate that was above the public rate on the same site on the same day. Gifts: $2,050. Outfits: $1,090, three of them for bridal parties with a specified color. Hair and makeup, mandatory, twice: $340. Bachelorette weekends: $640, and that is with two declined.

Not on the list: the twenty-two days of paid leave, which is more than my annual allowance, which means some of it was unpaid.

I want to be extremely clear about something, because this genre always slides into resentment and I do not feel resentment. I love these people. I would go again. Every one of the nineteen was a day somebody had wanted since they were small, and I got to stand in a room while it happened. That is not nothing; that is most of what a life is.

The problem is not any single wedding. It is that no couple can see the other eighteen. Each one is asking for one weekend, one flight, one dress, and each request is individually reasonable, and the sum of nineteen individually reasonable requests is a car.

So this is the piece I would want to read if I were planning one, and it is not an attack: your guests will not tell you. They will say yes and figure it out. The room block is not always the deal. The color-matched dress is $180 they will never wear again. And the friend who declines is not declining you.

The block was $289. The same hotel, same dates, same room category, on the hotel's own site, was $248. The gap was noticed by four guests independently and mentioned by none of them to the couple, because what exactly would you say.

Blocks are guaranteed inventory, not a discount, and the couple is often on the hook for unfilled rooms — which is why the pressure to book inside it is real and why nobody wants to be the guest who cost their friend money.

Check the public rate. Book the block anyway if there's a minimum. But know which thing you are doing and why.

The line items were: a snorkeling excursion, a “sunset dinner,” and a category called simply “Memories,” at $250 each.

A registry with a toaster on it tells you what someone needs. A registry with Memories on it at $250 tells you something too.