Man Shares Video Of 'Food Stamp' Wedding & Says 'I Don't Care What None Of Y'all Say This Is Beautiful'
"Love don't cost a thing," as a wise woman famously once said.
TikTok Weddings nowadays are often absurdly expensive, with even the smallest details quickly adding up to an exorbitant price tag—and that's before you even get into what a wedding dress costs.
Of course, not everyone has the money for a $50,000 wedding—or even a $5,000 one—so some people have to get creative. But as a TikToker recently shared, even the most low-budget wedding can still be a beautiful affair when the love between the bride and groom, and not the price tag, is the center of it all.
A TikToker posted a video of what he called a 'food stamp wedding' because of its low budget.
"I don't care what none of y'all say," the TikToker wrote in the onscreen text, "this is a beautiful EBT wedding."
EBT, or "Electronic Benefit Transfer," refers to the debit cards with which food-stamp recipients and others on public assistance pay for groceries. The TikToker went on to say the wedding was "the highest quality of food stamp service."
The low-budget wedding was held in someone's living room.
The wedding was a decidedly low-cost affair. The venue was someone's living room, where the couple's family gathered on folding chairs. The simple decor included strings of lights, balloons, and a lacey drape over a doorway.
That doorway ended up being where the bride made her big entrance in a traditional white gown with a lacey shrug and tiara, accompanied by a family member, presumably the father of the bride, in a simple dress shirt and pants. Rather than a videographer, a woman simply filmed the woman coming down the aisle on an iPhone.
It may have been missing the grander touches we traditionally associate with weddings, but the moment was no less emotional for those in attendance. The bride's face says it all—as she approaches her groom, she is visibly emotional and seems to struggle not to cry.
And behind her, her family and friends, some who are dressed up and some of whom just kept it simple in jeans and a t-shirt, all beam with pride and joy as they drift into the aisle to snap photos and take videos of the bride's big moment. Low-budget or not, the joy in the room is unmistakable.
Many people were upset by what they saw as an attempt to mock the couple's low-budget wedding.
According to an analysis by the wedding website The Knot, the average cost of a wedding in 2022 was $30,000 That's an astonishing amount of money to pay for a party. That's the down payment on a house. That's a year's tuition at some universities. And the costs are only going up—2022's figure was a $2000 increase over 2021.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with spending that if you have it. But many, like the woman below, felt the man's TikTok was nothing more than class-based snobbery.
"What do y'all do for a living that y'all feel as though you need to downplay someone else and how they live their life," she said, going on to say, "we're all struggling out here."
Another man agreed. "The EBT comment?" he said, "miss me with that one." He instead praised the couple for their low-budget wedding, applauding them for not getting "caught up in the pomp and circumstance" of putting on a huge, expensive wedding "for people who don't even care about you."
One woman was so angry she was moved to tears, chiding the man for turning the woman's wedding into something "everybody in the world is looking at, laughing at it" in his attempt to "go viral."
But as she went on to point out, if mockery was the man's goal, it seems to have thankfully backfired.
Many praised the couple's low-budget wedding and thought their marriage was built to last because of it.
Nearly all of the commenters refused to take the mocking bait. "EBT Wedding or not, she’s a beautiful bride!!," one woman wrote. "I bet they last a lifetime!" And as another commenter pointed out, we all know someone who went hard on a big-budget wedding and ended up in divorce court a few years later.
"I've seen people spend 6 figures for a marriage that didn't last a year," one woman wrote. "The money is best served on a great honeymoon anyway."
Others shared stories of their own low-budget weddings—and the long marriages they began. "My husband and I had a very very simple wedding with a handful of people," one woman wrote, "and tomorrow will be 22 years we’ve been married."
And for most people, what showed through the video was not the wedding budget, but the palpable love in the room. As one TikToker put it, "Surrounded by love, that’s all we can hope for."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.