The couple didn't want their wedding to be a party for others, which is why they chose to keep things to a minimum.
Celebrity weddings are usually an extravagant affair.
But not all celebrities feel they need to go all out to make their wedding a memorable day. In fact, when Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell had their impromptu courthouse wedding in 2013, the two of them only spent $142 in total!
See, even if you spend the bare minimum like Shepard and Bell or go all out like other celebrities, the ultimate goal is the same, right?
Honestly, Shepard and Bell have always been vocal about things, and even when they announced their engagement in 2009, they also shared that they would not get married until same-sex marriages were legalized, per Business Insider.
“We’re not going to have a party when half of our friends … can’t do that thing we’re doing,” said Dax Shepard on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live.
Finally, in 2013, when the Supreme Court terminated the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Kristen Bell tweeted at her future husband: “will you marry me?” along with the hashtag #loveislove.
Even when they got married, they wanted to keep their circle and expenses to a bare minimum. "The whole reason we didn't want to have a wedding or even a celebration, which was a tough pill for our families to swallow, but I politely reminded them: 'If you want a party, you can throw a party, Okay? I don't need to throw your parties. Have a party.' But we really, genuinely wanted the celebration of our unity to be the rest of our lives," Bell told UPI.
"And so, we didn't want to A. waste a bunch of money on one party or B. have the celebration contained. I think the idea of weddings -- in my opinion, I don't fault any girl for whatever she wants -- but in my opinion, I see it getting out of control and it's not what I would want. A. I'd prefer the cash and B. I feel like that's why we did it tiny and at the courthouse. We want the rest of our lives to be that party."
Elaborating on their decision, Kristen said, “We wanted the lowest-key day possible.” Additionally, she did not want to take on the stress of planning a wedding from start to finish. “The last thing we wanted to do was take something and add stress—Who’s invited? What’s for dinner?—since we’d rather buy a family member a house,” Kristen told The Knot.
The two simply completed the paperwork online and went to the courthouse to pick up their license. At the courthouse, they learned they would need an actual officiant for the process, and since no one else was around, they got someone from the courthouse itself to do the job for them.
“The total was $147 and I believe that included the gas in the car and the playlist,” Bell adds. “He bought all of my favorite songs from high school on to play in the car on the way there and those $1.99 single tracks, the total for the day was $147.”
There is just so much pressure on people getting married to break all their savings and invest them in something that has no returns. Spending money on a wedding is just like throwing it down a drain; given how it's something we do to please people around us. The fact that people like Shepard and Bell—who can actually afford to pay for an extravagant event—chose to have a small-scale one must be inspiration enough for all of us.
References:
https://www.businessinsider.de/international/kristen-bell-dax-shepard-proposal-story-2019-10
http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/24/tonight-dax-shepard-and-kristen-bell/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Frazer Harrison
