An awful lot of Tarmac! We reveal the £140,000 cost of those Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (just don't ask where the cash comes from)
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A Royal wedding may only be three months away, but it’s another type that has the nation gripped — the big fat gypsy variety. Channel 4 has the Irish travelling community to thank for their highest viewing figures in three years. Every Tuesday night seven million people are tuning in to gawp in disbelief as travellers are shown celebrating their marriages in their own unique and colourful way on Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.
As the programme shows, the gypsy wedding is a world where subtlety is banned and big and bling is always better.
Extravagance: Gypsy weddings have got the nation gripped thanks to a TV programme - but how do the fathers of the bride pick up the six-figure price tags - and where does the money go
Such over-the-top extravagance doesn’t come cheap but the first rule of gypsy weddings is that nobody talks about money. Internet forums are awash with people puzzling over how fathers of the bride, who pick up the wedding tab, can afford the six-figure price tags when they mostly work as manual labourers.
Here, with the aid of insider information, we run a slide-rule over the particulars:
A Dress Weighing More Than The Bride
Gypsy brides don’t do understated. Their dresses should be eye-catching and back breaking. Imagine a walking blancmange, the colour of cough mixture, and you won’t be far wrong.
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ShareComfort doesn’t come into it — these Swarovski jewel-encrusted puffballs usually come with 24 petticoats and a 20ft train, and can weigh up to 20 stone. A gypsy bride wears her wedding dress scars like a badge of honour.
Eye-catching and back-breaking: Dresses worn at gypsy weddings can cost up to £50,000, weigh 20 stone and have a 20-foot train
Thelma Madine, of Liverpool-based Nico’s Dressmakers, is the lady who has designed the majority of the dresses in the Channel 4 series.
She’s the Elizabeth Emmanuel of the gypsy world and, just like a royal designer, she won’t discuss her clients. Unlike the Emmanuel gown that Princess Di wore up the aisle, however, her bridal creations have included mechanical butterflies with fluttering wings and inbuilt fairy lights.
‘I’ve known dresses that cost up to £50,000,’ says Thelma revealingly. Before quickly adding: ‘I’m not saying I made them though.’
Cost: Astonishingly anything from £15,000 to £50,000
Bridesmaids... Or Barmaids?
Forget virginal and virtuous — at a gypsy wedding the bridesmaids look more like burlesque dancers. Even though gypsies always get married in church, flashing the flesh is not frowned upon.
Red, pink, purple and coral are among the favourite colour choices. With most gypsies coming from large, extended families it’s not unusual for a bride to have up to a dozen maids follow her up the aisle.
Corset is! Bridesmaids at gypsy weddings are not afraid to flash the flesh with red, pink, purple and coral among the favourite colour choices
The bridesmaid dresses chosen to complement Sam Norton’s frothy pink gown in this week’s episode included eye-popping black and pink tight-fitted corsets with diamante butterflies (right).
Seamstress Emma Green, from Lancashire, who created the daring numbers with taffeta trains says: ‘Usually travellers want very big white or baby pink dresses with lots of diamante, stars and hearts. They accessorise with crowns, massive tiaras and mini top-hats and bow ties, but some of the designs they come in with are so complicated they are just not possible to do.’
As always with gypsy weddings, bigger is better, so why have two bridesmaids when you can have 22?
Cost: Upwards of £20,000.
Feast: The wedding cake must look good as well as taste good - and there must be plenty of it as there are often food fights at the weddings
Bake Me A Cake As Flash As You Can
The wedding cake should be a feast for the eyes as well as the mouth. There’s usually plenty of it, too, as it may well end up on the floor and walls. It’s not uncommon for gypsies to have food fights at wedding receptions, as exemplified by the wedding of Josie, 17, and Swanley, 19, in the TV show.
Cakes in the shape of Disney-style castles are a favourite as are elaborate, edible butterflies. Rather than a traditional bride and groom on top, a gypsy wedding cake is adorned with feathers, jewels and fireworks and the icing usually matches the bride’s chosen colours.
‘They are willing to pay for that magical cake and the cost increases with the complexity of the design,’ says Ruth Daniel of Sweet Art Cakes in Bristol. ‘Lots of decorative piping, pillars and tiers creates the right look.’
Cost: £1,000
The Open To All Reception
There are no formal wedding invitations, it’s all word of mouth and anybody in the community who wants to turn up can. With no RSVPs it’s impossible for the bride to know how many guests will expect to be fed and watered.
The hot buffet will serve everything from lasagne and stew to chilli con carne and pizza. And everything comes with mountains of chips.
Unlike some weddings, you’ll never see a pay bar at a gypsy wedding. The bride’s proud father is expected to foot the hefty booze bill. While the unmarried women aren’t allowed to drink, the married ones, and the men can — and do.
With around 300 guests troughing and swigging into the early hours, daddy shouldn’t expect to pay less than £100 a head once a venue has been hired, and entertainment arranged.
As well as toasting the happy couple, gypsy weddings are also good hunting grounds for a man on the lookout for a wife.
While the men don’t tend to dance, the women bump and grind to the live band or DJ like good ’uns in the hope of catching a man’s eye.
Cost: £30,000 plus
What I Wheely Want
A gypsy bride simply must arrive at the church in style — gypsy style that is. Ever since Katie Price arrived at her wedding to Peter Andre in a glass Cinderella-style coach, every gypsy bride has wanted to copy her. Katie’s coach was a one-off, but thanks to demand there are now dozens of replicas in circulation that cost around £1,000 a day to hire. Even the white shire horses that pull them get a make-over as their manes are plaited and ribboned.
Arriving in style: The bride has to arrive at the church in a vehicle to remember - and ever since Jordan's wedding to Petre Andre, that has been in a white horse-drawn coach
The rest of the family arrive in anything from stretched pink limos to monster trucks with lightning flashes painted on the sides and their very own mini bar — like the one favoured by the groom in last week’s show. And a monster truck comes with a monster price tag — £700 for a few hours’ use.
Cost: £5,000, paid by the father of the bride.
The Future’s Bright, The Bride is Orange
The bridal look takes time, money and gallons of spray tan to achieve.
A gypsy bride starts the tanning sessions weeks before her wedding to ensure she is sufficiently tangerine for her big day.
A big dress, must be matched by big hair, which means hundreds of pounds worth of extensions woven in. The make up is trowelled on by professionals, while the whole look is finished off with fake, showgirl-style eyelashes, and 3in, bejewelled acrylic nails.
One make-up artist, who asked not to be named but is behind the looks of a few gypsy brides in the North-West, said the preparation starts a week before the wedding with facials, waxing and trial hairdos.
‘There’s no subtlety, the heavier the better as far as make-up goes,’ she says. ‘And they pay for everything in cash. I was foolish enough one time not to check how much they had given me until I got home to discover it was only two-thirds of what I’d charged. I don’t want to be ripped off again, so I avoid getting involved now.’
By contrast, expectations seem low when it comes to the groom’s attire. As we’ve seen on the Channel 4 show, they often wear a vest to the reception.
Cost: £2,000
Bling: The towering tiaras worn by the brides can cost more than £1,000 and contain countless Swarovski crystals and pearls
Towering Tiaras and Bouquets of Bling
Gypsy girls can’t get enough Swarovski crystals — the Swiss-imported precision-cut crystal glass.
Their towering tiaras (far right), which cost around £1,000 each, are full of them, while seed pearls are scattered liberally through gowns and veils. Necklaces and earrings don’t escape the telltale shimmer either, and just to add a bit more bling to the proceedings, jewel-encrusted wedding rings are also favoured .
Adam Khan, who sells clothes and jewellery for a gypsy wedding every week from his shop, Anna Mode, in North London, says: ‘The bride negotiates and they always expect good prices. Nobody has ever said to me “have you got anything less showy” — the more over-the-top the better.’
Cost: £2,000
Those Final (Tacky) Touches
Her wedding is the most important day of a gypsy girl’s life and it’s important to capture everything on film, so no expense is spared when it comes to hiring professionals to record every glorious moment.
The bride’s bouquet will match her dress and will usually be assembled with a healthy scattering of Swarovski crystals.
Balloons and ribbons on the tables at the wedding breakfast provide an extra helping of class. And once in full swing, the celebrations can go on for two days, enough time to get through a river of Cheeky Vimto (pint glasses of double port mixed with alcopops).
Cost: £2,250 which breaks down as £850 for a photographer, £400 for a videographer, £500 for flowers at the church and for bridesmaids, £300 for table decorations, balloons and ribbons, £200 for a jewel-encrusted wedding bouquet.
The Caravan Club
Few parents are in a position to buy their children’s first home but, not content with forking out a fortune on their big day, wedding presents from the parents of the bride and groom usually include a caravan for the pair to set up home in, with prices starting at around £25,000.
Present: The bride and groom's parents often buy a caravan for the couple to move in to once they return from their luxury honeymoon
But before reality hits, the happy couple get to experience the luxury of a honeymoon in Turkey or the Canary Islands at a further cost of £3,000 to the bride’s parents with the mysteriously deep pockets.
Cost: Upwards of £30,000
Typical Total Cost: £142,230. That’s six times the price of an average non-gypsy wedding. And all paid in cash, naturally.
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