Weddings can be expensive. Just thinking about all the stuff to pay for might make one rage till they’re purple in the face. If it’s the marriage for the King Of The Seven Kingdoms, you best believe all the stops are getting pulled.
Performers
Per the folks at Fire Pixies:
Rates for fire dancing shows start at $349 for a solo show, and you can expect to pay an additional $200-$250 for each additional firedancer. Some shows are highly choreographed and more involved, so they cost a little more…
The episode features 10, and we’ll assume hula hooping and juggling on stilts would qualify as “more involved”…. $450 for the first and $350 for the rest comes to $3,600 total.
Next there’s the musicians who score this. Bands do not quote rates unless you’re ready to book, but CostHelper suggests:
The average cost for a 4-hour performance by a 5-member live band, which is the most typical size, is $2,085. A smaller band of 4 performers averages $1,150, while a bigger band consisting of anywhere from 6 to 10 members, averages $2,200.
It’s a three person band, and Joffery was awful quick with the coin toss… $2,000 sounds about right. Although if you’re a purist, Sigur Rós is rumored to cost a cool $1.5 million a pop.
Comedy
Comedy Central pays up to $15,000 for a half hour special, so even though he bombs, he’s not cheap. And then there’s the play Joffrey has staged with little people to both recap the entire plot and also humiliate his uncle, Tyrion, because it just wouldn’t be a wedding without a family member being a tool. You not only need to find five little people: They’ve also got to have stage combat experience. A stunt day player would be $610 a head according to SAG and AFTRA rules, but to find specialized performers, Joffrey would probably pay double that, bringing us to $6050.
Venues
Apparently, if you’re a member of the church you’re getting married in, it can be vastly cheaper than a wedding out-of-pew. Paying for the priest, organist, and clean up can be as low as $350, but non-members may be charged as much as $2,000. The good news is that he’s king, so he can make them do it for free. Same goes for the reception venue. Then again, he spent three times that just to be a jerk to his uncle, so we’re guessing Joffrey isn’t big on the saving.
Open Bar And Fancy Finger Food
Joffrey likely exclusively served wine, and he had a thousand guests. On average, it’s predicted that it will cost you between $16 and $20 a head for booze at an open-bar wedding, so let’s go on the high end: $20,000.
Think the liquor budget is excessive? He’s still got to feed all one thousand guests, and as we know, he didn’t go cheap on that, either. Considering a high-end wedding in Manhattan will cost $75 a head to feed, that gives us a total of $75,000.
The Total Bill: $123,650. If you’re wondering, that’s five times the average cost of a wedding, which currently runs an average of $25,000. And that’s just the average, which is thrown out of whack by weddings that cost much, much more; most couples spend less than $10,000 on their wedding, meaning Joffrey spent ten to twelve times the cost of that wedding you went to last weekend.
But, hey, most of the guests had fun at the Purple Wedding, so that’s all that matters, right?
