Xue Sheng, if you had had a Chinese wedding without enough food to sink a Nimitz Class aircraft carrier something would have been seriously wrong. The Chinese take their food almost as seriously as the Jews do.
Flying Crane - you said the Unvarnished Word about the markup in the bridal industry. What's worse, the moment the planning starts the bride and all her female relatives are encouraged to throw out all higher faculties and turn into a brainless emotional wreck. "Bridezilla". "Mother of the Bride". *snarl*
We looked at wedding sites. At least a thousand bucks to rent any place decent
as a wedding venue. Rent the local Irish pub for the morning? Six hundred bucks, and they were sentimental enough to toss in the first set of the Irish fiddle band that was playing in the afternoon. The owner was tickled. A friend of the family had been ordained as a priest recently. The ordination couldn't be in the cathedral (mold abatement issues), so they held it in the same pub. An ordination. A wedding. Several wakes. I'm betting there have been christenings there since.
Wedding caterer? Twenty or thirty dollars a head for pretty lame "wedding food". Arrange to pick up the barbecue and Lebanese food that morning from local restaurants? Maybe fifteen a person for really good eats.
Decorated wedding cake? Hundreds.
Cakes from a local bakery? Very reasonable and tasted just as good.
Wedding dress? Even in those days five or ten thousand easy.
We could have hired a seamstress to do just as good a job for a grand. But Tiel went with a very nice black dress painted with Calla Lilies that had belonged to her grandmother. Total cost, zip. And it brought a tear to her mother's eye to see her wearing it.
Rings? See above.
Booze? We weren't about to pay for that. Many couples don't. We were in a pub. The owners probably doubled their profits for the morning.
Attendants? We didn't have any. We could have had a few friends wear LBDs (for the women) and suits (for the men). We did have a few of the guests who were staying with us help set up the food and decorations the morning of the wedding. Five people got everything set up for about sixty guests in a couple hours. All it took was a little organization.
Total cost for everything? About $3000.
Turn the whole thing over to a Consultant? The sky's the limit. But only until they get the idea of space-tourism nuptials.
When our dear friends Neil and Maritza got married it was even smaller and easier but just as nice as your average fifteen thousand dollar bridal extravaganza.
A year and a half ago our dear friends Neil and Maritza got married in Neil's aunt's house. The women of the family cooked lunch. I performed the ceremony. Their wedding rings were a suitably geeky yet attractive titanium. Tiel stood in for Maritza's family and kept her from bolting. It was sentimental, beautiful and cost a few hundred bucks tops.
According to a couple articles the
average American wedding costs close to thirty thousand dollars.
Thirty. Thousand. Dollars. That was three years ago. It's not just an outrage. It's obscene.