If I could go academic for a moment, because I have an MA in economics (and am also 6 months into an engagement in a very expensive city)...Your/our haters are wrong. The wedding industry suffers from a market failure that is not easily correctable. The NYTimes says it much better than I can, but the market…

I think, from an economist’s pov, the wedding industry is profiting from asymmetric information. They know infinitely more about the actual cost and labor of the wedding than we, the customers, do, so they can they set a wide mark up. That’s generally because a wedding is only something we buy once (ideally?); we…

I don’t understand why in all the comments there’s no middle between a $3,500 photograph and a quickie at the city council with only your parents and your best friend. I just attended a wedding of 300 people where we were served hot-dogs, sat on rugs during the ceremony and watched a bonfire. She bought a $100-200…

I’m a wedding vendor (a florist) and the answer is actually, kind of, #6. Every bride (yes, even the lentil brides) has a vision for her wedding, and we have no idea what that is until we talk to you. Like your example of 8 succulent boutonnieres— off the top of my head, I’d quote you $45/each. But if I told you that…

My husband and I made a point of only working with vendors who would listed actual prices on their websites. And then we resolved the whole hurdle of making decisions by being very upfront with everyone about our budget, which rapidly eliminated lots of options.

we used the budget tool on weddingwire.com - we typed in our budget and it spread the money out to all the wedding-related categories to tell us how much we could spend on each thing. if we didn’t spend as much on one line item (hello, clearance dress of my dreams!) you could roll the money into another category…