One of the articles I read about “how to save money for my wedding” discussed telling vendors that you just wanted to hire them for a “special event.” Don’t tell them you are hiring them for a wedding, otherwise the price gets marked up to a ridiculously high rate. Weddings have a markup in this country… really, in this world. The rest of the world is slowly adapting to how expensive weddings are in the U.S. I only had to take a look at a few photography packages in Melbourne to get a quick comparison of how much the markups are traveling out of the U.S.

Realistically, I don’t think you can actually do that. How can you hold a wedding and not tell your… officiant that? What about your photographer? I really don’t think it can be done.

I think I have a pretty good hold of what needs to be done to plan our wedding, but to be completely frank, the one task I need to get done that every woman on earth seems to think I will enjoy.. I already have a feeling I will hate. And that’s trying on and choosing a wedding dress. I hate trying on clothes, so I’m not sure why trying on a wedding dress would be “fun” for me. And to make matters worse, I know these dresses are massively overpriced for what they are, so it’s only going to make me feel worse. Chris’s cousin’s fiancee said her dream dress costs 3,000 euros. Well, my dream dress costs in today’s dollars about $11K USD… but I could potentially get it for $5.5K pre-owned. That is still a ridiculous amount to spend on a dress I will only wear for about four hours ever.

This damn industry.