What is wrong with the wedding industry!?

I had a link forwarded to me this afternoon. The Knot had written another article on saving money on your wedding, and it can be found
Here. It’s about time for another rant!

If you’ve ever broached the subject with me, you’ll know that I really dislike about 90% of the “cost saving” advice that comes out of wedding magazines. It’s not that I have anything against employing smart techniques to keep wedding costs from getting out of control. It’s that the vast majority of the advice that wedding media puts out is not only completely biased and self serving, it’s that most of it has no grounding in reality at all!

Like many cake artists out there, I have a major problem with the “get a fake cake designed for you”, with the implication that it should be extremely cheap – if not free! Not only is styrofoam not cheap, but the decoration is where all the labor cost is! I have yet to come across ANYONE where a fake cake is actually a cheaper option (aside from DIY and rentals). Another favorite is the “off season/Friday or Sunday is cheaper” advice. For many vendors, this means overtime, or giving up their only weekend day that week. For me personally, I can only do x number of cakes per weekend – doesn’t matter if it’s Friday or Saturday. It doesn’t cost me less for ingredients or kitchen time for Friday or Sunday weddings

As far as bias and self-serving goes, you’ll notice that none of the major wedding mags will ever recommend making your own wedding dress, or getting Aunt Betty to do it. Why? Because 95% of every wedding mag (more or less) consists of advertisements for wedding gown designers. The mags want to keep their bread and butter happy, afterall. In that vein, you may notice that many mags do not carry ads for online gown discounters, second hand shops, or rentals. Many actually have policies prohibiting it.

Anyway, I could go on for hours… but – back to my main rant. There are so many things wrong with this article, I don’t even know where to start!

Well, I guess let’s start from the beginning:

Stationery for $400. For a 100 person wedding! This is an article looking to cut the cost of a wedding from the average noted ($27,000) down to $10k. $10,000 being just over 1/3 the “average”. That’s a reasonable goal – and one that’s not difficult at all to meet – but to recommend spending $400 for 75 invites with THAT goal in mind is insane. More on this later.

Ceremony for $65. Expecting everyone to stand is hardly reasonable, especially when older guests are involved. Not only is expecting everyone to stand inconsiderate in many cases, it can be downright rude. Seating really should be planned for – the comfort of your guests IS an important consideration! Additionally, this “well thought out article” (/sarcasm) completely neglected to account for the fact that you’ll need to pay for an officiant to hold the ceremony! That usually runs at least $100, but usually more like $200-300.

Ok, sorry.. not “neglected”.. just totally glossed over the issue of officiating. Sure, you can get a friend “ordained” online, but this is definitely one of the cases where you really should have a professional do it. This is your wedding! While I’m sure that some of us have friends that would do a passable job, is it worth the risk? This is what your wedding is all about!

Flowers for $150. Realistically, fans or parasols can cost just as much – if not more – than well chosen, thrifty flowers – ESPECIALLY when you consider shipping on something as long/irregular as a parasol! If you’d prefer the look of them, that’s one thing – but if you have your heart set on flowers, then this advice makes no sense whatsoever.

Photography for $500 This is a really, really low goal. It sort of blows my mind that they’re considering photography only marginally more important than stationery when it comes to the budget! These are your photos, that you’ll look at forever. It’s tempting to cut the cost here,but as someone who feels a not-healthy combination of sick-to-her-stomach and outright RAGE when looking at her wedding photos – it’s NOT worth going as cheap as humanly possible on the photographer. $500 is very, very low. It’s not just the time AT your wedding, it’s post production, print costs, travel, time getting ready.. I think it’s really easy to lose sight of how much work really goes in to shooting even a 4 hour wedding.

Attire for $400 I don’t have a ton of problem with their advice here, amazingly enough.. but check our next entry for more ideas!

Hair and Makeup for $160 Again, not a ton of problem with their advice, even if they’re missing some great advice!

Videography for $300 Realistically, for the “quality” of video you’ll get for only $300, you may as well just have a friend set up a tripod. Pay for a real pro, or don’t waste your money at all. Unless you are adept at editing video, getting uncut footage is a bad idea / waste of money also. Either you won’t enjoy it, or you’ll be paying for someone else to edit it later – probably more expensive than the original videographer would have been!

Reception for $6500 Eh, not bad.

Reception Decor for $325Decent.

Reception Music for $500 I’m truly amazed that they didn’t suggest having a friend bring an IPOD. That one always makes me cringe!

Wedding Cake for $225. I’d glad they said “local bakery”. Ordering cake from a grocery store or big box discounter is throwing money out the window – GOOD cake gets eaten. I do think that you’d be hard pressed to find decent cake at the prices listed in this article.

Transportation for $4 Pardon me, but OMFG!!!!! Are they serious?! $400 on invites, but take the SUBWAY on your wedding day!? In your gown. Wow. Just.. wow. NYC Subway at that? Lovely way to travel on your wedding day. Ugh. Take some of that stationery money and invest it in proper travel arrangements!

Favors for $20 So they want you to spend $15 on PLASTIC BAGS (from their own site, no less).. but allot only $5 for the actual ingredients to make them? Wait, less than $5 – I’m assuming there is shipping on top of the $15!

Overall, on top of some unrealistic ideas of pricing/priorities (SUBWAY!), I was also unimpressed with how much they did not consider. Aside from the officient, things like gifts for your attendants, gratuities to vendors, etc were completely left out. Every little bit adds up.. and while it IS possible to do a wedding for $10,000… it’s not realistic to think that the wedding they describe would come to under $10k.

This is getting long, so I will be splitting this into 2 entries. Up next: BETTER ways to save on your wedding.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.