Consumerism and Weddings



Since I am recently married I thought this might be a good time to post about some trends I noticed going through the process. There is a whole industry built around weddings, they are constantly bombarding brides and grooms to be with things they absolutely "need" for their wedding to be a special day. There are commercials, radio commercials, TV shows, bridal shows and magazines all geared at making you think you need all this stuff for your day to be special. It is becoming normal for people to take out loans just to have their dream wedding, but what I would like to know is, what would your dream wedding be if you weren't surrounded with all these different medias telling what your dream wedding should be? Do you think it would be the same?
Now we did spend enough on our wedding, but the key point is we did not spend more than we could afford. To save costs I bought fake flowers on clearance at Micheals and made my bouquets, we did not rent any transportation, I made the centre pieces, we live on a farm so we used our beef so the caterer would knock some off the meal cost (it ended up costing around $11.50/person), I set myself a limit of $1000+tax for my dress and did not go over, I even made my own garter and there are many more things I did, but the point I am trying to make is that I did not read those bridal magazines and at the bridal shows I ignored all booths except those for services I had already decided I was interested in. I did this because seeing all these things truly does make one want them, I certainly felt it when passing by a booth with elaborate sparkly centrepieces or advertising some unique form of transportation and such. Or even when I was searching the web for ideas. It is so easy to loss sight of the fact that it's not all the stuff that makes the day special, it's you and your partner, the knowledge that you are pledging to spend your life together. The stuff is very nice but it is not what is special.
Also making the process difficult is everyone has their own ideas of what you should do, and sometimes you might be ready to go "bridezilla" on them. I certainly felt that temptation too, but it is important to step back and remind yourself that these people are trying to help because they care and I actually made a list of certain items that I set aside so they could choose things too, because at the end of the day are you really going to care what ribbon was used or whatever as long as it comes together. And then the people you love get to feel like they were able to help you and be a part of it.
I'm sure everyone has different experiences when planning their wedding, this is just what I myself experienced.