Weddings always have been festive (read “expensive”) affairs.
Today, however, it’s ridiculous.
One study found a wedding ceremony costs 15 times what it did a generation ago. The average number of guests invited to a wedding is 178. The average wedding budget is $20,000.
And, as a father of a bride-to-be, I am pain-fully aware that there is absolutely nothing that any man can do about this. “Just keep your mouth shut and your wallet open,” I tell myself.
Still, simply as an academic exercise, I would like to pose some questions.
Having planned parties for years, why do parents need a wedding coordinator? Is it to argue with the wedding coordinator of the church, temple and hotel?
Why does every distant relative, long-lost friend or person you ever met have an advocate to place them on the invitation list?
Why can’t invitations be e-mailed, and why must all invitations be engraved in gold?
Why must you spend $1,000 (or several times more) for a custom wedding dress that is worn once, then spend a couple hundred dollars to have it cleaned before it is put away forever?
Does the dress take five months to make because the beading and pearling has to be outsourced to India?
Why does a bridal party forget how to bathe, shampoo, blow-dry, comb, apply makeup and dress themselves, thus requiring several thousand dollars worth of stylists and assistants?
Given that the newlywed couple receives gifts typically worth $70 to $200 each, shouldn’t they be required to share some of these with the father of the bride to help offset his costs?
Since you pay all your life to a church or synagogue, wouldn’t it be the godly thing for them not to add a few hundred dollars to your already mountainous wedding bill?
What does a banquet have to do with a rehearsal?
Couldn’t a CD and stereo replace the band of questionable talent that you hire for $5,000 to play “Hava Nagillah”?
Why does everyone suddenly stop dieting when you’re paying for all of the food and alcohol?
If nobody eats the cake, why must you pay hundreds to have one?
If the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association can identify “Post Election Liberal Democratic Blues” as a dysfunction, what about “Aging Male Wedding Psychosis”?
Mustn’t my future son-in-law love my little girl a lot, judging by that stone he got her?
Aren’t they terrific kids?
So, isn’t that why, despite all of the questions I’ve posed, I’ll be feeling like a million dollars in my tux, holding one red rose, walking my daughter up the aisle?
“Young lady, shall we dance?”
Glueck, M.D., of Newport Beach, is a writer and frequent contributor to the Business Journal.
