By: Revanche

Elegant Bride is turning me off ….

September 16, 2006

I thought that looking at all the pretty pictures in Elegant Bride would give me ideas that I could economically reproduce sometime in the future. After all, I figure that the time factor when planning a wedding is one of the major reasons vendors can charge so much for their products or services. Just about every bride is planning for an event in the next year-ish, so they don’t have time to bargain shop or to look for creatively economical solutions.

It turns out that my logic was a little flawed here. Bridal products and services are ridiculously expensive because they’re bridal and because quite a few brides/families will pay that kind of money for those sorts of goods. And Elegant Bride is very much catering to that demographic.

For example, they feature the “best weddings” submitted by brides and grooms. These include weddings that involve going to Italy and custom designing a gown, and renting out an entire villa! Or feature articles highlight the new practice of throwing afterparties after the reception is over, featuring bands and brides wearing two custom-made Monique Lhuillier dresses during the day and a third one for the afterparty. Brides who schedule hairdressers a year in advance and actually make periodic consultations all the way up til the actual day to make sure that their hair is absolutely perfect every second of the day. Brides and bridal parties who will pay a makeup artist $1700 a day to do everyone’s make-up, clearly budgetarily justified because if “the bride is already spending 50,000 on her dress” $1700 is pretty much chump change. [Well, they have a point, if you’re going to spend thrice as much on your dress as I could afford on my entire wedding … $1700 pretty much has to be tip money.]

So, Elegant Bride is not for me. Oh, I saw two really pretty dresses that I liked. But I’m sure they cost about a year’s rent or so. And no, I’ve never ever had that highly-touted “jeans or rent?” conversation with myself, as fashionistas apparently have on a routine basis. I find myself so turned off by the whole mess that I seriously felt completely anti-wedding last night. The thing is, I’m a planner and organizer at heart. I love details. I’m the one who plans everyone’s surprise birthdays and farewells and all. And I considered planning a wedding, so long as I had plenty of time, a fun proposition. But this? The ten thousand dollar dresses, the twelve hundred dollar a night suites for honeymooning, the sheer materialism just rubbed me the wrong way and it’s got my back up.

Maybe I’ll settle down after a while, but I seriously don’t want anything to do with the trappings of a traditional Western ceremony right now. Hmph, they’ve sucked all the fun out of planning a party.

3 Responses to “Elegant Bride is turning me off ….”

  1. Kira says:

    Ha.. yeah when I read posts about weddings I think, I am going to have to elope. That’s just all there is.

  2. mOOm says:

    but I seriously don’t want anything to do with the trappings of a traditional Western ceremony right now. Hmph, they’ve sucked all the fun out of planning a party.

    I don’t either… and don’t see much point in getting married per se… so have whatever kind of wedding event that you want to have!

  3. I know BoyDucky is waiting for me to come to my senses …. šŸ™‚
    I know that he’s got his heart set on sharing the day with friends and family so we’ll work it out – when I’m not grumpy about battling the bridal industry!

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