The Expense of a Wedding

I've come to the conclusion that the idea of putting together a medium size wedding for under 10 grand is absolute lunacy. Everywhere I turn, I run into blown budgets. And not just little budgets. We're talking big bad 25 thousand dollar budgets being replaced by even bigger, badder 35 thousand dollar budgets. How can people do this? 35k is like a down payment on a house, or a luxury car. I feel sick to my stomach thinking about spending 10k on a wedding, but the weird thing about the wedding industry is the way they make it all seem so normal.

Take wedding photographers for example. They're one of the most important wedding expenses, for me at least. Eventually, no one will remember how many floral arrangements you had, how good your food was or whether they liked the cake, but you will hopefully have amazing pictures to remember "your big day". This is a sneaky wedding marketing phrase used to convince nervous brides that this is the single most important day in your life and you must book with them or YOU WILL RUIN IT!. They then turn around and admit that most women barely remember their big day, owing to those nerves that made them book in the first place. Interesting isn't it? Thus, many women would barely remember their big day if it weren't for their amazingly expensive pictures. All of this means you really really really don't wanna cut corners on your photographer. In Los Angeles at least, that means being prepared to shell out a LOT of dough.

The prices range anywhere from 2-3 grand, to 15 grand, with or without albums or prints. Chances are the base prices won't include any actual physical pictures or albums, and to order prints from the photographer you need to be prepared to shell out 6-7 dollars per 4x6. When confronted with this insanity, previously ridiculous prices begin to seem normal, nay, not just normal, but a bargain! 3 grand for two photographers all day, two albums and an engagement session? An absolute steal! Never mind that's almost a third of our total budget, the fact that I refused to spend 3 grand on my first car, and the unsettling notion that that's more than I make in a year sometimes as a student.

Really though, what can you do? You don't wanna have a friend take the photos, and even though I have an amazingly talented photographer brother, I definitely don't want to make him work on my wedding day. And that's just the bare bones. It doesn't even take into account the bad photographers, the vendors who don't show up or who lose your photos or take terrible pictures. Sometimes it feels like planning a wedding is an exercise in avoiding disasters while at the same time asking your loved ones to shell out large quantities of cash.

I know, we could elope, vegas is cheap, yadda yadda. I was never one of those little girls who ever imagined planning her wedding, but strangely I really really want to have this wedding. Blame it on the hormones or whatever, but even though our getting married after 8 years is a little anticlimactic, I really want to do this. I want the big stupid white dress, the overpriced flowers (that hopefully won't be that overpriced since we're buying them from the flower mart in downtown LA) and dammit I want a good photographer.

Has anyone actually done this? Is it possible to have a wedding for 100 guests under 10 grand? Can anyone suggest a good photographer?