Prioritizing What is Important
Ruby Dilts
You can do a lot with $25,000.
According to okbu.edu, $25,000 is the average net price a student would likely pay to our institution over the course of a year.
$25,000 is also the average amount theknot.com estimates an Oklahoma bride might spend on her wedding day. The last thing I’d like to do is perpetuate a stereotype. As a senior girl at OBU, though, I’ve had my fair share of exposure to the wedding industry. For crying out loud, it’s October and I’ve already got six weddings on my calendar to attend next summer.
At first glance, $25,000 on one day seems impossible. How could a dress, some flowers and a cake equal one year of college tuition? Surely that number can be explained as nothing more than a mathematical error.
Unfortunately, theknot.com knows their numbers. The modern bride is often told that a dress, flowers and cake are the bare minimum for an enjoyable and memorable wedding day. A quick scroll on “wedding-tok” (wedding-centered tik tok) illustrates the pressure society places on modern brides. Gone are the days of securing a cake and flowers. Now, industry professionals push the many necessities a bride should invest in to create the perfect wedding day. After all, a wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime day.
Wedding professionals often take to social media to encourage brides to delegate photography, music, planning and more to professionals. A bride might be interested in having a family friend take photos at her wedding. Wedding photographers are quick to share horror stories of inept family friends crushing the bride’s hopes of having their wedding day documented for memories sake. Your uncle who took your family photos for the last decade is not capable of shooting your wedding day. Instead, you need to hire a professional photographer – or maybe even two. These people have years of experience. Sure, they generally start at $500 per hour, but can you put a price on love?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this day and age it might be worth a thousand dollars. Interested in putting your cool friend on aux during your reception? Terrible idea. Don’t do it. A wedding DJ in Oklahoma starts between $700 and $1,300. But isn’t it worth it? If you put your cool friend on aux, you risk lacking cohesion as the night progresses. If your friend presses play and walks away, the playlist might jump from a hype song to a slow song with no transition. Songs may end and others begin without a smooth fade. Your reception will likely be a dumpster fire if you don’t hire a professional. Florals cost about an arm and a leg – if you do them right, of course. A bridal bouquet costs an average of $199, with centerpieces costing an average of $81. If a bride wants a centerpiece on each of her eight tables, she’ll be spending $648 on table flowers alone. She’ll almost double that with bouquets and any additional floral she wants, nearing the average of $2,800 spent on florals. DIY florals are certainly a cheaper option. Sam’s Club offers 40 stems of greenery for about $1 per stem. Many flowers from Sam’s Club cost between $1 and $3 dollars per stem. This can lower the price of florals dramatically, but it might also increase stress exponentially.
A bride should minimize wedding-related DIY projects as much as possible. Delegating is risky, too. After all, only florists are qualified to create floral arrangements. No amount of YouTube tutorials could equip a bridesmaid or family friend to arrange mediocre at best florals. I understand wedding industry professionals want to make a living in their preferred jobs. If you’re able to make a living documenting monumental moments in lives, or helping someone’s vision be realized on such an exciting day, more power to you.
However, turning a sacred event into a cash cow is too far. Could we allow brides to celebrate how they’d like, without creating anxiety around saving money? Could we somehow emphasize the marriage, and not the wedding. By no means am I a wedding Grinch-of course not! There may be something to the “spectacle” of it all, however. In America right now, wedding planning and marketing makes up over 66% of Pinterest content. That fact alone would lead some to believe that as Americans, we must really value marriage and lifelong commitment.
Not so, unfortunately. America has 82 divorces an hour; in fact, 42% of all marriages end in divorce. That dichotomy highlights the problem: perhaps we should focus more on the substance, not the spectacle.
