Wedding pricing makes so much sense.

Water from the tap: basically free

If you live with your parents, yes.
- Tap water in the US costs on average about $0.01 per gallon or less. People typically drink a gallon or less per day, so about $0.30 per month. Your water bill is pretty much not affected by the tap water you drink, just the water you use for everything else.
  
  Bottled water is easily hundreds of times the cost.

Here's the alternative:

Justice of the Peace ceremony: $43 (including license, supply your own witnesses)
session at photography studio: $13-$500 (including prints and downloads)
BYOB party at your place that evening: $0

Basically, finding out your partner wants a big wedding is a huge go/no-go moment. Save the money for when you really need it.

My wife and I were planning our wedding a year from then when I got a job offer to the US and we had to get married in a hurry to avoid some issues with the visas.

Best decision ever, we had a small party at my SIL patio, my parents got us tacos catering, a friend of my wife who has won some iPod battles was or "DJ" and we got some cheap wines at costco and told people to BYOB

We only had to rent some chairs and tables but it wasn't very expensive

We were planning to celebrate our 1st anniversary doing a "wedding" party but we decided to use the money to travel 3 weeks to Japan instead
As my sister in law said, even for expensive weddings, if you do things properly you'll end up making profit from the gifts you receive.

And yes, that's fucking disgusting.
- I mean you're right, but I believe the converse is what she was getting at. Invite respectable guests and they will know the unwritten rule: bring a gift worth at least as much as your meal, drinks and party favors. It's not necessarily bad to expect that much.
My mama's got a tiny little diamond in her engagement ring. Dad offered to get her a bigger one, but she said no, let's save that money for something more important. I believe that money got put toward a renovation of the house.

Give me a girl like mama, whose got a tiny diamond and a solid home.
- Get an "artificial diamond", much cheaper but basically the same thing
Yeehaw! A thirteen dollar photoshoot!
- Photoshoot's free. The $13 is for the print you get.
  
  You mock, but my grandparents only have a couple photos of the day they were married. But they did stick together all their lives, and they did raise their kids as best they could within their means.

If you think getting married is expensive, try getting divorced.

Divorce water was free what are you talking about?
- Until you realized the labor to bring it to the conference room is billed at $800/hr with minimum 15-minute increments.
- Those were tears, dude.

Never, ever, book a location for a "Wedding". Always book it for a "Family Event".

Reminds me of a blog I followed about a guy having a castle built. He'd get contractors out for various bits and before they arrived they'd be like "oh its X for job Y" but when they got there and saw that it was for a castle, well magically the cost doubled. This might make sense in some parts but when the painter is trying to increase his price for square footage he quoted on the phone? Nah fam that ain't it.

Getting married in about 6 weeks. Compared to my first one 10 years ago, it's nuts. One metric I read said that wedding costs were up 40% post COVID. My first wedding was maybe $5,000 and that was super strict budget. This one is closer to $25k.

My fiancée was quoted between $300-650 for makeup only. Seriously?? DJ is minimum $900 for 5 hours of work, I got a lot of quotes in the $1300 range, or $2200 for better lighting ($440/hour??) Look I know you had to buy your own equipment but holy hell.

Thanks for reaffirming my desire to never get married
- Its your wedding, you dont have to spend money on things you don't want. Courthouse weddings happen often and are very low cost.
- You can get, there is no need to throw tens of 1'000s of dollar at it.
- There are a lot of people who just have weddings with only the closest parts of their friend/family circle rather than making it auper extravagant.
- Having a wedding at the local all-you-can-eat sounds very enticing.
You can buy a good quality speaker that comes with free Amazon music at best buy for less than that. If you have a friend that doesn't mind talking on a mic infrastructure of a crowd you are probably better off without a real dj, your friend would also likely get the names right for your wedding party being announced.

We paid over 1k for dj+wedding video, and it really wasn't worth it.
- I didn't have a DJ the first time around, just a laptop and Spotify playlist (was at a church that has a speaker system, so we got to hook into that). It was fine, but we booked an actual venue for this wedding.
  
  No idea if I'll feel like it was really worth it when it's all said and done, but so far I actually like all the vendors picked.

I purchased a catering dinner package (which came with tea, coffee, and lemonade) and full open bar - apparently neither of these included water. That was an additional $200.00.

Now I imagine some guys thinking "Ah, I don't want to fuck up ChexMaxs financial situation. I'll just drink water the whole night to save him some money!"
- I'm guessing this isn't the UK, cause anywhere that sells alcohol is required by law to be able to supply free tap water

People tend to demand perfection when it comes to weddings. I'm pretty sure that's why it's more expensive. In general, prices rise alongside expectations.

With how much self-centered egotistical annoyances wedding planners and other suppliers have to deal with sometimes, I might actually be inclined to understand that pricing
Exactly. It's the bridezilla tax
You see this in aviation and heavy rail transport as well for a similar reason. The critical items like the engines, control systems and emergency equipment being expensive is obvious, they've been heavily tested and made super resilient with very strict certification criteria, but it even extends down to things that has pretty much zero impact on safety. That flimsy seat back table that can barely hold your laptop and that hard as a rock cushion cost the airline far more than you can imagine, costs which are inevetably passed onto you.

If you end up doing a big wedding I would recommend telling as many of the vendors and suppliers that it's for a birthday party instead. It'll still be expensive but should be more manageable

"Yes, I'd like the traditional tiered birthday cake with the bride and groom on top. Thanks."

"How much are your birthday rose petal cannons?"
- You would be surprised. Family friends of ours are Greek and rich, and they do not do anything small. I hate to perpetuate stereotypes but if you've seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it's like that with them but for everything. Birthdays, the christian holidays, just a summer BBQ, all huge. The bride and groom on top yeah that'll tip the baker off but that's not hard to quickly put on yourself.

I believe there is a Ferangi rule of acquisition for this

I think, it goes something like, Peace us good for business, and war is also good for business.

those are two separate but adjacent rules :)
- 34 & 35 I seem to recall.

Weddings are a racket

General Butler is that you?

Also water (in a movie theater)

You guys pay that much for bottled water?

I thought it was Airport Pricing, but I guess Wedding checks out too

Where tf do you find bottled water for 0.99c? It’s $2.50 everywhere.

I think it's still like .25 or .50 at Costco.
- TIL. Don’t shop at Costco too much.
- It goes as low as about 0.14€ (for 0.5L) here in Greek supermarkets.🙃
If you buy a bottle by itself. I can't imagine people doing that though. Buy a 24 pack for $5. The difference in pricing boggles my mind. Convenience is such a large upcharge.
- The use case in my mind is a vending machine or at a grocery/convenience/mall/not costco store when all you need is one bottle. There’s only so many 24/36 packs folks can buy, especially when out and about.

~~water~~ plastic

+ table service fee

or for people that live in the town where they steal the water from to resell to them.

if i went to a friends wedding, and they were charging for water, i would just leave. is this even a thing cause it sounds fake as hell.

I think the joke is about caterers doing this. Book a photographer session vs a wedding photographer and the prices are going to be drastically different.
- It's the BS fee. You're not just paying for the pictures, the water or the food. You are paying for them to put up with yours, your family and guest's BS for several hours, plus the nightmarish logistical stress of making it all happen flawlessly on time.
Normal dress: 1000 dollars

Wedding dress: 10000 dollars

Check out the price of wedding cakes vs similar amounts of normal cake
- There is an acceptable markup for a tiered and decorated wedding cake vs a grocery store sheet cake. There are also lots of places that charge way above that rate.

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- Good bot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gimiDBAK2wA

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