What Price a Wedding?
by Giulianna LamannaI was planning on getting married, but now I think I’ll save myself the trouble and just throw all my money in a dumpster. Don’t get me wrong - I very much want to be married. It’s the getting married that I’m starting to really resent. And it’s not because I’m a cheapskate, either: my mother’s generously offered Jason and me $6,000 to pay for the wedding. It’s the mere concept of spending $6,000 on a party. It’s the fact that, compared to the average cost of wedding nowadays, $6,000 - which is twice as much as my first car cost - is a drop in the bucket. Almost a year ago, CNN reported that the average cost of wedding was nearing $30,000. In 1983, your average wedding cost anywhere from $8,000 to $10,000 (in 2006 dollars). By 1991, that had risen to $19,000. And by 2002, a wedding cost $24,000. Now that it’s ballooned out to $26,000, the cost has risen $2,000 in less than half a decade. In the 80’s, an era famous for lavish, sequin-intensive weddings, my $6,000 budget would have been perfectly reasonable. Now you can find books like How to Have a Fabulous Wedding for $10,000 or Less. Along with the rising cost comes the length of time required to plan it. People routinely put a year or more between engagement and wedding. Anything less than a year, in some cities, is considered impossible.
There are a number of reasons for this. Obviously, increased affluence is a factor. There’s also the fact that, with quicker and easier travel available, people have wider networks of friends (which necessitates larger weddings) from farther away (which means your guests will be putting more effort into coming, which makes many couples feel like they have a responsibility to “wow” them). All this adds up to more people attending weddings, which puts pressure on the bride and groom to make their wedding unique. But by and large, this growth has been fueled by an ever-growing wedding industry which some have taken to calling “The Wedding Industrial Complex.” It consists of jewelers, caterers, bridal salons, and a whole host of other businesses determined to use your upcoming nuptuals as an excuse to part you from as much of your money as they can. As Dave Barry once said, the motto of the bridal industry is, “Money can’t buy you happiness, so you might as well give all your money to us.”
Let’s face it: an engaged couple is easy to take advantage of. For most people, getting married is a one-time thing, as is planning a party of this size and scope. If you’ve never hired a caterer before, or bought fine jewelry or a glamorous gown, then how do you know how much things are supposed to cost? You just heard the word “tulle” for the first time five minutes ago; who are you to say that a tulle veil shouldn’t cost $200? (By the way, your average veil can be easily handmade in less than half an hour using products bought at Michael’s or Jo-Ann’s Fabrics for about 5 bucks.) The one-time customer also means that businesses that cater exclusively to brides don’t have to worry about good customer service because repeat business is not a huge concern. Bridal salons are well-known for driving their customers insane.
It’s nerve-wracking for someone unaccustomed to throwing grand parties to try it out for the first time while going through the complicated emotional process of engagement. So many things that you just found out about could go wrong. The Wedding Industrial Complex plays on these fears by pushing “the perfect wedding” on you. Not a nice wedding, not a fun wedding, but a perfect wedding - one in which, by definition, nothing goes wrong. After that, of course, comes the fire-and-brimstone sermon about how awful the wedding will be without This Wonderful Product, followed by the Good News of the wedding’s salvation by check or credit card.
Throughout planning my wedding, I’ve tried to avoid the Complex - and the spirit of conspicuous consumption that it helps promote - as much as possible. Jason and I have managed to keep our guest list in the double digits. My dress is not a wedding gown, but a dress that happens to come in white. My veil comes from eBay, and back to eBay it will go once I’m done with it. Jason and I skipped the diamond engagement ring, opting for two recycled gold bands from GreenKarat, which we’re wearing on our right hands and will switch over to our left hands after we’re married. And we’re completely ignoring the “save-the-date” cards, the vital necessity which the stationary wing of the Complex recently invented. But however simple we try to make our own wedding, we still have to deal with the residue left by the Wedding Industrial Complex. Because everyone else starts planning their weddings 14 months in advance, that makes it more difficult for us to find vendors that aren’t already booked for the date we want. Because everyone else is spending $26,000, I have to work extra hard in order to avoid the artificially inflated prices. Add to that the fact that my politics are making it impossible for me to feel comfortable renting out a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, or getting my flowers from a grocery store, or wearing a veil without contemplating the sociopolitical implications for weeks on end. All of this is making eloping look pretty sweet.
But it’s easy to focus on the problems. I can almost hear Linus scolding me: “Giuli Lamanna, you’re the only person I know who can take a wonderful thing like a wedding and turn it into a problem!” Ultimately, whether it costs a million dollars or nothing at all, it’s still a wedding, and you’re still married at the end of the day. Too many people get caught up in the trappings, whether it’s mistaking perfect flowers for the perfect man, mistaking the misogynistic add-ons of our culture for the concept of marriage itself, or mistaking the demands of a materialistic society for the sacred ritual that is a wedding. Every once in a while, I manage to remind myself what the purpose of this party is: to celebrate my lifelong commitment to Jason and his commitment to me, and to thank our loved ones for joining us in celebrating it. For this to occur, I don’t need a giant cake or lavish centerpieces or engraved invitations. I don’t even need $6,000. And I certainly don’t need to focus on the orgy of excess that this misguided culture tells us a wedding must be. I’m not going to let all this commercialism ruin my wedding! It’s not an ugly tradition; all it needs is a little love.
Over the years, I have known some truly annoying people. These are the ones who announce their plans to hold their wedding in some far away place. Think Paris or Hawaii. Then they expect the rest of us to attend. Asking me to put a suit on, or a tux, on a weekend to attend a local wedding is already pushing it. Asking me to take half a week off to attend a wedding in Cabo is sheer bloody arrogance.
Conversely, I have known a few couples who fly off by themselves to Vegas and have a quick, yet romantic, wedding at the drive-thru Church of Elvis. Then when they return there’s a party with friends. I much prefer these couples because they have no need to try to impress anyone with the tab for their wedding.
Comment by Peter — 21 March 2006 @ 1:56 PM
I agree with everything in your comment except for this:
You seriously view it as an unwelcome burden to celebrate your friends’ union? To even be asked to celebrate your friends’ union? Especially seeing as how you get free food and alcohol out of it?
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 2:19 PM
I’m not big on crowds or chit chat being an INTP. After about 30 minutes in a crowd, I am ready to call it a day and go home.
Over the years a few weddings have been mildly fun, most were simply an ordeal to get through. That’s not to suggest that I didn’t wish the newly weds the best in each instance.
Comment by Peter — 21 March 2006 @ 2:26 PM
I’m not one for parties or crowds, either. But to say that even asking you to come celebrate their nuptuals is “pushing it”? You do realize that “no” is an acceptable answer, right?
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 2:28 PM
This brings up a business idea. Someone needs to create a website for online weddings. Webcams would allow the rest of us to attend from the comfort of our homes. We’d be there in spirit if not in body.
Comment by Peter — 21 March 2006 @ 2:29 PM
Um… or you could just attend the ceremony and not the reception if it’s such a huge deal.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 2:31 PM
You can’t say “no” to a friend’s wedding invitation. It will poison the friendship.
The only exception is one of those far away weddings in Bali. Then you can explain that you can’t take the time off from work.
Comment by Peter — 21 March 2006 @ 2:31 PM
“Um… or you could just attend the ceremony and not the reception if it’s such a huge deal.”
True dat.
Comment by Peter — 21 March 2006 @ 2:32 PM
Do you really care about poisoning the friendship if it means that little to you that coming to their wedding is a burden you resent having to endure?
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 2:36 PM
Sing it sister!
My lovely wife and I just got married last September, and it was a serious struggle not short of an epic campaign against the tyranny of the W-I-C. All in all, we got it done for about $7K, and a fancy-schmancy one at that. If you’ve got lots of family with tons of cash you can actually come out ahead in the end (we did), but of course that isn’t the goal at all.
By far the most expensive thing is the photographer. My lady didn’t want to skimp on that, so we went totally cheeseball in that regard. If you can go with a buddy who knows their stuff then you’ll be way ahead (but you do want the pics to be good).
As far as the “officiant,” get a buddy to get ordained on the internet (I recommend Universal Life Church) and have them do it. Write your own stuff too. You probably are already doing this. I got a buddy to get ordained and I got ordained as well just for kicks. Now I’m actually going to do (”officiate”) a wedding in NY this weekend for some agnostic buds that were at mine and thought it was a great idea. As long as you wear a dark suit/dress and act smart no one will know you aren’t some flavor of christian (unless they listen closely to the “sermon”). Even my mega-right wing Catholic father was fooled by my pal!
Make the cakes yourself. We bought the main super-cake but made the “grooms cake” (read: wimpy cake) ourselves. I crafted it to look identical to an 8-bit nintendo because I am a mega-dork. Moral is though to make it yourself (preferably by getting some friends to volunteer to do it for you).
The location is going to be the stickler, you’re right on the nose for that. Remember that besides “Community Centers” and “Churches” there are American Legions, Dance Halls, big parks for outside weddings, and occasionally Masonic Temples (not the actual lodge, just the “churchy” front bingo-area) will let you rent them out for cheap (especially if you are/know a Mason), and those multi-use buildings usually aren’t all booked up a couple months before.
Comment by Cory — 21 March 2006 @ 2:39 PM
The best weddings I have attended were small intimate affairs with a few close friends and family members. The couples had no need to be ostentatious.
Why spend a small fortune to have people you hardly know attend? It makes no sense.
Comment by Peter — 21 March 2006 @ 2:39 PM
I should mention that our goal was to keep it under $5k but the open bar and prime rib got us in the end. Have a cash bar and don’t go crazy on food and you’ll be golden!
Comment by Cory — 21 March 2006 @ 2:43 PM
Awww, those pictures are so sweet!
Jason’s dad has already volunteered to take the pictures (huzzah!) and he is professional quality.
We’re currently considering going with the pastor (?) of my mom’s Unitarian Universalist church. Because my mom’s a member, I don’t think it should be too expensive.
As for the cake, Janene’s already volunteered to make a paleo one.
The food will probably kill us too, as I’m trying to get all-organic. Stupid morals.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 2:51 PM
Jason’s dad just saved you $2k at least. Well done.
Comment by Cory — 21 March 2006 @ 3:00 PM
I’m not sure I want to make my dad work through it … we’re already making him drive all the way up to New York from Pittsburgh (Giuli’s family outnumbers mine by a margin of about two to one, so, it’s in NY), and I’ve done plenty of wedding photography before–it’s work. It was fine when it was my cousins, but c’mon, he’s my father for Chrissakes. Let the man enjoy the day!
I did long ago lament that I wouldn’t be able to photograph my own wedding, and though my brother’s as good with a camera as my father or myself, he has other duties to attend to that day–namely, best man.
But I don’t think we need to despair all the way to professional photography just yet. I know some other good photographers I might be able to call on….
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 3:05 PM
:::shrug::: If he doesn’t want to do it, he doesn’t have to. He seemed excited about it, though, so I just assumed…
In any case, pictures aren’t particularly important to me. I was envisioning something like Angela’s wedding, where anyone who wanted to could bring a camera and take whatever pictures they liked. More of a family reunion-style “okay everybody, say cheese!” kind of thing.
But maybe this is a discussion we should be having off-site.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 3:13 PM
I love taking photos at friends weddings - it means you get to send some time with the couple rather than the usual 5 minutes that everyone else gets - especially if the party is big. The important thing though, is not to be the only photographer otherwise you’ve got all the pressure and then it really is like work. Get a 2 or 3 friends to team up - it can be fun.
Something we did at ours was get a photograpaher who doesn’t want to own the negatives and charge you for every single damn print you get. We paid about $400 (about US$270) for our photographer 5 years ago, we had control of the negatives. The photographer was young, enthusiastic and creative rather then old and jaded and she took good pictures. We also bought someone along to supply the wedding party with food and drink during the photo shoot. It was a good part of the day rather than a chore in the end.
Comment by Aaron — 21 March 2006 @ 3:29 PM
I’ve been to my share of backyard, pig-on-a-spit affairs - and I think they’re more relaxed, honest, and less pretentious. However, there are folks that mistake the pomp for the meaning & ritual, and they are the type that can feel under whelmed by “homely” events.
I cringe at weddings when people pony up piles of cash for the whole WIC package - either they are immediately digging themselves into a deep hole, or their values are bent out of wack. 10 years ago, our wedding fell somewhere in-between sane and unsane - leaning toward the excessive. It’d be different now… but we never dug into debt to make what we wanted of it.
No matter what route you choose, you’ll be up to your ears in planning, compromise, and anticipation - compression & release - and I think that’s all part of the buzz. I hope I make the list - I think it’ll be a great day.
Comment by JCamasto — 21 March 2006 @ 3:32 PM
Yes, but you’ve met him before. Sometimes you just have to tell him, “No, bad!”
I was raised Catholic. I need my rituals with a certain amount of pageantry. I don’t need conspicuous consumption or thousand-dollar spreads, but I do need my rituals to feel like actual rituals, know what I mean?
You’re in the “On the list, but don’t be too surprised if a wedding in upstate New York is asking for just a wee bit too much” crowd, i.e., on the list, and we understand perfectly if you can’t make it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 3:47 PM
Prioritize! We had over 200 people at our wedding, and it cost well under 10K. We really just wanted a nice party to have fun and spend time with people we don’t see very often, so we had it in my wife’s grandparent’s backyard (free). We had an open bar for all 200 people, and spent very little–we went to the discount liquor store and bought many cases of beer and wine, borrowed some large tin tubs for ice, and paid a guy $50 to be bartender all night (no mixed drinks). Total for drinks was about $1000, and the variety, quality and quantity was great. Otherwise the open bar can kill your budget. Our ceremony lasted all of 5 minutes, with vows that we wrote and a judge ($100), and was at the same location to minimize cost and logistics. Then on to the party… yeah, we spent most of the money on the food…
Comment by Jeff Vail — 21 March 2006 @ 3:47 PM
:::sigh::: When I was little, I used to dream of having my wedding in my backyard. But then my mom moved to a smaller house with a postage-stamp backyard. It couldn’t possibly fit everyone comfortably, even with our guest list.
I really wanted to ask Judge Fudge to officiate, but he’s probably too busy being delicious.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 3:59 PM
sorry that should read SPEND some time with the couple
Comment by Aaron — 21 March 2006 @ 4:01 PM
My parents’ wedding cost them $50, and I think that might have been to rent the church. My grandmother and aunt made my mom’s dress, my other grandmother baked the cake, my uncle was the photographer, and the reception was a potluck at my dad’s folks house. There were no gifts, as everyone’s participation in the wedding was their gift. I was not able to attend (having not been born yet), but the best weddings I have been to have been potlucks. The food was so much better than some stuffy, caterer-prepared meal. And everything has meaning when it’s the members of your community who are creating it.
Comment by Anonymous — 21 March 2006 @ 4:16 PM
In lieu of the overarching theme of this website, I must add my two cents. I, too, was floored when my bride-to-be started talking in the 5-digit range when we were budgeting for our wedding. We did the best we could to keep the price down - we went with locally produced products, we found hostels and campgrounds for guests to stay at, we minimized the paper used, etc. In the end however, the event was transcendent regardless of $ - not due to any particular decision we made, but due to the combination of true love and the co-gathering of clans in celebration of our life together. If there is any event which can be joyous and celebratory and fill our lives with community and love, it is a heartfelt wedding of two souls. And this event may be extravagant, but so are many celebrations stretching far into the distant memories of families, tribes, etc. The question is not how much to celebrate, but what to celebrate.
In defense extravagant weddings, I must assert that depending upon the circumstance, many weddings are created by the parents, with the children just attending. For this reason, wasteful habits created in wasteful times are changing only slowly. I can attest that my wife and my unconventional vows, or simple decorations, our non-denominational service, and our inclusiveness of friends and family in celebrating our vows with us under the open sky were all details picked up by friends who are getting married after us. So habits and conventions change with time and through subsequent iteration.
I congratulate you on your effort to help us all do the same…
Comment by Ethan — 21 March 2006 @ 4:17 PM
You can elope, then throw a party!
Comment by APerson — 21 March 2006 @ 5:01 PM
Isn’t this exaggerating the point just a little bit? Let’s face it. It’s not as though anyone is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy a $200 veil. People spend that much on their weddings for one of two reasons. Either they’re just bad shoppers and can’t be bothered to educate themselves about the choices they have, or they actually want to spend that much.
And it’s not that absurd to suggest some people might actually want to spend $200 on a veil for the most important day of their lives. The so-call “Wedding Industrial Complex” may profit off of the demand, but they don’t create it. They wouldn’t be able to sell their products at the prices they do unless the demand was already there.
Obviously, any salesman would prefer that you buy their most expensive package. But any salesman worth his salt knows better than to try to push that package on every customer who walks in the door. The negative word-of-mouth that that generates ends up costing the company far more than they gain from the sale.
People should have perfect weddings. But the “perfect wedding” doesn’t mean that everyone should have the same wedding or that nothing can go wrong. The “perfect wedding” is the wedding that the bride and groom want. The various industries involved in the wedding business are merely a response to that demand.
That’s quite a moral stance. It’s about time someone stood up to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. They’re just a bunch of bastards. How dare they campaign for veteran benefits and provide community services? And why do they have to get shot at so much too? Why can’t they just decide not to be shot at like the rest of us? I mean really. Screw those guys.
And don’t even get me started on what I think of veils. For indeed, it is inanimate objects for which I save my true rage.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 5:08 PM
Errr … no. You’re right that there is a psychological component there that they create the demand out of. There has to be, doesn’t there? You can’t create a demand for knives in your forehead, no matter how slick your marketing is. But the demand is most certainly created. The prices are inflated to decieve the gullible. You’ve seen the cost, vs. the price, of wedding photography. It most certainly does create its own demand–and it builds a small empire on fools, their money, and how quickly they can be parted.
So you’re saying that 99.9% of all salesmen are not worth their salt, I guess.
Giuli’s experience of the VFW is quite a bit different from yours or ours. For Giuli, the VFW are the people who organize the counter-protest across the street to send kids off to die in some war half-way around the world. For Giuli, the VFW are the ones who harass her and her family for not supporting our troops. As benign as the VFW has been in our experience, we’ve never been the hippies they go after–Giuli has.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 5:20 PM
Photography is a very specialized skill. You can’t just hand anyone a camera and tell them to start taking pictures. Half the time you’ll be lucky to get back photos that contain recognizable geometric shapes. And among those who are able to take decent photos, those who are really good are even rarer.
Most people want high-quality photos for their weddings. And since there aren’t a whole lot of people with the equipment and the skill to take those kinds of photos, the price goes up. That’s not an artificially inflated price. It’s simple supply and demand.
The only area where I could see saying that the prices are artificially inflated is the diamonds. But that’s only because De Beers has a monopoly on the industry.
Now that just sounds suspicious to me. The VFW isn’t the Westboro Baptist Church. They don’t “go after” people. And frankly, I’m not sure they could intimidate someone if they wanted to. They’re like 90-year-old guys at a fish fry.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 5:42 PM
What Jason said. Also…
Actually, yes, they did create the demand. If you like, I could lend you “All Dressed in White,” a book that tells the history of the modern wedding.
If you read advice for people looking to get involved in the bridal industry, you’ll find yourself reading again and again how brides are in a constant state of sticker-shock, and how they’ll try to demand a lower price, but you just have to keep insisting that this is the best price they’ll ever get. It’s rare that you’ll find a couple that actually wants to spend so much money. More likely, they’re convinced that they have to spend tons of money because that’s the only way you can do it.
Actually, that’s exactly how bridal salons work. It’s actually hard to find a bridal salon that doesn’t:
- ignore you for half an hour or more
- accuse you of being fat
- only show you dresses that are $1,000 to $2,000 above your stated price range
- insult your intelligence and your taste in clothing if you don’t buy the most expensive dress
- refuse to let you try on more than two or three dresses
- lie about your dress size so you have to pay extra for alterations when the dress comes in (wedding dress sizes are different from normal dress sizes specifically so they can do this)
- sell you the wrong dress, then make you pay extra for them to bring in the right dress
etc. etc. This is commonplace. Many of them also rip out the tags on their sample dresses (which is illegal) so you can’t find out what the designer and model is and see what the same dress costs somewhere else.
That’s the thing - it’s only recently, with the popularity of the internet, that there’s even been any word-of-mouth about the bridal industry at all. They don’t have to worry about repeat business, and because the wedding industry is so new, there’s very little consumer advocacy related to weddings, so they feel free to treat their customers like garbage.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 5:52 PM
Jason’s exaggerating. They don’t “go after” people or intimidate people. But they are very conservative, and pro-war. (Oddly enough.) I would feel like I was somehow deceiving them if I used their hall to hold the wedding reception, given my political beliefs.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 5:58 PM
That’s true. But ask for a photographyer to photograph an event, and he’ll ask for a given price. Tell him that event is a wedding, and it will quadruple. You’ve seen this as well as I have–both of us have gotten our hands dirty in the photography business, and we both know it’s true.
You might have a point, except that I’m talking about the same photographer, with the same equipment. A regular event could be a few hundred dollars. If that event is a wedding, though, it will be thousands. That is an artificially inflated price.
The demand is created culturally, through TV and movie weddings, books and songs that condition us to think what a “wedding” is. Before Queen Victoria, brides didn’t wear white. That’s how recent even that tradition is. I’ve even heard that the Chicken Dance might be a recent addition….
We’re conditioned to believe that a wedding involves all of these extravagent elements, running the total bill into the tens of thousands of dollars–more than enough to run an industrial complex off of. Add in the fact that you typically don’t have to worry about repeat business, and your customers won’t know any better, and you’ve got a recipe for all your normal economic rules to be turned on their ear. Not that they worked all that well even before.
Wasn’t your mom telling us something about them lurking about her house, sending her threatening letters, or something really creepy like that?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 6:05 PM
I thought that was the FBI?
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 6:30 PM
Huh. I thought she said something about the VFW. OK, then, maybe I exaggerated. I could’ve sworn your family was talking about some kind of creepy intimidation stuff the VFW were up to with them.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 6:39 PM
You might be right; I’ve got a horrible memory. I’ll have to ask my mom.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 21 March 2006 @ 6:42 PM
Well, first of all, it’s not so rare to find someone who wants to spend that kind of money… or at least, someone who wants a wedding that costs that kind of money. The materialist aspects of the wedding may not be as important to you, but to many people they are important. This is the most important day of their lives, and they want it to look like it.
More importantly, though, what you describe above is just bad salesmanship. There’s a huge difference between an inter-industry conspiracy to artificially raise prices and an industry that just happens to have a lot of shitty salespeople.
Well, that’s just not true. The internet may expedite the process, but word-of-mouth is something that salespeople have had to worry about since the dawn of business. And it effects the wedding industry more than most others. Because even though you may not have another wedding, you probably know a lot of people who are going to have weddings. And you’re more likely to complain to your friends about a crappy wedding than you are about simpler products and services that cost less money.
Besides, these days it’s not that uncommon for people to have more than one wedding.
Because there’s a higher demand for weddings and also because weddings are generally more difficult to shoot.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. The demand comes from the culture. It’s not some sinister plot hatched by the various industries involved in wedding planning. That kind of thing would require collusion on an absolutely unprecedented scale.
There are a handful of examples of the companies inflating the demand for a particular product, such as De Beers’ “A Diamond is Forever” campaign. But that’s nothing compared to the demand that’s created by the culture. And the things that the wedding businesses sell are expensive because that’s the value that society places on those things.
It probably looked something like this.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 6:53 PM
It was the FBI, not the VFW!!! And yes, Mike, it looked exactly like that.
Actually the FBI followed my father when he was a card-carrying Communist. They also tapped our phone, and wrote letters to my mom’s employer telling them that they had a Communist working for them (like they cared). I suspect that in my hippy days the FBI hounded me too. I may find out one day; I’m planning to request my file under the Freedom of Information Act. But Mike I think you’re mostly correct; the VFW is mostly old. And I believe Giuli is also correct that they’re mostly conservative and pro-war. But if you’re going to have a wedding in any hall, why not have it at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship where you can have it for free?
When I got married (as Giuli would barely remember, as she was very young), (no I was kidding about that; she wasn’t born till 11 years later), my father asked me if I wouldn’t rather just have the $5000 and go on a beautiful honeymoon. But no, I wanted my big, “perfect” wedding at a Manhattan hotel — yes you could do that for $5000 in 1975. Later I was sorry. My parents and their friends were old, and not much for partying; most of them went home by 11:00 and most of the liquor was left over. (Well, that wasn’t so bad; we took it home and drank it for the next few years.) It was a good time, though.
But the main thing isn’t the wedding anyway; it’s the marriage. Orthodox Jews have a saying: “Orthodox Jews have big weddings because they know it’s the last time they’re going to get married. Reform Jews have big bar mitzvahs because they know it’s the last time they’re going to go to synagogue.”
Have big wedding, make it the last one, and have a wonderful marriage.
Love,
Mom
Comment by Giuli's mom — 21 March 2006 @ 10:57 PM
OK, I suppose I’m just crazier than usual.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 11:08 PM
It’s the Jason & Mike show, crazy and cranky, tonight talking wedding. Keep on keepin’ it crazy - but I hope the cranky is spent by tip-off…
Comment by JCamasto — 21 March 2006 @ 11:47 PM
Well, yeah. They are that. I guess it’s kind of hard to have an organization for veterans of foreign wars without the foreign wars. It just sounded as though Giuli had some more significant problems with the VFW… like them eating babies or something.
Although, I don’t think you have to agree with their politics to use a VFW hall. It’s not like you’re pulling a fast one on them or anything. Besides, supporting the war isn’t how they spend most of their time anyway.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 21 March 2006 @ 11:51 PM
You know, we could just tie you up in the forest and leave you there until dawn. I won’t even charge for the rope.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 22 March 2006 @ 12:40 AM
Guess that was too much to hope for, eh Jim?
Anyway Ben, I guess you could do that. But then you wouldn’t have anyone to show you the way back out of the forest.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 1:02 AM
More or less got that part covered myself actually.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 22 March 2006 @ 1:43 AM
No, it’s the end result–not its price–that’s important to people. Nobody wants to pay twice as much for the same thing. At best, they assume that price is a barometer of quality, and that paying more means it’s higher quality. If it’s the exact same thing, just with a jacked-up price, it’s just as deceptive.
Sales is one of those industries with a heavy skew to the “bad” side of the spectrum. By far, the most common kind of salesmanship is bad salesmanship. The specific nature of the bridal industry–a general lack of repeat business, naive customers typically unfamiliar with the market, etc.–provides a systemic incentive for what you call “bad salesmanship.” In the wedding industry, it seems like bad salesmanship is really great for business.
More difficult than, say, a football game? Please.
Hardly. When culture changes that quickly (we’re talking the past two decades), and so clearly in favor of a particular industry, it’s usually not by happenstance. It’s become par for the course for American businesses to undertake massive cultural reconstruction campaigns, to create a culture more ammenable to its product. I think DeBeers probably did the best with this, and probably did it first, by first claiming a monopoly on the diamond market with absolutely brutal tactics and slave labor, and then mythologizing the diamond to the point where random creepy woman at Giant Eagle told Giuli how sorry she was that I was too poor to get her a diamond engagement ring.
But that’s hardly the extent of it. In fact, we do it most often to other cultures. When American fast food restaurants, shaped by American cultural attitudes of what constitute a “meal,” went to East Asia, they ran into a problem. They didn’t consider McDonald’s to constitute a meal. It was, at best, a snack. Their cultural attitudes also expected the use of the restaurant as a general hang-out with little in the way of purchase, remaining at the McDonald’s for hours on end. The “Napkin Wars” erupted as Koreans saw the free napkins as a limited resource to be collected and hoarded. In response, McDonald’s realized that if they were going to succeed in East Asia, they would need to reshape Asian cultures in their own image. East Asians would need to eat like Americans–and that meant, they would need to think like Americans. McDonald’s began a massive campaign to destroy one of the most basic foundations of any culture: its attitudes towards food. On some points, they had to accede: they offered rice with their meals, thus elevating it from a “snack” to a “meal.” On most points, however, they succeeded in transforming East Asian culture and attitudes on a fundamental level, in order to help their business model.
American businesses have been deliberately shaping cultural attitudes to get us into the situation Tyler Durden described: “working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don’t need.” The demand is manufactured. It is manufactured culturally. It is manufactured deliberately.
Advertising is a huge chunk of any company’s budget. It’s one of the largest industries around–enough to support television, radio, and most of the internet just as vehicles to deliver their message. Hell, even this page has Yahoo ads on the side. That’s a force powerful enough to mold culture into whatever shape best helps to move product–and that’s exactly what it does.
Giuli’s funny about her politics. My first criteria for a mate is someone smart enough for me to have a real conversation with. Hers was whether or not I matched her politics.
But yeah, it’s looking more and more like the UU in Poughkeepsie. I have no problem with that–but then again, I have no problem with a VFW hall, either.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 10:06 AM
I find it amazing, given the overall theme of this website, that no one seems to be questioning the necessity of the civilized institution of marriage. I think that this belief in the sanctity of marriage is a cultural artifact, a product of civilized culture.
Why not decide to make your relationship sacred, and leave the institution and its attendant ceremony to wither and die along with the rest of civilization? To do this, you don’t need the permission/approval of the church OR the state. Just your local tribe, if you wish.
(sigh) I too find it very difficult to disentangle myself from the mainstream. I get frustrated with my own slow progress.
Best wishes to everyone here.
Comment by mark — 22 March 2006 @ 11:21 AM
Mark:
See:
Love & Marriage
The Sanctity of Marriage (in which we discuss exactly what you’re talking about for a record 208 comments)
Long story short: marriage is not a result of civilized culture. It’s been around since humans have been around, and is found in every known human culture, from band to state.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 22 March 2006 @ 11:29 AM
Then why is it found in all cultures, civilized and uncivilized alike?
It’s not permission, so much as announcement. Civilized folk announce to their church and to their state. We announce to our tribe.
It’s still a marriage.
It is … but this is a poor example of that phenomenon.
Well, as long as human culture has been around. Unless you want to define “humans” in terms of their culture.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 11:52 AM
Have humans ever not had culture?
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 22 March 2006 @ 12:01 PM
Oh, yeah. I’m sure you’ll find your way out… some day… maybe.
That’s what I said. They don’t necessarily want to spend more money, but very often they want a wedding that costs more money and are willing to pay price. I’m just saying that just because someone has a $30,000 wedding doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t know what they’re doing.
Well, your measure of what constitutes “the most common kind of salesmanship” not withstanding, there are bad salespeople in every industry. That doesn’t constitute this sort of inter-industry league of supervillains. If your point is simply that there are a lot of bad salespeople, and some of them happen to work in industries associated with weddings, that’s not really news.
Besides, if things are really as bad as Giuli claims, then a certain amount of responsibility rests on the consumer, doesn’t it? You’re telling me that “all salespeople” ignore the customer, call them names, lie to them, and refuse to show them what they want to see, and they’re still buying from these people? Honestly, why should I feel sorry for these people? They obviously don’t feel like they should be treated with respect, so why should the salesperson?
You can blame the salesperson for bad behavior. You can’t blame the salesperson for the customer putting up with that behavior and then make bad purchasing decisions.
How many people hire photographers to shoot a football game?
Okay, but we’re not really talking about the fast food industry. We’re talking about industries involved in weddings. Other than De Beers, which is a unique case, can you show me one example of a wedding industry changing the way people think about weddings?
McDonald’s, De Beers, Coca-Cola–these are companies that can do that sort of thing because they’re enormous. The amount of money they sink into their advertising campaigns each year is just mind-blowing. Most companies aren’t like that, though. They don’t campaign to change the culture. Their aim is simply to get people to remember their name.
This is especially true of most of your wedding-related companies, which tend to be relatively small companies. They’re people like florists and caterers, not global conglomerates. They’re mostly on a local level. They’re lucky if they have an ad in the newspaper.
Now unless there’s already a culturally created demand for these products, what will happen is the first time one florist tries to inflate prices, some other florist with lower prices is going to get those customers. And that will force the first florist to bring prices back down. The only other way for this to work would be if all of these guys actually got together and decided that they were all going to raise their prices. That does happen, but in this particular scenario it’s just absurd.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 12:06 PM
Mike, I already offered to lend you “All Dressed in White.” The history of the modern wedding - and the bridal industry that essentially created it - is well-documented. It just isn’t well-known. Or you could go yourself to one of the conferences where these businesspeople give each other advice on how to do all the tricks I’ve mentioned, and more.
There’s a bit of a backlash happening (like I said, mainly thanks to the Internet) with stuff like IndieBride, Anti-Bride, etc.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 22 March 2006 @ 12:25 PM
Depends on how you map the colloquial “human” to scientific terms. You might have had some Australopithecines sans culture (maybe)–do they count as human?
It does if you could have the exact same wedding for $8,000.
No, I’m saying the nature of the industry systematically rewards bad salesmanship–the same way that the practice of law systematically rewards people who are good at lying with facts.
Doesn’t leave much of an alternative, though. Giuli’s quite proud that we’ve so far skirted that industry–just as you suggest. But even we can’t get away from its effects entirely, as Giuli mentioned in the article.
The NFL, minor league teams, and most high schools, on a weekly basis for about a quarter of the year. The earlier in that list you get, the more photographers they hire. That’s a fairly significant segment of the photography business, too. Demand is fairly high, and it’s an event that’s even more difficult to shoot than a wedding (people tend to move more slowly down the aisle than down the sidelines). Yet they charge less. Wedding photography is completely divorced from all of the costs incurred by the photographer. It’s a price set arbitrarily, because most people don’t know what the going rate is.
I know what a racket like that looks like. I’ve done freelance web design.
That’s exactly what All Dressed in White is about. I haven’t read it, but I can probably give you an outline already: TV and movies form our conception of what a wedding is “supposed” to be like. DeBeers is a big part of the wedding industry. Others lobby popular TV shows to include a high-profile wedding episode, then lend all the catering, tuxedos, the gown and everything else to make sure that we’re creating the proper image of what a wedding “should” be. Exactly the same way American businesses have changed cultures in other industries, both here and in other cultures.
FTD? 1-800-FLOWERS.com? Sure, the middle men are small, but there are large, powerful industries behind them. The designers who make wedding gowns are often powers unto themselves. The boutique where you buy it may be small, but the designer’s name is not.
Absurd or not, it’s exactly what’s happened. Order one set of flowers, you’ll get a price. Let slip that it’s a wedding, that price quadruples. For the exact same flowers.
No, seriously, we did this. We went to a florist, and asked for flowers. We mentioned it was a wedding, and the price quardupled before our eyes. Giuli, didn’t you repeat this a few times with the same results?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 12:44 PM
I haven’t repeated it, but others have. There are other factors, too, namely money. If you bring your mom with you, they’ll jack up the price because they’ll assume she’s paying. If you come in an expensive car, they’ll jack up the price. If you have a large engagement ring, they’ll jack up the price. Two friends both went to the same florist and bought the same flowers, but one got charged $1,000 more because her mother came along.
I know of one woman who wanted a low-key reception at a restaurant. She just wanted to bring her family members and close friends to a nice lunch buffet after the ceremony - no DJ, no fancy wedding cake, no limo. Just a buffet. She told the restaurant she wanted that it was a “family event,” and they gave her a certain price. However, when talking with a different employee at that restaurant a few days later, she accidentally let it slip that it was for a wedding. Immediately, they charged her $500 more. She had to argue with them for months; they kept insisting that the extra cost was for flowers and music and all kinds of wonderful stuff that she MUST want because it’s a WEDDING and it’s YOUR DAAAAY, etc. etc. She kept saying, “NO. I want a quiet luncheon. I want nothing but a quiet luncheon. I want exactly what you were going to sell me before. Nothing has changed except now you know what I’m going to be wearing.”
Finally, she haggled them back down, but it took months.
As for DeBeers, they’re obviously a huge part of the wedding industry. You can’t say, “What has the wedding industry done to influence culture? Oh, but don’t mention DeBeers” because they’ve done more than any one company to promote an idea of what a wedding should be. They made the diamond engagement ring a necessity, as you mentioned. They popularized the concept of both men and women wearing wedding rings. In the 60s, they tried to make people buy engagement rings for men, but that didn’t work out too well. They financed a Baywatch episode revolving entirely around buying a diamond engagement ring.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 22 March 2006 @ 12:59 PM
When I say “human,” I usually mean Homo sapiens sapiens.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 22 March 2006 @ 1:01 PM
Not a valid assumption. See, I usually mean any member of the genus Homo; I call Homo neanderthalensis “human.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 1:06 PM
See, I’d call Neandertals hominids, not humans.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 22 March 2006 @ 1:21 PM
Got married this past year, we did it ourselves primarily all told it cost a little less than 4k. We both didn’t like the idea of spending money on such a thing, but we were both happy we had a wedding celebration. No church, all done in the reception hall…Had some relatives with digital cameras take photos & had the edited to music later, for almost nothing.
I think that the formalization ended up being powerful for me, after having lived with my ‘wife’ for a few years before the marriage.
I would suggest going through it, in a frugal manner, do much of the work yourself & invite your friends & families for the celebration. Sadly, we seem to celebrate few things anymore, and there are many stressful things that the future holds for all of us, so enjoy the day.
Comment by bubba — 22 March 2006 @ 1:59 PM
Why do I feel like I’ve just been witnessed to?
And that would fall under the category of people who can’t be bothered to educate themselves about their choices.
But you’re missing the point. Some people want weddings that can’t be bought for $8,000. That’s enough if you just want the basics. But if you want a higher quality dress, a bigger hall, a more elaborate floral arrangement, all these things cost more money.
And in what way is bad salesmanship “systematically rewarded?”
You mean people actually have to do more research for major purchasing decisions? My God. Next you’ll be telling me that buying a car isn’t just like picking up a pack of gum at the 7/11.
Okay, you do realize that the photographers who shoot those games are completely different from the photographers who shoot weddings, right?
That’s exactly what I said. Culture creates demand. What’s wrong with that? That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Besides, most of our ideas about what weddings should be like don’t even come from TV. They come from friends and neighbors who feel like they have to do one better than whoever was the last person to get married.
We’re talking about businesses here. They’re not the Borg coming to assimilate us all into their collective hive mind. There is no “wedding industry.” There are several industries that are involved in wedding planning. Now for what you’re saying to be true, not only would you have to accomplish the practically impossible feat of getting all of the players in one particular industry to come together and agree on a strategy, but then you would have to get those people to come together with all of the players in all of the other wedding-related industries and agree on a strategy. And you would have to get all of those people to agree not to stab everyone else in the back by lowering prices to steal away all their customers.
Frankly, you’d have an easier time trying to prove that the U.S. government faked the moon landing.
And price discrimination is something that never happens in any other industry.
So basically you’re saying that because this particular industry is a unique case in which one company has an exceptional amount of power, that anything that’s true of the diamond industry must also be true of every other industry that provides wedding-related products or services?
You really can’t argue with logic like that.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 2:05 PM
I don’t know. Do you think that the footnotes at the end of a peer-reviewed article are proselytizing, too?
You’re missing the point–they raise the prices on these things, these exact same things–just because the event in question happens to be a wedding.
Because you don’t have repeat business, you have a customer base who’s largely incapable of finding out what the going rate is because they constantly “poison the well” with misinformation, etc. We went through all of this above. Then you say that’s just bad salesmanship. Then I say that this industry systematically rewards bad salesmanship because in this context it just plain works. Then you ask how that could be. Then I explain how it happens. Then you say that’s just bad salesmanship. Then I say that this industry systematically rewards bad salesmanship because in this context it just plain works. Then you ask how that could be. Then I explain how it happens. Then you say that’s just bad salesmanship…
More like if the most basic Honda Civic cost half a million dollars at every dealership, and the only way to get one even close to its actual cost required smuggling it into the country, and even then you have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes on it because the government just assumes it’s a half-million-dollar Civic, just like all the others.
Then you’d have a better comparison.
The prices are artificially inflated, and there’s more than a little bit of a cartel going on to keep it up. Skirting that cartel means being extremely inventive. Giuli’s dress comes from a costume company. Perfectly fine dress–but getting it from a costume company is just a little bit off, don’t you think? We’ve had to cut corners, find loopholes, and bend the rules ten ways to Sunday and we’re still paying more than any of this is actually worth, because everyone else isn’t willing to see to such Herculean feats just to not get sucked in. We’re consciously avoiding it, and we’re still suffering from it.
That’s not true at all. There’s quite a bit of overlap. And where there is, they charge far more for a wedding than they do for a game. Why? Because sports teams know what their value is actually worth. It was the same mechanism that led web designers to charge hundreds of times more than their websites were actually worth. This is not uncommon, when your customers are ignorant of how your work is done, and you withhold that information quite deliberately from them.
Nothing–as long as culture doesn’t become a creation of marketers who turn humanity’s greatest adaptation into one huge ad to push product. Which is precisely what they’ve done. They manufacture their own demand. It’s circular. There is no actual reason for them to exist; they are defined only in their own terms.
Partially, but what constitutes “one better” comes from TV and movies. For my money, “one better” would be a longer reception, but you don’t see that as one of the dimensions of growth, do you? The dimensons of growth are the dimensions laid out in TV and movies, which is an agenda set by the wedding industry. Curious, isn’t it?
As “the premier site for wedding professionals,” I believe the folks at “Sell the Bride” would beg to differ.
Seriously, Mike, that’s like saying there’s no such thing as a tourist industry, and people just go to Cancun because it’s such a great place that has nothing at all to do with the money spent by Cancun’s tourist industry to drum up business.
And that could never happen, right, OPEC?
Cartels happen all the time. They fall apart, but it’s only been the past twenty years. Web designers were ripping off clients for a good decade before people figured it out. There was no conspiracy, no collusion necessary. They noticed that they could manufacture demand for things people didn’t actually need, and that they’d pay astronomical prices for things that didn’t really cost nearly that much. So they did it. Heck, I felt like I was ripping people off, and I was charging half or less what everyone else was.
Didn’t say that. We’re just saying that this is one of them, and that it’s wrong.
No, we’re saying that when the one company that constitutes something like half the total industry is guilty of something, and you see the tell-tale signs of it throughout the rest of the industry, and there’s enough documentation of it to fill a frickin’ book, then it’s not such a far stretch to suggest the other half might be up to it, too.
I’d imagine not. Egregious strawmen are like that.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 2:39 PM
Er… no it didn’t. It just came from a regular ol’ clothing designer instead of a wedding dress designer.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 22 March 2006 @ 3:13 PM
Clothing designer for Goths. I saw that website. That was totally a costume company.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 3:22 PM
I’m a little late to the party, but figured I’d chip in. My wife an I were married a year and a half ago for under 2k, and still receive comments about how nice it was.
1) Did the wedding at an outdoor chapel at a church camp. Great views, cost us $50. Friends brought flowers to spruce it up.
2) Anna’s brother did the ceremony for us - $50 to the county to have him allowed to marry us & the marriage cert. Cherry picked parts of the ceremony out of a hymnal.
3) Just us and Anna’s brother, didn’t worry about other people in the ceremony. If people wanted to help, we put them to work doing other things. Waay less hassle this way. One of the things going into the wedding was that we didn’t want any gifts. We already had enough stuff. So instead, we asked people to do things for us. Sing, bring snacks or flowers to the ceremony, bring a few cases of beer, etc. Worked well for everyone.
4) I wore a guayabera, Anna a nice dress. Total clothes spending less than $300.
5) Rather than a formal reception, we essentially had a nice party at a friends house (big house & yard)
6) Catered Mediterranean & Mexican trays, serve yourself food, guest list was under 90 people. I’d guess $600 on food & etc vs. what, $8 a plate?
7) Photography was a gift from Anna’s sister.
If you would like more info, or a link to the photos, let me know.
ChrisN.
Comment by ChrisN — 22 March 2006 @ 3:32 PM
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 22 March 2006 @ 4:05 PM
Well, if I’m having a conversation with someone and they respond to my points simply with, “SPEAK NOT AGAINST THE HOLY WORD OF JAMA, HEATHEN!!!” then yeah, that kind of feels like proselytizing.
They really don’t. Generally, the products made for weddings tend to be of higher quality. But these places have a whole range of products. You don’t have to buy the most expensive thing they offer you.
My point is just that a lot of people spend that much money on their weddings because they want extravagant weddings.
Maybe we’re going in circles because you’re not really answering the question. Consumers not knowing much about the product doesn’t “systematically reward” bad salesmanship. But that’s a red herring anyway since it’s completely untrue that people are “incapable” of learning about the product, especially in today’s era. Lack of repeat business doesn’t “systematically reward” bad salesmanship either. Although, the fact that people who are getting married generally know several other people who are getting married within a relatively short time span and talk about their wedding plans more than almost any other purchase they make certainly does a lot to discourage bad salesmanship.
So tell me again how this is an industry that systematically rewards bad salesmanship.
Sure. I mean, you can tell from all of the hardcore dress dealers smuggling wedding dresses across the Mexican border in their stomachs.
Okay, let’s be honest here. You’re not getting “sucked in” to anything you don’t want to be in. If you just want to be married, all you really need is a judge. All the rest are things you’re adding because you consider them to be of value. And things that have value cost money.
Photographers who shoot football games tend to be employed by newspapers and magazines. Photographers who shoot weddings generally work out of studios. Weddings are pretty much their bread and butter. That’s a fairly significant difference.
No, it’s an agenda laid out by lazy writers who have run out of ideas and decide to have two characters get married as an easy way to grab ratings.
Advertising increases the demand for a particular product by letting people know that it exists. But it can’t create demand out of nothing. If there was nothing in Cancun worth seeing, you could run ads from now until doomsday, and it wouldn’t do you a whole lot of good. That’s why at least half of all that money that’s spent on “increasing tourism” isn’t spent on ads. It’s spent on building up places that people would actually want to visit.
But my point is simply that what you keep referring to as the “wedding industry” is, in fact, several industries. And each of those industries has many, many players (except the diamond industry). And all of those players have their own agendas–usually involving the horrible demise of the other players in their industry. This is hardly a group that’s working in unison.
You’re comparing wedding industries to the oil industry?
I never said collusion doesn’t happen. In fact, I specifically said that it does happen. But it can’t just happen anywhere. In the oil industry, in addition to it being a single industry, you’re talking about a product that’s high in demand, limited in supply, and very expensive to gain access to. And, oh yeah, most of it is controlled by the most ruthless tyrants on the planet. It’s a little easier to have collusion under those circumstances.
The industries involved in wedding planning are a little bit different. I don’t see any Republican Guard protecting the precious wedding dress wells.
Price disrimination is wrong? If that’s the moral stance you’re taking on this, I guess you won’t be buying any of those cheap, last-minute tickets the next time you take a plane somewhere. After all, that’s price discrimination. The people who bought their tickets before you paid more.
And you can rule out going to the theater or the museum too. Those bastards are the worse price discriminators of them all, with their separate pricing for children, adults, and senior citizens.
If you’re looking at cars, I don’t want to see you haggling with salespeople. Haggling is just another form of price discrimination. And that’s wrong.
First of all, I already admitted that De Beers is guilty of the kind of thing you’re talking about. But what you don’t seem to get is that that’s ONE industry. It has nothing to do with any of the other industries that are involved in planning weddings. De Beers is a unique case. If you’re talking about standard industry practices, the word “unique” should serve as a red flag. And I really have to wonder about the rest of your argument if De Beers is the only specific example you can give of a wedding industry creating a demand for something that wasn’t there before.
As far as the book goes, you can’t just respond to everything I say with, “I read it in a book.” There’s enough documented evidence of secularists pushing extreme political correctness to fill a book too. Does that mean there’s a war on Christmas?
Comment by Mike Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 7:46 PM
Yeah, that would kinda be proselytizing, wouldn’t it? Except the part where you felt “witnessed to” was when you asked for a source, and Giuli offered you one.
They really do. They really have. To me.
Not because they think money makes such a pleasant aroma when it burns. Most people spend a lot of money on their weddings because they see no other alternative, and they spend more money on products and services that are generally not even worth a quarter of their price.
How so? With an ignorant customer base, a “bad salesman” gets all the benefits of a bigger commission, with none of the problems usually associated with the practice.
No, it’s not because of lack of repeat business–it’s because the wedding industry spends a lot of time and effort to obfuscate the issue.
When I did freelance web design, you wouldn’t believe the amount of FUD I saw my competitors spew, just to poison the well, to make sure clients never found out what a racket the whole thing was.
Bullshit; I most certainly am! I have to make reservations so far in advance because everyone else is. I have to make sure that none of the vendors know it’s a wedding they’re going to be at, or they’ll quadruple the price for the same damn thing. I have to do end-runs and find every loophole I can, or I’m going to get screwed to the wall. Tell me again how I’m not being “sucked in” to anything I don’t want to be in.
That doesn’t justify the sheer amount of money involved. Yes, a Snickers bar has value, and costs money to reflect that value. If the price is set at $18 billion, then you might conclude from that that something is awry, no?
WRONG. The NFL, newspapers, high schools, etc. routinely contract with independent photographers to cover events like football games. The VERY SAME studio photographers who do weddings. That’s why, when I started this, I mentioned comparison of the EXACT SAME PHOTOGRAPHER, using the exact same equipment. But at the more difficult event to shoot (the game), the price isn’t even a quarter of what it is for the wedding. That’s because WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY HAS ZIP, ZERO, NADA, NOTHING TO DO WITH THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT.
MOST prices for most services have utterly nothing to do with the cost of manufacture OR labor. They’re set by demand. And for the most part, demand is manufactured through marketing–marketing geared at changing our culture fundamentally, to support greater demand. Our culture has been turned into an engine to turn us into nothing more than consumers–so that we’re willing to pay far, FAR more for something than it was ever imaginably worth.
That’s what the wedding industry has done–far more effectively than most industries, I might add, because they prey on ignorance and produce misinformation to create more ignorance. Giuli’s just highlighting one of the uglier corners of this travesty. Economic theory is all nice and quaint, but it’s all quite broken. It’s never worked that way.
And it’s just coincidence that those episodes so routinely follow large checks being cashed from the likes of DeBeers and FTD?
Counterproof: Paris Hilton.
We routinely create demand out of nothing. We’ve gotten to the point where advertisers tell people what they want, and they want it. We don’t need, or even want, MOST of the things we buy. But we do–because we’ve been carefully conditioned. The twentieth century is about this more than anything else: first, the failure of psychology on the individual level, second, its astonishing success on the mass level. Advertisers have employed powerfully manipulative psychologically-honed tactics to undertake the largest scale cultural and psychological engineering project in history. And for the most part, it’s worked. We most certainly do create demand out of nothing. It’s become routine.
Same could be said of the “tourism industry,” yet we can see clearly that they work in unison. Companies are good at noticing where their common interests are–or would you also argue that lobbyists are mythical boogeymen of liberal paranoia, too?
NO IT’S NOT!!!!
All those local florists, look in their window. They’re just street-level vendors for FTD. ALL OF THEM. FTD is the DeBeers of flowers. They do the same damn things. It happens over and over again, in each of the sectors involved in the wedding industry.
On top of that, they collaborate, through organizations and trade shows and meetings where they really do get together and discuss pricing models, and how to trick people into paying more for things they don’t want or need. They do it all the time. It’s routine.
So far we’ve given you about half a dozen other examples, but the way you keep insisting it’s just DeBeers makes me think you’re being deliberately dense on this. Why? What’s so shocking about the idea that our economy might be profoundly fucked up? What, are you on the payroll too?
Might help reading it first.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2006 @ 9:58 PM
I responded to you simply with, “read All Dressed in White” because I don’t give enough of a shit about any of this to actually hold a lengthy debate on it. So since you live like fifteen minutes away, I might as well just tell you which books I got my information from and offer to lend them to you. All Dressed in White is a good overview; there’s also some really outrageous information in Bridal Bargains and in the chapter “Heart of Whiteness” from The Meaning of Wife.
Okay, I don’t want to be mean, but this made me laugh hysterically. Most bridal gowns are mass-produced out of polyester (which the industry calls “Italian satin”) in factories in Asia, just like most other clothing. One of the big reasons why bridal magazines are currently trying to sell brides on the idea of wearing the gown for the ceremony and switching to a different dress for the reception is because the vast majority of these gowns are so shoddily made that many of them fall apart after only a few hours of wear. Serious problems with beading, stitching, and fabric quality abound. My $80 dress is of higher quality than any given $800 gown I may buy at a salon.
Furthermore, some bridal “services” pushed by bridal magazines and websites are pure scams that don’t even offer any services at all. A good example is “wedding insurance,” which, thanks to a number of clever contract loopholes, doesn’t actually have to reimburse you for anything. Of course, you can only see those loopholes in small print, written in legalese, after they’ve already bombarded you with ads and paid off magazine writers to explain to you why you desperately need wedding insurance.
Another good example is “gown preservation.” When a sample gown has gotten too dirty from being tried on, the bridal salon tosses it in the washer and dryer. Of course, they don’t tell you this. They insist that the gowns are so fragile (which, they’re so badly made, that they kind of are fragile) that they must be professionally “preserved.” These preservationists give you your gown back in a sealed box and tell you that it’s vitally important for you not to open the box for a year. Or five. Else, the dress will be ruined. Of course, when you finally do open the box, you find that not only did they not “preserve” it - they didn’t even clean it! Most women find that their dress has come back dirtier than it was before, with grime and even bloodstains on one occasion.
Not only are both those “services” total scams, but the entire rest of the industry - magazines, bridal salons, etc. - has been working overtime to convince customers that they need the services. That, I think, is a pretty good example of collusion.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 23 March 2006 @ 12:50 AM
Soooo I shouldn’t trust a single word you say about, say, the !Kung because you’ve only read about them in books? After all, you haven’t actually met them in person. Just like I haven’t dealt with caterers or florists or officiants or locations or–oh, wait. Yes I have. Because I’m the one actually planning a wedding.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 23 March 2006 @ 1:17 AM
Except that that’s not what happened at all. I had made several points outlining the flaws in your arguments, none of which included a request for sources. Rather than responding to these points, Giuli responded by saying, “But I already told you that I read a book about this!”
Whoa. A book. Well, that changes everything. And not only that. There are conferences you can go to also. And don’t worry about the actual contents of these products. The fact that they exist is enough to invalidate any differing opinion you may have. And there are by no means any similarities here to a fundamentalist Christian.
And you accuse me of being purposely dense? You’re still completely missing the point. Let me try going over this again as slowly as I know how. There are many people whose idea of a perfect wedding involves a certain show of material wealth. This requires items that are of higher quality than those needed for a bare bones wedding. As a result, these items cost more money. The people involved in these weddings are willing to spend that much money because that’s the kind of wedding they want. It’s not because they’re too dumb to realize they’re wasting money. They’re not wasting money. They’re spending more money to buy the type of wedding they want.
At best, you can say that it doesn’t punish bad salespeople. Which I’m still not sold on, but still, a lack of punishment isn’t the same thing as a reward. There’s nothing about these industries that would encourage there to be more bad salesmanship.
I didn’t say it’s because of a lack of repeat business. You said it’s because of a lack of repeat business. You’re arguing with yourself! And losing!
My point was that your claim that people are “incapable” of learning about these products is flat-out, dead wrong.
You don’t have to do any of those things. All you have to do is go down the street to the JP. You choose to do those things because you’ve decided, just like most other people getting married, that they have value. And when you want something of value that’s highly in demand and limited in supply, you’re going to have to pay for it.
And by the way, I, in a five minute internet search, was just able to find dresses ranging from $80 to $2000. So to tell me again about the lack of options.
Wow. ALL of economic theory is wrong. That’s quite a claim. I don’t think I even need to respond to that one.
Companies also spend billions of dollars to show their products during the Super Bowl. But just because they spent the money doesn’t mean it has any effect. A good 90% of all the products advertised during the Super Bowl are forgotten before the game is over. And that’s not even as subtle as the product placement that happens on television. That’s with a good 30-90 seconds devoted solely to flashing their logo all over the screen.
Paris Hilton doesn’t create demand out of nothing. She satisfies a very specific demand. The demand for slutty pornography.
Ah yes, the advertisements-as-alien-brainwashing-devices theory. You know, just because a product doesn’t have some readily apparent utilitarian function doesn’t mean that you were tricked into wanting it. People like to have things that are just silly because they help us fit in, or because they give status, or just because they just make us feel good. I have a phrenology head sitting on my desk right now. There’s no earthly reason for me to have it other than it makes me feel good to have it. Does that mean that I was “conditioned” to want to have a phrenology head?
Honestly, what’s the last thing you bought that you didn’t want at all?
Companies are actually, more often than not, terrible at noticing where their common interests are. As Lenin once said, “a capitalist would sell rope to his own hangman.”
They all have VISA stickers on the windows too. Does that mean they’re being controlled by VISA?
FTD doesn’t “control” the flower industry. It’s a delivery co-op that florists use to deliver their flowers. Besides, you still haven’t shown me how FTD has changed the way people think about wedding flowers. Saying that FTD is equivalent to De Beers just doesn’t make any sense.
Yeah, I’m on the payroll. Every month I get a big fat check from FTD.
Although, I do like how your whole argument is conveniently unfalsifiable. After all, anyone who disagrees with you is just too dumb to realize that they’ve been duped by the sinsiter forces of the Wedding Industrial Complex. They filled all our heads with lies right after they buried those dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us into believing in the theory of evolution. Diabolical!
Says the person who wrote the actual article that started the debate. But really, “not giving a shit about any of this” is the sort of demonstration of devotion to your subject matter that really convinces people to listen to what you have to say.
No, that’s not mean at all. I can’t imagine what would make you think it might be taken that way.
Well, first of all, that’s not really true. Secondly, allow me to congratulate you on discovering the concept of what is commonly referred to in business terms as a “scam.” They can actually be found in almost every industry. Of course, to try presenting them as the entirety of the industry is just a little bit of a stretch.
Well, you’re wrong. Just out of curiosity, do you actually know what “collusion” means?
Yeah, that’s exactly what I said. Honestly, I would love to see exactly what a scholarly debate between anthropologists looks like in your head. I imagine it would go something like…
A: Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San & Their Neighbors. Therefore, p.
B: But The Kung of the Kalahari! Therefore, not p.
A: Ah, but you forget. The Lost World of the Kalahari!
B: Oh, yes! I did forget about that one! Drat, I say! In that case, I suppose p.
And you know what? You’re actually the first person to ever do that. It’s a good thing too, knowing as we do the wealth of accurate information that comes from anecdotal evidence. And all I have is this degree in business administration, so I guess I just don’t know what I’m talking about. But maybe if I go out and read the holy scripture that is All Dressed in White, then I’ll be allowed to have an opinion too. Won’t that be exciting?
Comment by Mike Godesky — 23 March 2006 @ 7:14 PM
Monogamous marriage is a pretty rare thing, culturally - and I get the feeling that Mike is harboring resentment that Giuli won’t go for that ever exclusive prize, polyandry. In a tribe of four, that would up the odds very favorably for Mike to get some before the collapse. Ah, the tribe hashes out it’s burgeoning culture…
Tip - weddings can be great places to pick up chicks - just not the bride. You know, our vestigial western ways and all…
Comment by JCamasto — 23 March 2006 @ 8:14 PM
My “wedding” was completely out of my hands. My wife’s parents threw a comparatively cheap bash at a Japanese inn (in Fukuroda for those in Japan). I didn’t know what was going on and they didn’t discuss it with us before hand, but I am very thankful there was no religious mumbo-jumbo, no silly costumes and none of the intolerable boredom that accompanies most weddings.
May yours be as good.
Comment by DJEB — 24 March 2006 @ 10:06 AM
Heh I had a Japanese wedding as well, near Kyoto. My wife and I had planned to more or less elope, but her mother insisted on a ceremony. They ended up spending $30k on an elaborate buddhist ceremony at a temple, followed by an incredible reception at a ryokan (like a big bed and breakfast with indoor hotsprings). The food was amazing, the pageantry was beautiful. The bride was wrapped in layers of kimono, and she had to change into a new one midway through. I had to recite mantras I didn’t fully understand, it was all quite surreal. I was glad to see and take part in this, but it certainly wasn’t for “us”, it was for those in attendance. I did resent that the bill was held over my head for the next few years, even though I was almost completely left out of the planning phase, but then constantly reminded of my “debt”. They resented that I seemed to think our wedding was not “worth spending that much on”.
I am no longer married, for what its worth.
Comment by rob — 24 March 2006 @ 11:28 AM
And the respectability of this conversation manages to find another way to go down a notch.
Anyway, if that’s where you want to take this, it doesn’t really sound like I’m the one with the problem, Jimmy. Tell me. Does your wife know that you have these kinds of fantasies about other women?
Comment by Mike Godesky — 24 March 2006 @ 3:52 PM
Which is worse, providing sources with no arguments, or dismissing another person’s statement with neither argument nor source?
If you’re so intent on running this into the ground, you might as well debate the way you keep insisting I debate.
I never said I didn’t give a shit about it. I said I didn’t give enough of a shit about it to debate it for days on end. I also wrote an article on Generation Y. Guess what? I don’t care enough about that one to debate passionately about it for a week either. Believe it or not, not everyone is obsessed with constantly debating every single topic to death.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 24 March 2006 @ 5:09 PM
First, to all the onlookers, I need to make a preface. Michael is my brother, I love him dearly, and he’s one of the smartest people I know. Please bear that in mind throughout the following. Jim, that means no one gets to pick on my little brother but me.
Now, bearing that all in mind … Mike, that is the most idiotic thing you’ve ever said. Rather than go line-by-line through all your various snarks, snipes, and nasty little sarcastic barbs you’ve made towards my fiance, I’m going to rewind and take this from the top.
The Left and the Right are both just attitudes on how to run a civilization–not whether we should run a civilization at all. Thus, I am neither. The Left perhaps the dictatorship of government; the Right, the dictatorship of corporations. I think I’d rather pass on dictatorship altogether, if you please. Thus, the Right is willing to believe any horror story about the government, and the Left is willing to believe any horror story about corporations. I tend to be skeptical of both. Both are interested only in their own power. If helping you will get them more power, they will help you; if crushing you will get them more power, they will crush you. Last year, WalMart posted $256 billion in profits–more than the GDP of Poland. Lobbyists shape government policy. Businessmen are politicians and politicians are businessmen. The line that seperates corporations and governments is increasingly thin. Just look at theyrule.net.
But I’m skeptical of conspiracy theories. People don’t get together and plan how to hurt you. The world just doesn’t work like that. But sometimes, organizations do get together to see to their common good. Even more often, the nature of a given industry is predisposed to a given set of talents. The nature of law creates a natural selection for those talented at lying with facts. Those who possess such a talent are better able to win a case than someone who is constrained to only the truth of the matter. A superior record leads them to succeed. Not always, of course; an honest lawyer, though rare, is not an entirely extinct species. But that is the pressure that the nature of the business applies.
Then there’s this question of an “industry.” That’s a funny word. Wikipedia defines it as, “generally any grouping of businesses that share a common method of generating profits, such as the “music industry”, the ‘automobile industry,’ or the ‘cattle industry.’” Most industries are made up of many sub-industries. The tourism industry is made up of the hotel industry, the restaurant industry, the airline industry, etc. Companies within the same industry compete with each other–ruthlessly. At the same time, they can understand where their common interests lie. Industry trade shows and organizations provide the means by which companies in a given industry can cooperate on these areas that are in their common interests. Advice given in the columns of trade magazines and presentations given at trade shows constitute a form of open collusion, whereby everyone in the industry is given a “game plan.” Though it is up to individual retailers whether or not to implement that advice, the very fact that they have all recieved the same advice makes it far more likely that those ideas will be implemented on a large scale.
Capitalism, in it’s purest form, is probably not such a bad thing. In its purest form, capitalism is merely trade–trade conducted freely, between willing parties, no more, no less. The problems with capitalism–the seperation of rich and poor, the exploitation of lower classes by the elites, etc.–are endemic to all agricultural economies, including not only capitalism, but also communism, socialism and feudalism. They merely rearrange the definition of “the elites.” Another factor that separates the economy we see in contemporary America from “pure capitalism” is collusion. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations took as its founding premsie that neither the employers, nor the employees, would have any kind of cooperation. Smith’s ideas are the founding premise of all economic theory, yet Smith’s own founding premises have never been met. When he wrote The Wealth of Nations, he lived in an age ruled by guilds. Guilds gave way to cartels and industries. In response, employees finally began to create organizations of their own–unions–to balance the collusion of nineteenth-century robber barons. The premise of all modern economic theory is Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and its premises were conditions that have never been met. Small wonder, then, that economic theory fails to match reality so regularly. For any logical argument, if the premise is false, the whole argument becomes unsound. Still valid, mind you, but unsound.
Now, it is true that cartels never last long–and that’s the main reason I mistrust conspiracy theories about business. Cartels present a Prisoner’s Dilemna. The first one to defect will get to rake in the profits–for a time. In the end, they’re all best served by keeping to the pact; but the temptation to individually break it is overwhelming. That’s why cartels never last very long. But they do occur–frequently. They’re just unstable.
Look at OPEC, one of the most successful cartels ever. It was founded in 1965, and has shown increasing signs of instability. As Peak Oil is passed, it’s increasingly likely that OPEC will break up.
Often, active collusion isn’t even necessary. This is primarily the case when a subject is relatively unknown to its customers. The case I know best is web design. Clients typically have no idea what it costs to develop a website, or what the “going rate” for a website is. This led to web designers vastly overstating the value of their websites. It was a racket. In time, though, there were designers who undercut the rest by making up in volume what they lost per sale, customers became more educated, and for the most part, web design prices have come down to reasonable levels.
This is the biggest factor involved in the wedding industry: the simple fact that the customers don’t know what “normal” is, so they have no point of reference. Giuli’s right: the par for customer service is very, very low in the wedding industry, because people don’t know what “par” is. Bridal gowns tend to be very shoddily made, and priced high above their actual value. It is, as you say, a scam. Just as important is the fact that emotions run high about a wedding. That makes customers easy to manipulate. Who wants to seem like they’re “skimping” on “their special day”? It’s very easy to coax people up to a higher price by playing on their emotions and equating the dollar value to an expression of affection. The message isn’t very subtle at all: sure, this dress is barely worth $20, but if you’re not willing to pay $8,000 for it, that means you don’t love her. When it’s so easy to do such a thing, and there’s so little by way of reprecussion, the salesmen at such establishments have no reason to treat you fairly. If you tell your friends, how likely is it that any of them are getting married any time soon enough to remember? How likely are you to even know that you were taken advantage of–that this isn’t just par for the course? It all comes out to making the threat of “bad salesmanship” a very idle one.
Not that the wedding industry is without its fair share of collusion, either. I already linked to Sell the Bride, but the best known is probably the National Association of Wedding Professionals, Inc. (NAWP). There’s also the Wedding Planning Institute, the Association of Wedding Professionals International and the plain old Association of Bridal Consultants. Here’s a gem: “Book More Brides!.” These organizations exist to spread misinformation about weddings–misinformation that the general public generally doesn’t have the resources to combat. Here’s a flier one person posted online for an industry seminar:
They exist to help promote a cultural ideal of the wedding that benefits its members: a wedding that’s extravagent and above all, expensive. They push whole industries that are nothing but scams–Giuli already mentioned the bridal gown cleaners, but there’s also “wedding insurance,” and my personal favorite, the wedding planner. The wedding industry has succeeded so thoroughly in pushing this cultural ideal that the wedding has become so complex and so expensive, a full-time professional must be contracted to handle it. Diminishing returns on complexity, no?
We’ve already discussed how DeBeers has engaged in a cultural construction project on a massive scale. Giuli already mentioned an episode of Baywatch paid for by DeBeers, revolving around the purchase of a diamond engagement ring. Look carefully at those “wedding” episodes that you ascribe merely to lazy writers looking for a ratings boost: nearly every commercial break will include a spot from DeBeers. The article, “For Richer or Poorer,” includes a timeline of DeBeers’ schemes:
By itself, DeBeers constitutes a significant amount of the wedding industry–but DeBeers is hardly a special case. Its success was seen as a template to be followed by the rest of the industry. As Giuli mentioned in the original article:
How do we account for such a rise? We have already accounted for inflation. As we’ve seen with bridal gowns specifically, the items being sold are not of a higher quality. Mike, you and I have photographed weddings. I agree it was work and worth some compensation, but do you really think that effort was worth thousands (plural) of dollars? Because that’s what the average wedding photographer costs–photographers who take far fewer, and lower quality shots than we did. That’s just for the shots. Proper presentation costs more–a lot more. The CD’s we made for our cousins would normally go for a grand each, by themselves. Even if you can argue that such is the case–where do we get the increase from? There were wedding photographers in the 1980s just like today; it required just as much skill (arguably more), and heavier equipment. Yet they were paid significantly less than today.
It’s not the quality of the items, the cost of the materials, or even any kind of reasonable compensation for labor. What is it? Of course, any econ 101 student could tell you, it’s demand. Price is not set by cost, but by the balance of supply and demand. While supply has increased (there are more vendors every year), demand has increased even more. That’s not a coincidence. The wedding industry noted that its single biggest member was able to create demand out of whole cloth for items with no practical value. They took this as a lesson, and ran with it.
It was not so long ago that our “fashions” were defined by the habits of royalty. The white wedding dress dates only as far back as the wedding of Queen Victoria in 1840. As “The History of The White Wedding Dress” explains:
The multi-tiered wedding cake made its first appearance with the marriage of one of Victoria’s daughters in 1859, but it wasn’t perfected until the wedding of Prince Leopold in 1882.
Without crowned royalty, America’s own wedding traditions instead came from media royalty. Magazines proved particularly effective. The Wikipedia entry on “White Wedding” explains the history:
Our current conception of the wedding evolved from post-war wedding magazines: magazines that made the bulk of their revenue from advertising, paid by wedding vendors. They shaped the public consciousness with regards to what a wedding is supposed to be. If they decided that weddings required extravagent expenses, that’s what people would want. Their customers had likely never been married before, and they looked to these magazines to tell them what “normal” was. In turn, the more expensive the average wedding became, the more prosperous the magazine’s advertisers would be, and they would be able to spend more money on advertising.
This happens in other industries all the time, of course. “PC World” doesn’t spend a lot of space discussing the merits of Red Hat Fedora Core 3 or Mac OS X. In these industries, the effect is tempered by the fact that people deal with these products all the time, and are able to develop their own opinions on the products. Even today’s most voracious and fickle serial monogamists don’t wed that often.
Neil Shister’s “Queen for a Day” sums it up well:
Which brings us to how our cultural conceptions of the wedding have been shaped in more recent decades: TV and movies. The post-war period began to be shaped by bridal magazines financed by vendors, thus giving the magazines a vested interest in what kind of wedding they would promote–the June “Special Planning Issue” of Bride’s Magazine regularly approaches 1,000 pages, almost all of them advertisements. Today, every television series has a wedding, and a good number of movies.
In the case of television, perhaps the strongest force here, we again have a medium supported by advertisements. By this time, the wedding industry had come to understand the cultural power it could have from the success of Bride’s Magazine and Modern Bride. The bigger players began to pay for wedding episodes, to help use TV to the same effect, to create a cultural expectation of a “wedding” that would require couples to bankrupt themselves. DeBeers’ specific financing of Baywatch has already been mentioned, but other examples abound. FTD also spends a great deal of money on advertising, pushing television networks for more wedding episodes that fulfill the needs of their cultural project. Movies follow suit. Each media wedding becomes progressively more elaborate, and our idea of what “par” is keeps going up–all because vested interests are paying for precisely that effect.
There is no conspiracy here, merely an industry operating the same way any other industry operates. They operate in a highly emotionally charged part of people’s lives, and cynically exploit that to the tune of $72 billion a year. They have successfully changed our cultural ideas about “marriage” to fit a consumerist vision that creates demand for things we don’t need–and really don’t even want–but feel obligated to purchase by cultural norms. Norms they created through a long campaign of mass psychological manipulation specifically for that effect.
In the ideal you talk about, Mike, salespeople and advertising exist to let people who are looking for your product to know your product exists. If that was the wedding industry, we’d be in agreement. It’s not. The wedding industry is about changing culture to increase profit, and some of the largest-scale psychological manipulation ever achieved. The price of the average wedding keeps going up, because the wedding industry isn’t about providing a necessary service–it’s about exploiting vulnerable people through ruthless psychological manipulation.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 March 2006 @ 5:26 PM
Do your fingers type fast enough to catch all the stuff coming out of your head?!?
Now I understand why you went on a hunter/gatherer diet - you plan a Roxanna Troy wedding.
Comment by Rick Larson — 25 March 2006 @ 12:36 AM
Firstly, on the issue of the tulle veil that we were discussing earlier. I looked into it, and there’s actually quite a wide range of them available with a similarly wide range of prices. It can get pretty expensive depending on the size of the veil and the material used. With tulle veils, you’re dealing with very fine materials. That’s why they cost more money. When my cousin was getting married, they actually researched the different options they had for the veil. It turned out to be cheaper to just buy a veil than it was to make one out of the raw materials.
Anyway, I don’t feel a need to keep this discussion going any longer by responding to Jason’s last post. Suffice it to say, it’s based largely on red herrings and misconceptions, most of which I’ve already touched on above.
I would, however, like to address the increasingly negative tone of the discussion. There seems to be the conception that somehow I’m the one who is being mean or “cranky.” Jason, you yourself said,
Don’t get me wrong. Protecting your fiance is a good thing. Perhaps not so much when it’s against assaults that exist largely in your own mind, but still. I guess my point is just that it’s too bad you can’t see real attacks when they’re aimed at anybody else.
Now I can usually at least understand where my opponents are coming from even when I disagree with them. But accusing me of being the negative one in this thread is simply beyond comprehension. So far, I’ve been the calmest person in this entire debate.
The “snipes” you speak of have been, 99% of the time, directed at ideas, not people. And if your self-concept is so wrapped up in a single idea that you feel that this constitutes an attack on your person, you probably have more important things you need help with than an argument on a website. The few times I have made personal snipes have been in direct response to personal insults aimed at myself. And I feel that they have been proportional responses.
On the other hand, my ideas have increasingly been met with insults, name-calling, shouting, condescension, and just plain rudeness, including some comments by Ben and Jim that were completely out of line by any standard of good taste. I can see no reason for these outbursts other than the fact that I dared to express a differing opinion. And God forbid that we use the internet as a medium through which to critically examine ideas.
Of course, there’s no reason for such responses from people who really believe in Thesis #1: Diversity is the primary good. I actually do believe in diversity. Not just cultural or biological diversity, but a diversity of thought. Too many websites dismiss out of hand any person who expresses opinions that in any way deviate from the goodthinkful beliefs that have been approved by the group. I had hoped that with Anthropik we could create a community that appreciates a diversity of thought. But judging from the responses above, we still have a long, long way to go.
I suppose I can only hope that this discussion is not an example of what Anthropik has become.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 25 March 2006 @ 2:28 PM
You can climb down off the cross any time you like. Just to be sure, I went back and counted up all the statements in this thread that I’d consider antagonistic. Total was 29. Not bad for a thread with now 80 comments. But Mike–you were responsible for 15 of them. More than half of the antagonistic comments in this thread came from you. The rest of the score: Giuli with 5, me with 4, Jim with 3, and Ben and Peter with one apiece. So, Mike, the person with the most antagonistic comments behind you was Giuli (which makes sense, since you were being pretty ruthless with her), but you still beat her by a margin of about 3-to-1.
So, if you don’t like the tone of the thread, I don’t think you have anyone to blame but yourself. We talk about different ideas quite peaceably all the time. Problem is when somebody gets all nasty about it. Like here. But the one who got nasty was you. Your very first contribution to this thread included this bit of antagonism:
That last line Giuli was just going off about ready to hurt someone. “Gee, I guess I might as well sew a yellow Star of David on my dress, too; after all, it’s just an inanimate object, and as we all know, inanimate objects never mean anything!” She kind of has a point, about you, y’know, totally missing the point … and then being kind of a dick about it, to boot.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 26 March 2006 @ 12:28 AM
I see. So basically, attacking an idea is, to you, equivalent to an attack on the person. What deep personalities you and Giuli must have if the entirety of them consist of a single idea. Maybe I did miss the point, but that’s probably because you guys were so busy hurling insults at me that you forgot to explain what the point was.
You see, I also went back through the thread, and I came up with a very different count.
Ben wrote:
Jason wrote:
Jason wrote:
Jason wrote:
Giuli wrote:
Giuli wrote:
Jim wrote:
Tip - weddings can be great places to pick up chicks - just not the bride. You know, our vestigial western ways and all…
Jason wrote:
Just to name a few. And that’s not even including the general implications throughout this thread that anyone who doesn’t get the cheapest wedding they can buy is just stupid and that you’re not allowed to have an opinion on the matter unless you’ve read Giuli’s book.
The only personal remarks I’ve made in this thread have been in direct response to one of the statements above. But then, I did disagree with Giuli a lot. So if that’s your definition of antagonistic, I’m guilty as charged.
I don’t care so much about the fact that I’m the target here, although I do find it rather disturbing that you’re incapable of seeing that. Especially considering how much time you’ve devoted to protected “your woman” from my imaginary attacks. I’m much more concerned by the larger principle that is at stake. This shouldn’t be a place where people are not permitted to disagree. I’m one of the two founding members of Anthropik, and if I can’t express a differing opinion without having insults thrown at me, who can? Giuli said it herself:
In other words, you’re fine writing articles as long as everyone is agreeing with you and telling you what a good job you’re doing, but if anyone actually questions anything you wrote, then that’s where we draw the line.
Really, if this site is just going to become one huge electronic circle jerk, then what’s the point?
Comment by Mike Godesky — 26 March 2006 @ 10:56 AM
No, attacking a person is equivalent to attacking a person. Which you did … quite a bit. You caught the same one I did for Ben and Jim, though I fail to see how “No it’s not,” can be a personal attack–even if I was exasperated at explaining it so many times and put it in all caps. Nor can I see the personal attack in this:
You don’t want to count a snide little swipe like, “For indeed, it is inanimate objects for which I save my true rage,” but it counts as an attack if I get exasperated at explaining this for the umpteenth time, and put it in all caps? And while I agree that it has quite the sarcastic tone, if we’re going to include Giuli’s,
…then I’m going to need to adjust my count a good deal, because I didn’t include times when people were just plain old, garden variety sarcastic. I can assure you, though, if that’s the criteria, your “market share” here is going to go up drastically.
I agree, Jim’s message was way out of line. That’s why I wrapped him on the knuckles for it. Giuli isn’t particularly interested in defending her articles like a thesis–neither does she particularly care if you disagree. Neither do I. It’s not a circle jerk, and we do have differing opinions quite often. When it runs in circles, people get frustrated. When people turn nasty, the responses turn nasty.
This thread turned nasty right here. I can pin it down to the exact sentence:
Mocking Giuli for considering the symbolism of items in her wedding was the first really nasty insult anyone made in the thread. Notice before that, everything’s nice and amicable–and look! People are disagreeing! But with your very first message in this thread, you made a sarcastic insult at Giuli, and you were responded to in kind. Next, I tried to explain Giuli’s side so you’d calm down and stop with the attacks, y’know, resolve it all amicably, and we almost had things calmed down until Jim and Ben took their shots, but where it got really nasty was, again, with you, when you compared Giuli to an evangelic Christian. You asked for evidence, but Giuli’s not like me–she’s not willing to write a 10-page essay summarizing the evidence presented in a book (see thesis #14 for an example of my own). Instead, she just offered to lend you the book. Your reaction to that was WAY out of line. That particular comment continued on with a good deal more in the way of sarcastic snipes and so forth. Giuli and I both made comments that continued to engage your ideas and ignored your sarcasm, but you followed up with another, even more sarcastic and personally insulting comment. At that point, yes, the gloves came off, and both Giuli and I responded in kind. From there on, it was pure slugfest.
So no, Mike, I’m not blind to the attacks that were made against you. I recognized them. But I also recognize the attacks you made against others–something that you seem to be turning a blind eye to. There are plenty of counter-examples to your notion that we attack people who disagree with us. I know you were mad about the evangelical we drove off, but as we said then, it wasn’t for disagreeing–it’s because his talk is responsible for countless deaths, and allowing him to continue spewing that vitriol here would make us accomplices in that mass murder. In this case–in most cases–the consequences are not nearly so severe. In those cases, the tone of the debate is generally decided by the one who takes the dissenting opinion. In this case, you disagree with pretty much everyone else here. That’s fine. But if you decide to do so in a sarcastic, hostile way, then you will be responded to in a sarcastic, hostile way–and if you happen to be completely outnumbered, that can make for a fairly unpleasant experience.
Nobody attacked you for disagreeing. We attacked you because you were being a dick about it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 26 March 2006 @ 11:30 AM
Jeese I make one joke to try and lighten the mood and get 3 or more posts calling me an ass (depending on how inclusive you want to be)?
Hey Mike? I noticed you didn’t include your response to me in your list there. I had considered it in good humor, but if you thought I was being an ass then I need to reconsider your response insinutating that I’d be lost and left alone in the woods. I must now challenge you to a duel.
Unless, of course, we can all agree that this has been kind of blown out of proportion. You know, like one driver getting lost in Austria-Hungry causing two world wars, nuclear weapons, the space program, the holocaust etc blown out of proportion. Well…maybe not quite that bad. But, come on? All this over the bridal industry? Come on. Jason and Guili don’t want an expensive wedding and don’t like the culture and businesses that make that difficult. Mike thinks there is good reason for their prices. Jason and Guili think that reason is profit. Mike thinks that it’s cost of opperation. etc. This is one of those cases that all of you can be 100% right without any adjustment of your point. Some of this stuff is made of expensive materials, some of it is not. And businesses will charge as much as they think people will spend, for a wedding this is more than for a birthday party. So, do they charge more? Of course they do, they’re a business not a charity. The deal with diamonds? What else where they going to do? If they want to make much money on a relatively common stone then they need to create enough demand to out weigh the supply. Photographers know that people will spend this much on a birthday, this much on a milestone birthday, this much on wedding, and this much on a funeral. These are not going to be the same amounts. So what do they charge? What people will spend. Same as anyone else trying to make money.
I actually stopped reading this a while ago as having a certain running around in circles quality to it. Miranda is the one that told me I was being mentioned. (Come on Mike, you know my sense of humor, did you really think I was intending to be insulting?) So I come to see what was being said about me, and I find you guys at each other’s throats over rhetoric? If this discussion can’t get reasonable then we really should take this in to the real world and stop jerking off online.
Maybe Mike’s right here and there should be talk about how disgreements like this one are handled? Mike disagreed with Guili, Guili doesn’t like long arguements online where she feels like she’s being dismissed, and Jason is very defensive of his finance. So there is certainly much adu here, what is it about?
Sorry Mike, I didn’t mean to come off as dismissive or insulting. Sorry Jason and Guili, I really wasn’t planning on tying you up and leaving you in the woods.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 26 March 2006 @ 11:52 AM
Nah, I’m actually fairly nonchalant about my finances.
My fiance, I can get defensive about, but I wouldn’t call it “very.” I let her know when she’s completely wrong.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 26 March 2006 @ 12:29 PM
Et tu? Who was going on about spelling in English being rote memorization?
Still, you do rise to her defense with perhaps more vehemence than you would rise to your own?
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 26 March 2006 @ 1:47 PM
I made maybe three. And then, only in response to personal attacks made by others. Show me one case in which I made a personal attack that was totally unprovoked.
Trying to shout people down isn’t generally regarded as the height of good manners. Unless you’re going to tell me that you decided to use all caps and quadruple exclamation points to lend your argument that air of high-minded debate.
That was hardly just a “plain old, garden variety sarcastic” comment. If it was, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But, aside from hideously misrepresenting my words, this was just presumptuous and condescending. It was Giuli basically saying that she’s planning a wedding and I’m not, so I should just shut up and agree with whatever she says.
And it’s especially insulting when it follows her having the gall to just outright laugh at me. Big mistake. I graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh, so I don’t feel like I have to tolerate being talked down to by a child just because she read a book.
First of all, how is that a personal attack? She said something that makes no sense. I called her on it. And by the way, that was about 60 comments ago, and I still have no idea what she meant about the “sociopolitical implications” of wearing a veil. But hey, don’t respond. That’s fine.
Of course, some people might also find it a little insulting that you would thumb your nose at an organization like the Veterans of Forgein Wars. But that’s beside the point.
I can see that everything is nice and amicable before I started posting. I also notice that I’m the first one to actually question anything that Giuli said.
How is that an insult? I questioned her argument, and she responded by telling me that it’s all in a book. That’s exactly the same tactic that evangelicals use. If you’re using the exact same debate tactic as an evangelical, it’s not an insult to compare you to an evangelical. It’s just a statement of fact.
If we all have to read this book in order to have any kind of intelligent discussion, then what was the point of writing the article? Are we just regurgitating whatever we read now without any kind of critical thought? You’re telling me that it would actually be easier for me to just go out and read all of these books than to ask my questions directly to the person who wrote the article?
So no, I don’t think my reaction was out of line. You can’t just post these kinds of things and then act surprised when somebody asks you to back up your claims. If you can’t back up what you write, don’t post it.
Not that we’re being just a little bit self-important, right?
Comment by Mike Godesky — 26 March 2006 @ 2:05 PM
I already did–your first post in this thread, last line.
I did confess to exasperation, you’ll note. So, exasperation counts as a personal attack, but a personal attask (like yours in your first comment, last line) does not?
Isn’t that what sarcasm is? I haven’t seen a single comment from you in this whole thread where you didn’t misrepresent someone else’s words with great presumption and condescension.
OK, that crossed a big, BIG line. Whatever you might think of Giuli’s age, calling her a “child” is completely uncalled for. And if you want to measure penis size via number of degrees, you know I’ll match you bit-for-bit, so there’s no excuse to try to use a piece of paper as a cudgel. I resent anyone who does that–and being able to shut people like that down was one of my best motivators in those four years. So if that’s the game you want to play, things will get a lot nastier here really, really quick.
Most people think that the veil is to hide a woman’s face so the husband doesn’t run off in an arranged marriage, or symbolic of the hymen, to let the groom know he’s getting a good deal on undamaged goods. In other words, it symbolizes the woman’s status as property, and the marriage as a business transaction. Giuli researched it and found out that wasn’t true, but that’s where her weeks of consideration came into play.
Now, as to how it represents a personal attack, if you think my exasperation counts as a personal attack, but you can’t see how a denigrating insult like that could be construed as one, then I can certainly see where you’re coming from. The only rubric I can find in your case is if “personal attack” means, “things that made me feel bad,” in which case, you’re incapable of personally attacking others, by definition. But I don’t think that’s something you’ll get a lot of agreement on.
What she said made perfect sense–the things in a wedding have implications. They’re symbols. They say something. We should be conscious of what they say. You ridiculed her for getting all worked up over “inanimate objects.” What you said made no sense. The only way your insult would have any founding would be if no inanimate object was ever attached with any kind of symbolic, metaphorical or sentimental value whatsoever. If that’s not true, then you were just being an ass.
Giuli didn’t thumb her nose at it. She didn’t want to hold her reception there out of respect for their political beliefs. In Giuli’s world, everyone is defined primarily by their politics. According to her, it would be no better than an oil CEO trying to hold a gala on a wildlife preserve.
Really? That should come as a surprise to Peter and Ethan.
It’s also exactly the same tactic that a bibliography uses. You know what, Giuli and evangelicals also share other things in common: they both metabolize oxygen; they’re both bipedal; neither of them leave mucous trails behind them (well, except for Jerry Falwell).
Giuli has a few books on the subject. To provide you with a full list of counter-examples would require several book reports. Instead, she offered to lend you the books so you could read said counter-examples for yourself. You responded by saying you’d been “witnessed to.” You know, when somebody tells me about complexity and its diminishing returns, I don’t think it’s particularly “fundamentalist” to cut my own energy expenditure short and just tell them to pick up Tainter.
If you’re asking her to repeat everything in the book, yeah, it’s reasonable for her to tell you to just read the book. Especially when she offers to lend it to you. That’s why we have bibliographies. It’s not out of line for an author to cite a source, and not provide a book report on it.
OK, you were mistaken. Now you know better.
Agreed. I’m not sure who you’re talking to, but yes. Well done with that straw man.
But, if we can return to the thread in question, Giuli did support her argument, in precisely the fashion used in an academic paper: she cited her sources. Now, with that fancy degree of yours, I’m sure you know the next step in the process of academic debate: you read the sources. You do not wait for the author to whip it up into a pabulum to be spoon-fed to you.
Not in the least. Christian teens kill themselves all the time for that kind of rhetoric. It’s that ambience that makes them hate themselves, and in the end, kill themselves. Anyone who spews that rhetoric creates that ambience. Anyone who spews that rhetoric is a mass murderer. Anyone who tolerates that rhetoric helps the ambience to spread. Anyone who tolerates that rhetoric is an accomplice to mass murder. There’s nothing self-important about it. I was nearly implicated in mass murder, and did what I could to extricate myself. That’s no more self-important than it is to look for cover in a shoot out.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 26 March 2006 @ 2:48 PM
…
…
…
You’re two years older than I am.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 26 March 2006 @ 2:51 PM
“You started it!”
“Nuh uh, YOU started it!”
ENOUGH!
It doesn’t matter. This is a minor, petty thing, and with the animosity building up, it’s threatening things that really do mean something–like my relationship with my brother, and my relationship with my fiance. This needs to end.
I had a phone call with Mike, and he doesn’t see this thread going the same way as Giuli or I do. That’s fine. He said we can all agree that regardless of who started it, we all had a hand in keeping it going. We also agreed that this isn’t going anywhere good, and it needs to be brought to an end. Now that everyone’s been pissed off, insulted, and has their feelings hurt, it’s time to end this. I’m closing comments on this thread.
Let’s remember this as a prime example of how not to conduct a discussion in the future.
Update: Ben emailed me a clarification on his remark above:
Comment by Jason Godesky — 26 March 2006 @ 3:46 PM