The end of the bridezilla era? Yeah, no.

AM New York (one of the free daily subway papers here in New York), reported about couples trying to get around the standard cake cutting fee while the New York Post countered with a report that Manhattan ladies are no longer getting diamonds to wear at their weddings. It seems that the Wedding Industry is now struggling and the main stream media is beginning to take notice!
A high end jeweler claims that budgets for diamonds use to be $65,000 dollars but now is around $10,000 and brides are not happy about it. Of course they aren’t. Over the last five years, as Americans turned to their homes to fake an economic recovery from the dot com era (our income as dropped during this period but our spending skyrocketed), weddings, like the 7th car, the 3rd house, and the McMansions, just got bigger and better. If you watch old episodes of Bridezilla, you’ll notice that the budgets were huge for incredibly boring and tacky and cheesy weddings. Now, when you turn on the show, the budgets are only high in respect to the fact that the women on the show are usually lower income and/or white trash. But they still want a wedding that feels expensive and that matches the extravagance they saw in the past five years. Weddings are not only about fulfilling your fantasies but also about keeping up with your friend who forced you to buy that godawful lemon and lime bridesmaid dress four years ago.

I wonder if someone in the Wedding Industry is hoping that someone in Washington DC will notice their plight and they’ll get a bailout.

I don’t agree that the Bridezilla era is over. I’m just hoping that the era of refinancing your house/maxing your credit cards part of weddings are over. It’s not but that’s what I hope. My fiancee and I approached our wedding with that goal in mind. We simply are paying for the best wedding that we can afford. Will it be showcased on Platinum Weddings? No. But will it be as spectacular extravaganza that will be talked about for years to come? Oh I hope so. But there’s only so many DIY hanging decorations I can make by hand before I want to give up and instead use the tissue paper to make a hat for my cat so we shall see. We shall see.