It’s the BS fee. You’re not just paying for the pictures, the water or the food. You are paying for them to put up with yours, your family and guest’s BS for several hours, plus the nightmarish logistical stress of making it all happen flawlessly on time.
Not just that, but the expectations are almost always significantly higher (and, in return, the effort that you as a consumer get from those vendors should also be higher.) Speaking from the position of someone who supplies the cake industry, for example, you’re not just getting “a cake”. You’re getting a multi-tier work of edible art that took that cake decorator four times longer to make, requires a special setup for transportation, and usually requires another half hour to an hour of the decorator’s time to fully set up once on site. Any old cake could feed 100 people, sure, but do you really want pictures of a flat single layer cake decorated with ugly, mushy balloons half-assedly piped on by the resident 18 year old at your grocery store, transported in a flimsy cardstock box in Aunt Hester’s 1970 woody wagon so that half the icing is stuck on the top of the box? If you do, great! You can save a lot of money that way, for sure. But most people want a 3-4 tier cake, decorated immaculately with flawless buttercream and covered in flowers. That shit requires effort, and effort means money.
Oh, not arguing that. Just pointing out that this is a large part of why price goes up when you mention the word “wedding”. Even if a particular individual doesn’t care to have absolutely top-tier perfect service, they’re in the minority - and those vendors in the wedding industry price their services to fulfill the expectations of the norm, not the exception.
It’s the BS fee. You’re not just paying for the pictures, the water or the food. You are paying for them to put up with yours, your family and guest’s BS for several hours, plus the nightmarish logistical stress of making it all happen flawlessly on time.
This - I’m a photographer and I try to avoid doing weddings, even though they pay more, because of the sheer stress involved.
Not just that, but the expectations are almost always significantly higher (and, in return, the effort that you as a consumer get from those vendors should also be higher.) Speaking from the position of someone who supplies the cake industry, for example, you’re not just getting “a cake”. You’re getting a multi-tier work of edible art that took that cake decorator four times longer to make, requires a special setup for transportation, and usually requires another half hour to an hour of the decorator’s time to fully set up once on site. Any old cake could feed 100 people, sure, but do you really want pictures of a flat single layer cake decorated with ugly, mushy balloons half-assedly piped on by the resident 18 year old at your grocery store, transported in a flimsy cardstock box in Aunt Hester’s 1970 woody wagon so that half the icing is stuck on the top of the box? If you do, great! You can save a lot of money that way, for sure. But most people want a 3-4 tier cake, decorated immaculately with flawless buttercream and covered in flowers. That shit requires effort, and effort means money.
This seems to me more a problem of people wanting to much.
At my cousin’s wedding the bride made her own cake. And they didn’t want a huge wedding so it only had to feed like 20 people instead 100.
The problem here is the absurd extravagance that people want in a wedding.
Oh, not arguing that. Just pointing out that this is a large part of why price goes up when you mention the word “wedding”. Even if a particular individual doesn’t care to have absolutely top-tier perfect service, they’re in the minority - and those vendors in the wedding industry price their services to fulfill the expectations of the norm, not the exception.