Bli$$

So the wedding date has been officially set for about two weeks now, and I’m starting to think seriously about calling it off.

Let me try to keep people from becoming apoplectic by saying I in no way mean the marriage itself.  Oh, hell, no.  I’m all good with the being married thing.  I don’t think a lot of people realize what an unbelievably lucky bastard I am finding someone who shares a great deal of my likes, overlooks a lot of my faults and quirks, and seems-- oddly enough-- to find me enjoyable enough to be around that she wants to keep doing it.  Finding her was almost certainly the best thing that’s ever happened to me, quite possibly even better than finding ephedrine, and I have no intention of fucking that up.  No way in screw.  And I should point out that I’m not just saying that because my Lovely Fiancee™ reads this blog… although, if it wins me brownie points with her I won’t turn them down.  (As a male, I need to build up my reserve of those as quickly as possible, because I will spend the rest of my life calling them in when I inevitably do something stupid, drunk, pigheaded, or a combination of all three.)

What I’m talking about is the wedding.  As in the ceremony, and the reception that comes with it.  Look, no one wants a dashing, romantic, bigger-than-life wedding for his wife-to-be more than me.  No one wants the big, lavish, decadent Renaissance/Medeival themed celebration for their wedding more than I do.  Or to be correct in my verb tense, no one did, until the realities of things came into it… realities like, say, the ratio of “How Much Money We Have” to “What Anything Costs”.   To put it mathematically,  A ![] <  B   (or in other words, How Much Money We Have is ridiculous fuckloads less than What Anything Costs).

This sort of thinking first reared its head when we were looking for a photographer.  My understanding was that a photographer was someone who shot pictures.  In other words, like you or me, only with much more expensive cameras and equipment, a well-trained eye and a helluva lot more practice. 

And then I saw what they charge, and I realized that some photographers are artists.  Because no one else but an artist would have such a fantastical vision that I would be willing to pay $2300—on the low-range side—for someone to shoot pictures of me and my Lovely Fiancée™ on the day she becomes my Lovely Wife®.  (Quick moment of true story: We are very fortunate in that my niece referred us to a pair of photographers whose work is extremely good, and whose price was not only fair but did not make my insides crumple like a wadded-up toilet paper ball when I heard it.  So let me clarify, not every photog has a price package like that.)

That said, here’s the thing.  I’m an artist, and if I charged someone $2300 dollars for 20 pieces I made totally from scratch starting with a blank piece of paper, I would expect someone to punch me right in the nads.  It's not that I think photography is terribly easy-- quite the opposite-- or that I think it has any less artistic merit than drawing with pencil on paper… it just seems really freaking expensive to pay more than the down payment I made for my car when we’re already covering the event itself, event setting, costuming, makeup, and in most cases, booze. 

So that sort of explains my response to this sort of price quote, namely: “For that price, do we get his and hers oral sex?”

The part that galls me is that I have been told that this is actually very competitive pricing.  (My response to that was, competitive with what, heart surgery?) 

As an aside, I have made my thoughts known on other sites about artists and prices.  Being an artist myself, I would find myself very hard pressed to charge anyone more than $75 for any piece I made.  And I realize that strikes a bad chord with people... I've heard the rejoinders siding with artists charging arms and legs before: “But that’s their only means of income,” or “but they have to cover the price of equipment” or “but they do such high quality work!”  To which I say, Tom Clancy worked an insurance job while writing his first three books, and McDonald’s hires daily; if what you do doesn't make enough to cover the bills and you need the supplemental income, then you really need to do the math.  (Besides, you’re an artist!  Who cares if you demean yourself?  Demeaning yourself in the name of-- for the sake of-- art... dammit, isn't that what’s expected of us artists?!?)

Here’s my thinking.  I work a somewhat menial job that requires me to remain a little active; causes me at least a slight bit of stress; and in which I have to deal sometimes with inane questions, people who do stupid things, and a lot of laziness and politics-- same as just about anyone else who works anywhere in blue-collar/low white-collar places.  And like many other people, my job is not what I’d prefer to be doing, even if I like it.  At said job, I net somewhere in the area of $90 a day… maybe as much as $150 when I’m pulling overtime.

So maybe you can understand why my blood pressure spikes like the jab of a syringe full of adrenaline to my chest when I see that someone is suggesting that them shooting pictures for somewhere from five to eight hours is a competitive rate… and that competitive rate just happens to be the equivalent of me working my job for a month.

And you know, I could even understand-- and maybe even get behind that-- if the photographer were the only expense.  But according to the numerous checklists I’ve looked over, the photographer is barely the tip of the Titanic-Killing-Iceberg that is the modern wedding and reception.  In fact, the photographer is the stuff that falls on the deck and is just enough to chill the drinks.  The average—yes, average­—cost of a traditional American wedding is $22,000.   

Twenty.  Two.  Thousand.  Dollars.

It hurts to fucking say it, let alone consider paying it.  Hell, I  paid $22,000 for my car only when you added in the insane annual high-risk percentage rate and the fact I’d be paying on it for six solid years.   That’s 1/6 of the price of my not-yet-built house!  Holy scrod, it’s no wonder everyone opts for common-law marriages anymore!   Or a JoP or Vegas deal... License, check; blood test, check; bam!  Thank you, have a nice day-- it's the Home Depot of instant gratification wedded bliss, and it's cheap!

Fortunately, my Lovely Fiancée™ realizes what a cash-strapped bastard I am, and as such has mostly gone along with me on certain ‘budget cuts’ that I have suggested for our wedding, including making the reception a pitch-in, holding the wedding at a retreat center (it’s a pretty retreat center, though!), and having our wedding and reception music on an mp3 player and speaker system rather than hiring a DJ or band.  Alone, that’s cut us down about $4500, which can instead go to the sort of trivial things that we might otherwise have to eschew; things that make a house truly a home-- like, say, food or heat… or walls. 

She’s holding firm on some areas, however, and because this is her special day as well, I guess I can’t begrudge her those things.  So I can probably get by without finding old wedding napkins, crossing out the names and writing in ours.  We don’t necessarily have to see what wedding cakes go unclaimed at the bakery and haggle for a reduced cost.  We can decorate the tables without re-using last year’s Halloween decorations.  

But I think we’re still going to look carefully at some of my ideas.  I mean, who needs rice when they can toss pouches of freshly shredded credit card applications?

FOOTNOTE: Lovely Wife® is a registered trademark of Anonymous Moron Enterprises, and is only used for purposes of demonstration.