Funny, I took to calling it the Wedding-Industrial Complex. To the greatest extent possible, we tried to avoid all that. My wife's engagement ring was a family heirloom rather than a shiny new one. We hired a photographer who doesn't normally do weddings. We hired a restaurant that doesn't normally do weddings. We even got a judge to officiate who doesn't normally do weddings. Some things, you end up surrendering to the madness. The worst, at least financially, was booze. Since my family's tradition is to have an open bar, that ended up being the single largest cost item on the spreadsheet. *sigh*