Well, for one thing, getting married was something for everyone, including the poor. In Meg Keane's A Practical Wedding, there's a discussion about what wedding

Well, for one thing, getting married was something for everyone, including the poor. In Meg Keane's A Practical Wedding, there's a discussion about what weddings were like in the beginning of the 20th century. It turns out that what we consider a "normal" wedding was once the wedding only rich people could afford. http://a.co/iC1AZMU http://a.co/iC1AZMU Back then, a wedding happened at church or city hall, and there was a simple stand-up reception at home. The Tappet Brothers warned to beware, "The Wedding Industrial Complex." A lot of the "traditions" around weddings are manufactured with the express purpose of getting more money out of you. This reminds me of a discussion I had with a VP at my company about what happened to going out to the ball game. It used to be something democratizing, something even the poor could afford. Now, everything is jacked up in price, starting with the ticket, and the amount one would spend to take a family out could count as a major purchase. The same thing happened to the movies. I think capitalism is the best system we've come up with so far, but someone needs to realize that everyone needs an outlet, or else people will reject the system.