How much did you say?!

Sadly, my holiday time has come to an end and I'm back in Sydney, ready to go back to work.

This last week's adventures consisted of meeting future in-laws, catching up with old mates and investigating wedding venues; I'm pretty tuckered out.

I always hear about these obscene financials being bantered about attached to weddings; I've always thought to myself that if I ever got married, I'd be a great deal more responsible with the expense. I've quickly come to the realisation that getting married is pretty much going to be expensive in 95% of cases.

Part of me wants to just say "Stuff it" and elope. It'd be a great deal cheaper, and it'd also double as a honeymoon so win/win... however I can't really do that. Although it feels like Katie and I should be the only ones concerned with the details, I now have come to the realisation that it's not really fair on either of our families if we deprive them of the opportunity to celebrate the union with us. Getting married isn't just for the bride and groom, it seems.

Oh wait, you're talking about real money?

I always knew that there were a great deal of expenses that come along with weddings, but I didn't really have a realistic concept about just how many things need to be considered. The venue, rings, celebrant, wedding license and certificate (that's right, I recently learned that they're not the same thing), catering, attire... The list goes on, and it gets crazy very quickly.

One thing I definitely didn't anticipate was the fact that people charge more for pretty much everything as soon as the word "wedding" is dropped. For some reason, it's become acceptable to charge more for the exact same thing. 

My idea of modest, small wedding has been blown out of the water. We decided early on that we're only going to invite close family and only a handful of friends.

"No worries, let's start writing down some of these names. Okay, so this list is just family, how many is that?"
"70 goddamn people?! Are you serious?!"

Many of you will know what this means, but for those of you who don't: The standard measurement for the price of a wedding is calculated per head. To rephrase, every single additional person is a nominal amount of money.

Can't we just get Subway to cater this shindig? Apparently not.

In any case, there's a great deal of people I would love to invite to the wedding, but realistically simply can't. I'm sorry, internet, but you're just too damn expensive.
Don't worry, it'll happen just like most other weddings and you'll get to see the photos... it'll almost be like you were there!