Outsmarting the Bridal Industry
Written: Jan 18 '02 (Updated Jan 18 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: packed with good advice and loads of information, humorous
Cons: Note: Does not explore the absolute cheapest options (e.g. do-it-yourself).
The Bottom Line: Humorous, hard-nosed look at the bridal industry. How to get the most bang for your buck in an industry designed to squeeze every penny from you.
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| jaseroque's Full Review: |
I am in the midst of planning a wedding. I want the wedding to be small, personal, tasteful, and to cost something less than the national debt. Turns out that it takes a great deal of creativity and planning to thwart the bridal industry, a giant machine designed to extract as much money as possible at every single decision point.
I jumped in to the planning with a book called “Priceless Weddings for under $5,000” by Kathleen Kennedy (see my previous review), using it to bludgeon the hungry wolves of the bridal industry.
About eight months into the planning, a fellow bride suggested another book, “Bridal Bargains,” by Denise and Alan Fields. I went to the bookstore and opened it to the first page. Where most wedding planning books begin with a congratulations on your engagement, this one began with a commiserating scream: “Aaaaaaigh!!! So, you’re engaged? Well, fasten your seat belts! Soon you will enter a bizarre and crazy world, where the boundaries of good taste and sane thought are only fuzzy lines. Yes, you’ve done it now. You have entered the WEDDING ZONE.”
Recognizing the truth when I saw it, I flipped through the book and ended up buying it. The humor and honesty were like a breath of fresh air -- the authors do not fall for all the froth and fuss that seems to surround weddings. Rather, they insist that planning a wedding is like shopping for anything else, like new tires, or an air conditioner: you seek out good deals, find good quality for the money, and don’t feel guilty if you don’t pay top dollar. The authors insist that you should aim to have a good time at your own wedding (what a novel concept!). You should not aim to throw the perfect party with every trivial detail in place -- this is an impossibility that will disappoint you and strain your pocketbook. Their hard-nosed, humorous approach suited me perfectly.
Like many other bridal books, “Bridal Bargains” contains a chapter on each aspect of planning a wedding. It has a chapter on buying a bridal gown, buying bridesmaids gowns, finding ceremony and reception sites, wedding flowers, invitations, catering, photography and videos, cakes, and entertainment.
Each chapter then contains a series of helpful tips and advice: what are you actually buying?, sources for finding vendors (both on and off-line), when to start planning, step-by-step shopping strategies, questions to ask of vendors, money-saving secrets, myths, hints, and pitfalls to avoid.
All of the chapters contain useful information on what to look for and how to find it more cheaply, as well as providing good moral support for brides like me who were unaware that planning a simple wedding constituted a personal threat to the wedding industry. In addition, Bridal Bargains casts light on the hidden corners of wedding planning that people don’t talk much about: they give blunt advice on tipping, assert that fondant icing looks good but tastes awful, and tell the story on those Art Leather albums only sold through photographers. They expose the whirling gears of the industry, and show you where to crawl through the cracks and spaces while clutching your wallet for dear life. This may be depressing at first, to see how the sausages are made, but the knowledge this book gives you is invaluable in navigating this bizarre, arcane, insular underworld that is the bridal industry.
The crown jewel of “Bridal Bargains” is definitely their chapter on bridal gowns. In this chapter, the authors ruthlessly expose the underhanded dealings of some bridal salons -- from ripping the tags out of gowns to prevent comparison shopping, to selling sample gowns at full price without telling you, to deliberately ordering the wrong size so they can profit on the alterations. The authors tell you what to look for in a reputable bridal salon, and the kind of service you should expect to receive. The authors then review every bridal designer on their designs and prices, how much bang you get for the buck, and customer service rating. They highlight best buys -- designers that give good quality for the money, places to find gowns off the rack, and numerous discounters who offer designer gowns at deep discounts if you just know where to look. Using their advice, I found a gown for 45% off retail.
In a nutshell, the strategy of the authors is to tell couples how to get the most for their money. How to use the bridal industry without getting ripped off. So, this book is not a craft book, it won’t tell you how to do it all yourself. Nor is it a book for those who want really really inexpensive weddings that bypass the bridal industry altogether -- the weddings catered by your mom, photographed by your brother-in-law, with flowers from your garden and music by a cousin (or a wedding with you two, an officiant, two witnesses and a beach). If you plan a wedding like this, more power to you -- you may not need this book. However, if you need or want to use all or part of the bridal industry, this is the book for you. This is a book for people who want what the bridal industry offers but don’t want to spend top retail dollar to get it.
Recommended:
Yes
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jaseroque
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