Just check ahead to make sure your reception venue will permit home-brew. Our venue did not, so the ceremonial keg that my husband and uncle prepared months before the big day was enjoyed at the "rehearsal picnic/softball game" the day before our wedding.

Oh, and some rings can be very inexpensive yet deeply meaningful. It is a token gesture at its core, there is no need to spend thousands on it.

Consider the white prom dress that makes a lovely bridal gown. I bought my veil on e-bay, from a woman in the Ukraine, for a fraction of the salon cost. You can make a pretty veil with a kit from Michael's craft store, too.

There is a book that gets updated regularly, I think it is called Bridal Bargains. Has great suggestions for negotiating discounts and cutting costs. Worth far more than a million envy-inducing glossy bridal magazines.

the article wasn't so awful, but the title is godawful. i was expecting a rather bitchy rant. but the essay was thoughtful and non-misogynistic. i agree it would be nice if the term "fag hag" faded into oblivion and was replaced with "friend."

if you marry, this will be a big bone of contention.

don't "act jerky." talk talk talk about what goes through your mind when she talks about her parents' money and materialism. let her know what bugs you and concerns you.

could be a deal breaker for your relationship, could be a path toward some compromise if you are both able to loosen up from the way of the parents enough to find a middle ground of saving some and spending some.

i wouldn't settle down together until she's had a chance to support herself for a couple of years. there really isn't a rush. she may be a different person at 28 than 22 if she's had to pay her own way in the world for a couple of years before settling down.

you may be a different person too.

Never heard of Manolo Blahniks until that episode of Sex in the City where Carrie loses a pair at her friend's baby shower.

I've never paid more than $100 for a pair of shoes and for a pair of shoes to cost me more than $50 it would have to be a very well designed, professional, comfortable, long-term shoe investment.

The realization that people would pay $500-1000+++ for a stinking pair of uncomfortable fashion heels was sorta shocking to me. And the over the course of 5 additional years, chick lit seemed to be all about promoting high fashion and expensive designer shoes.

I think the authors or publishers must have been awash in freebies or something because it all came off like not very subtle product placement.

Anyhow, there was a time in Sex in the City where Carrie's shoe fetish was paid for in real dollars and she couldn't afford to purchase her Manhattan apartment because she had unthinkingly spent her entire would-be down payment(earned as a freelance sex columnist!) on a closet full of overpriced shoes. When she was engaged to Aiden, she shopped for her dress at a close-out bargain sale. By the time the SITC movie came out, Carrie was rich and about to marry richer, and no price tag was examined in the making of the film. That was released right as the recession was about to hit. Imagine if the film hit a distribution snag and didn't come out until 2009-- I can't imagine it playing well to today's downsized professional women other than as pure fluff fantasy.