tomorrow i will be in my 3rd wedding in 6 months, taking a trip down the aisle for the 5th time in my life (not including being a flowergirl). in may, however, i will get to do it in white.

or cream, or ivory, or some other color. but whatever color my wedding dress will be, it will probably come from the cutting floor of a sweatshop in a poorer country than my own. “…[O]ne person’s luxury is produced by another’s labor.”

that’s a quote out of one of my favorite, most painful books that i’m currently reading. it’s called one perfect day: the selling of the american wedding, and it will take your breath away… and not in the seeing-the-bride-walk-down-the-aisle way, but in the what-the-hell-are-we-doing-way.

how about this food for thought.

“what does all this wedding industry hype mean for the woman who turns to the bridal magazines for guidance adn inspiration? One of the things it means is that an expectation that getting married is going to be a very costly endeavor has been drummed into her head will in advance of the start of her wedding planning. If a bride has been told, repeatedly, that is costs nearly $28,000 to have a wedding (the average amount spent by americans getting married in 2006), then she starts to think that spending nearly $28,000 on a wedding is just on of those things a person has to do, like writing a rent check every month or paying health insurance premiums. (Or, she prides herself on being a budget bride and spending a mere $15,000 on the event). She is less likely to reflect upon the fact that $28,000 would cover an awful lot of rent checks or health insurance payments…The bride who has been persuaded that $28,000 is a reasonable amount of money to spend on her wedding day is less likely to measure that total against the nation’s median household income–$42,389 in 2004– and reflect upon whether it is, in fact, reasonable for her or for anyone to spend the equivalent of seven and a half months of the average american’s salary on one day’s celebration.”

which should then only horrify us more as we think about the majority of the world, where $28,000 could be the equivalent of 121 years salary to half the world’s population living on 2 bucks a day.