Wherein it is determined that money can’t buy taste…

Granted, I haven’t been to a wedding in quite a while.  

I think the last one I attended was my own, eight years ago.  There was only one other guest and he was the groom.  Even though it was only the two of us, we were appropriately dressed for the happy occasion.

The spectrum of wedding celebrations is a huge one, with hubby and I at one end.  We got married at a little chapel by the side of the road on the way to Lake Tahoe one Saturday afternoon and stood in the snow with the minister. It was over in ten minutes. We continued on to Tahoe where we played a bit of roulette at Harrah’s, had a lovely dinner and went home the next morning.  I think the whole thing cost us $500 including hotel, car rental and gambling.  It was romantic, inexpensive and appropriate to who we are.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum.

In the UK recently, a young (very young) lady married her betrothed.  She was 16 years old and he, 17. But that isn’t the unusual part of the story.

The father of the bride paid for the wedding, which is customary. What is unusual is that the blue collar dad paid 100,000 GBP ( $160,800.00 USD according to today’s exchange rate ) to marry off his little girl. 

According to the Telegraph newspaper:

     “Missy Quinn’s father Simon, 35, paid £16,000 ($25,000.00 USD) for her wedding dress, which was studded with Swarovski crystals and came with a 10ft train so heavy it took ten guests to help her out of the Rolls-Royce Phantom that brought her to church.

There were 150 guests at the reception and Mr Quinn also paid for cars, accommodation, the tiara and a £500 bouquet.

In total, it cost five times as much as the average UK wedding. Mr Quinn, who works surfacing driveways, insisted that the expense was worth it and added: “I’m very proud of her today.”

Missy, who hasn’t attended school since she was nine years old and wants to be a glamour model, struggled with the dress.

“It was extremely heavy and just standing in the church was really difficult. But despite all that, I felt just like Cinderella,” she said. “It cost a fortune, but I’ve always wanted a big wedding and my dad has been saving for ages to pay for it.”

Oh yes. There *is* the dress. If you can call it that.

Read more about it. I know you want to. There are more pictures; just be sure you’re sitting down.

ETA: Since posting this, I’ve come to learn that this family is part of Europe’s “Traveller” culture, which I had no previous knowledge of. There is little information on the internet about them, but I found this article to be of interest as it sheds a bit of light on the subject.

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Tags: 16, bride, wedding

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