The Idiot of the year...

Wow! 2008 was the craziest year that I have ever experienced. For starters, I finished my first full year of real work. Then, I got married. Yup, I took the plunge. It only seemed natural. After all, I had been dating my girlfriend for close to a decade. However, I guess I underestimated just how consumer-driven and capitalistic the wedding industry is.
For starters, holy shit does it cost a lot to have a wedding! Halls, chapels, pictures, flowers, guests, food, the stupid little things you leave on the tables that no one remembers. It all adds up to a ridiculous sum of money that is mostly never recouped. But, we do it all for love, right? Wrong. We get married for love. We spend obscene amounts of money on weddings, because we're told we need to. It's like we feel obligated to contribute to what is surely a billion dollar industry.
For example, if you simply type "Planning a Wedding" in the Google search engine, the first "non-sponsored" link that comes up is, The Knot.com. Holy hell what a joke this website is. In fact, I don't even know how women search through this damn thing. It's like it's written in another language: advertisements, links to other sites, and wedding jargon. I'm surprised anyone gets any advice at all. But see, I think that's the point. This website guides its surfer through a maze of unwanted material, while at the same time, it ingrains the thoughts of commercial America into the reader's brain. Genius? I suppose so. I fell victim.
You see, I fell into the trap of doing what I was supposed to do. The websites say to get a fancy hall-we got a fancy hall. The websites say to order oodles of flowers for not only the bride, but for every table at the hall-we did that. The websites also say that one is supposed to get a wonderful photographer and order tons of pictures in big fancy books-done.
So here's what it all comes down to: add in music, paper products, church singers blah, blah, blah-you're looking at nearly $30,000. $30 f'ing thousand dollars! What a joke. I would have rather taken the thirty thousand, whisked my wife-to-be off on a trip to... anywhere, and have a romantic getaway. But no, we spent tens of thousands of dollars on a lot of unnecessary things because we were supposed to.
I guess you could say that the idiot of the year then is: Me. Not because I got married-I love my wife. But because I allowed myself to fall victim to one of the biggest rip-offs in our modern society.

everydayidiot@gmail.com