A Big Fat Cheap Wedding in the 2020s

One of my favorite areas to browse on Reddit is the Weddings Under 10K subreddit. I think planning my own wedding, nearly 21 years ago, was the starting point for my ecofrugal journey, and I'm always happy to help other brides-to-be (and the occasional bridegroom) try to plan weddings in similar style. So when I saw a post there last month asking about wedding venues in New Jersey, I cheerfully chimed in to mention the state park where we got married. Back then, it cost only $50 to reserve the picnic grove we used (though we also spent $130 to cover our guests' parking fees); today, according to the NJ State Park Service, it costs $100 for New Jersey residents or $150 for out-of-state guests. Better still, you can pay an extra $25 to reserve the site "with no parking fee," meaning that the total cost would actually be less than we paid back in 2004.

This got me wondering: If the site was still so cheap, how much would it cost to recreate our entire wedding today? Back in 2004, we spent a total of $2,685 on the ceremony and reception—about 12% of the $22,360 CNN reports as the average wedding cost for that year. Punching that number into an inflation calculator, it looks the cost in today's dollars should be roughly $4,545. Given that the Weddings Under 10K sub itself has expanded its mission (though not its name) to cover weddings costing up to $20,000 on account of inflation, is it really possible to have a wedding like ours—a Quaker-style ceremony and a lunch reception for 80 guests in a beautiful outdoor setting—for that amount? 

Well, being me, I naturally couldn't let that idea go. I dived down a rabbit hole of price-checking, trying to work out the 2025 cost of every item on our 2004 wedding budget. Luckily, I still had the Excel spreadsheet in which I had (again, being me) recorded all our wedding expenses, so I knew exactly what prices to check. And after a day or two of immersing myself in online research, I've come up with a reasonable ballpark estimate—one that you might find surprising.

Here's the item-by-item breakdown. (All prices have been adjusted to account for 7% New Jersey sales tax.)

Invitations

2004 cost: $50. We printed our own invitations using a $20 set of blank cards and envelopes from Staples and spent about $30 on the postage. 

2025 cost: $49. We only used cards and envelopes in 2004 because that's what we could find a kit for; if we were getting married today, we could buy a set of 100 printable postcards for about $15.30, saving both money and paper. This would also allow us to use cheaper postcard stamps, reducing the postage cost to $33.60.

Rings

2004 cost: $95. I bought a secondhand set of his-and-hers wedding bands on eBay for $73 and we spent $22 to have them resized. I didn't have an engagement ring, though I did wear my great-grandmother's ring as my "something old."

2025 cost: $50 to $155. Returning to eBay, I found rings in many materials besides gold. There was one set in tungsten for $50, but they're probably impractical because this hard metal is so difficult to resize. There was also a $31 set in sterling, a material that's quite easy to resize (a job that costs around $20 per ring). It would also be possible to avoid resizing by buying new bands in a non-gold material, such as this basic set in stainless steel ($117) or, my favorite, this very nifty pair in recycled silver ($155).

Clothing

2004 cost: $128. I was the only person who needed a wedding outfit, as we had no wedding party and Brian just wore his one good suit. However, I had to make several attempts at finding a dress and shoes, and a couple of the gambles I made on eBay ($15.50 for a dress, $16.84 for a pair of ballet flats) didn't pay off. I eventually ended up in a Renaissance-style bodice I bought from an eBay shop for $34.24, paired with a skirt my mother-in-law-to-be made for me with $24.95 of fabric from Joann (may she rest in peace). I paired that with a pair of white fabric Mary Janes that cost $26.75 on eBay, plus $5 for a set of insoles to make them more comfortable. My headpiece was a wreath of ivy gathered from my parents' house, put together with $4 worth of baby's breath, $1 worth of floral wire, and some of the dollar-store ribbon.

2025: $63 to $143. Although secondhand clothing would be the most ecofrugal, it's also generally impossible to return if it doesn't fit, as I discovered in 2004. So, instead of combing eBay for outfit ideas, I turned to some of the sellers I discovered in my 2023 post on where to find ecofrugal wedding wear. I found several promising choices, including the $95 Danu Maxi ($110 with shipping) from Holy Clothing; a bodice and chemise from Etsy seller Echoes of Time ($93.50 with shipping); and the $44 Vanilla Cream Summer Dress or $41 Short Renaissance Dress from The Little Bazaar ($6.30 for shipping). Shoes are always a challenge for me, but there's a $25 strappy sandal from Costco that might work, and I could at least try that one on before buying. And if those didn't fit, I could always fall back on $9 foldable ballet flats ($13 with shipping) from Etsy. A wreath like the one I wore in 2004 would cost about $8.30 today: $4 for a bunch of baby's breath from Lidl and $1.25 per spool for floral wire and ribbon at Dollar Tree.

Wedding venue

2004 cost: $180. As I said above, we spent $50 to reserve a picnic grove with a covered pavilion at Washington Crossing State Park and paid $5 per car to cover our guests' parking fees.

2025 cost: It now costs only $125 for NJ residents to reserve a picnic facility at this park "with no parking fee in effect." Bargain!

Flowers

2004 cost: $53. I bought all our wedding flowers at our local farmers' market: 35 pots of double impatiens for only $1 a pot. We repotted some of these small plants into larger pots ($9.38) to flank the entrances of the park pavilion and dressed up all the pots with $9 worth of ribbon from Michael's & Dollar Tree. I used some of that same ribbon for my own bouquet—two blossoms snipped off my parents' hydrangea bushes on the morning of the wedding.

2025 cost: $96. I couldn't count on scoring a $1-a-pot bargain today, but Lowe's has small pots of flowering annuals for only $1.98 each; 35 of those, with tax, would come to $74.53. I could buy the four large planters at Dollar Tree, as well as 12 spools of ribbon to decorate them, for $1.25 a pop, or $21.40 total after tax.

Rehearsal dinner

2004 cost: $388. Since we didn't have an actual rehearsal, we reserved a meeting room at the hotel where most of our out-of-town guests were staying and threw a game party for about 50 people. It cost $150 to rent the room, around $200 for pizzas, and $37.50 for drinks, snacks, and disposable tableware from Dollar Tree.

2025 cost: $758. It's almost impossible to find the actual cost of a meeting room if you're not actually planning to book it, but Peerspace says its prices for conference rooms range from $25 to $185 per hour. So, assuming ours was somewhere in the middle of that price range, it would be around $105 per hour, or $420 for 4 hours. I estimated that we'd need 17 pizzas for 50 guests at around $16 per pie, for a total of $291 after tax. Then I took a little shortcut: Everything that cost a dollar at Dollar Tree in 2004 is now $1.25, so I just added 25% to the amount we spent for supplies, drinks, and snacks and came up with $47 for the lot.

Ceremony

2004 cost: $141. We paid $28 for our marriage license, $4.54 for postage to send it, and $108.89, including shipping, to have a calligrapher create a handmade Quaker wedding certificate for us and our guests to sign. (This was one of our few splurges, but it's now a treasured keepsake, bearing the signatures of all our friends and loved ones, including several who are no longer with us.)

2025: $49 to $100. A New Jersey marriage license still costs only $28, and nowadays you can get it directly from the local registrar, with no need for shipping. As for wedding certificates, there are loads of sellers on Etsy offering customizable certificates that can be delivered in digital form. This means you need to pay for printing, but you don't need to pay for shipping—and you don't risk having your certificate held up for over a week because it was sent to the wrong state, as ours was. Sellers include UnmeasuredEvents (just $13 for an editable template), ImagineDigiCreations (several beautifully illustrated designs for around $25, but most can't be customized), and KatiraDesigns ($60 for a lovely illustrated design with customizable text). If we were marrying today, we could order any of these and use Rutgers printing services to print it as a poster for $7.79. Or we could create our own design from scratch in Canva and have it printed and shipped to us for $28.

Photos

2004 cost: $229. We scored a bargain on our wedding photos because the two friends who introduced us had a side gig doing wedding photography, and their gift to us was to provide all our photos at cost. They charged us $207 for the shoot, including a CD and a full set of prints, and $22 for reprints of our favorite shots. 

2025 cost: $113 to $137. I couldn't figure out what "at cost" would mean today, when photography is fully digital. But I know that before our friends offered to do our photos for cheap, we weren't planning to hire a photographer at all; we were just going to ask all our guests to bring their cameras and send us copies of their favorite candids. Nowadays, that would be even easier, since everyone has a phone to shoot with and there are services like GuestPix ($97 for a one-year subscription) and Flickr Pro ($73 per year) for sharing the photos. We could select the 100 photos we liked the best and print them off at 32 cents each, plus one 8x10 portrait for $4.79; the total cost for prints, after tax, would be about $40.

Music

2004 cost: $0. We had no band and no DJ, just our many talented musician friends jamming.

2025 cost: $0. Homemade music is still free.

Food

2004 cost: $1,136. We found a caterer in Blawenburg that put on a lunch spread with sandwiches, fruit, cheese, punch, water, coffee, tea, and a truly amazing cake for only $11 a head. We also paid $45 per hour for two servers and gave them each a $20 tip.

2025 cost: $1,778. Our former caterer is no longer in business, and other caterers in our area generally don't provide their prices unless you call for a quote. The only place I could find price info was on a couple of supermarket sites. One of them, Wegman's, has a lunch package similar to our reception menu for $12.95 a person, or $1,036 for 80 people. Add on $13 for plates, $69 for utensils and napkins, $32 for water and juice, and $72 for coffee and tea, and 7% for tax, and that brings it up to $1,308. This doesn't include the cake, but the exact one we had is still available at Chez Alice in Princeton. They don't sell full sheets like we had, but they do half sheets for $100. Two of those, with tax, would come to $214, bringing the total to $1,522 for the food. For wait staff, I checked Thumbtack and found hourly rates in the $40-$50 range—amazingly, around the same as what we paid in 2004. So the total cost for service, including tips, would be about the same $256.

Rentals and supplies

2004 cost: $162. Our caterer took care of the rentals for us: $126.14 for 80 folding chairs and 2 tables. We also spent $16 on dollar-store plastic tablecloths and $20 on drop cloths and bricks to cover the sides of pavilion in case of rain.  

2025 cost: $362. Miller's Rentals, the contractor our caterer used in 2004, is still in business. At $3.25 per chair and $15 per table, the total would come to $310.30 with tax, and based on their contract, it looks like delivery is included. Dollar Tree has picnic table covers for $1.25 each, which comes to $21.40 after tax for 16. I don't remember exactly how many drop cloths and bricks we bought in 2004, but I'd guess it was around 6 drop cloths ($11.78 at Home Depot) and 24 bricks (68 cents each at Home Depot). After tax, the total for that lot would come to $30.07.

Attendants'  gifts

2004 cost: $40. Technically, we didn't have any attendants, but we ordered a couple of $20 decorative prints from the calligrapher who did our certificate and gave one to Brian's brother-in-law, who signed the marriage license as the officiant, and one to the friends who shot our photos.

2025 cost: $10 to $60. Just like the wedding certificate, art is readily available and quite cheap in digital form on Etsy. But since digital art is so easy to find these days, it doesn't feel like much of a gift. I think I'd rather go with something else cool and unique from an Etsy seller, like this 3D-printed dragon planter ($10 to $38 depending on size). The seller has lots of other interesting designs as well. Two of them, with tax and shipping, would be around $60.

Favors

2004 cost: $12. We considered skipping the favors entirely, but instead we opted for something cheap and simple: homemade packets of forget-me-not seeds. We spent $2.79 on bulk seeds, about $6.71 on printer paper and ink, and $2 on glue sticks to put them together. 

2025 cost: About $31. I couldn't find forget-me-not seeds in bulk, but I found a four-ounce bag of wildflower seed mix for $18.99. Rutgers print service could run off the envelopes at 25 cents per color sheet, or $6.75 for 27 sheets, and the glue sticks would cost about $3.50.

Incidentals

2004 cost: $60. Most of this is supplies for the scavenger hunt activity we did at our reception. (It was designed to help guests get to know each other by asking them to find other guests with different characteristics.) We spent $6.77 on copying, $5.70 on pens, and $10 on prizes for the winners (a pair of Cheapass Games). We also spent $2 on a dozen or so small bottles of bubbles from Dollar Tree and $36 on various wedding planning books.

2025: $59. Once again, Rutgers print services could provide the necessary printing at 4 cents per black-and-white sheet, or $3.20 total. Two bulk packs of pens at $14.39 would come to $30.80 after tax. Cheapass Games are only available in digital form now, so the prizes could be a couple Pack O Games ($7.99 each, $17.10 with tax for both). Six packs of bubbles from Dollar Tree would cost $8.02, and the books wouldn't be necessary because you can find pretty much anything online nowadays.

TOTAL

Adding this all up, the grand total for a 2025 version of our wedding comes to somewhere around $3,800. That's a little lower than what the inflation calculator predicted, but as it turns out, still around 12% of the 33 grand The Knot reports as the average cost of a wedding in 2025.

In short, even in today's economy, an ecofrugal wedding is still possible. I hope this post is helpful, or at least heartening, to anyone currently planning a wedding, and an interesting exercise for everyone else.

Frugalversary 2024: We'll take Manhattan

Most years, Brian and I celebrate our anniversary in a modest style. For the first few years of our marriage, I'd put on the bodice from my wedding dress, we'd buy a little 4-inch version of our wedding cake, and then we'd go to the park where we got married to eat it. When the bakery stopped carrying small cakes, we started going to Princeton instead and visiting the bakery cafe to order a slice of the same cake. And when the cafe shut down during the pandemic, Brian started baking the cake himself. Our gifts to each other were either small tokens (like the game I made for Brian and the aluminum-foil flower he made for me on our tenth anniversary) or practical items (like the cherry tree we planted for our fourth anniversary, which sadly didn't survive, or the glass-and-silicone lids I got Brian for some of our Pyrex containers on our fifteenth). The biggest celebration we ever had was going shopping at IKEA and having lunch in the cafe.

But this year, for our twentieth anniversary, we decided to splash out a little. We've discovered that one activity we really enjoy is going to a town where we haven't spent a lot of time before and just exploring, wandering up streets and into shops looking at whatever takes our fancy. So, for our anniversary, we decided to carry out this activity on a grander scale by visiting the biggest town on the whole East Coast: New York City.

Although this trip was bound to be much costlier than our usual anniversary outings, we tried not to go overboard. We made no attempt to get tickets to a show, which could easily have cost more than we'd spent on all our previous 19 anniversaries put together. We didn't even plan a visit to a museum, not even the intriguingly named Museum of Illusions or Museum of Sex, which would have cost over $70 for two tickets. Instead, we looked for things we could do at little to no cost within walking distance of Penn Station, thus avoiding any need to find our way around on the subway. 

Our first stop (well, second, after the rest rooms at the station) was 9th and 31st, where an article from Beloved City had promised we could find a "magical art installation" called Citrovia. But as it turned out, this article was several years old, so the exhibit was no longer there. Fortunately, we hadn't gone very far out of our way, so we just continued on to the next site on our list: the High Line, a park built on a disused set of former elevated train tracks. It's only about 1.5 miles long, but it has lots to see, including a variety of native plants, some funky art exhibits, and an above-the-fray view of the city. 

We also got a look at the neighboring Hudson Yards, which is both a resting spot for the city's trains and an open-air food court. We weren't quite ready for lunch at that point, but we did get a peek at a huge public sculpture in that area called "The Vessel": a series of staircases and landings visitors can explore. The ground-floor level is normally open to the public for free, but it was closed for construction, so we had to content ourselves with snapping a photo or two from outside.

Being thwarted by construction continued to be a theme of the trip as morning wore into afternoon. We'd planned to exit the High Line at 16th Avenue and then descend to street level to go visit Chelsea Market, a sort of Bohemian shopping mall with lots of eateries, but the section of the park between 23rd and 16th was closed for maintenance. So we got off at 23rd and wended our way through the streets to Chelsea Market in the wake of a large crowd of students all wearing yellow backpacks with "MLA" on them. (My first thought was "Modern Language Association?", but a quick search showed it referred to Moving Language Ahead, an English course for foreign students that culminates with a trip to an English-speaking country.)

For lunch, we chose a place called Berlin Currywurst, which offered an intriguing-sounding tofu kielbasa. Sadly, the sausage itself was disappointing, a bit mushy and lacking the garlic punch I expect from a proper kielbasa sausage. Also, the bun it was served on (along with some unremarkable sauerkraut) disintegrated about three-quarters of the way through, and Brian's more traditional meat bratwurst sandwich didn't fare any better. So, 6 out of 10 for the sausages, but 10 out of 10 for the accompanying French fries, which had a crisp, golden exterior over tender insides. The only fault I could find with them was that they were perhaps a trifle over-salted, but Brian thought they were just right. 

We ate our sausages at a small table, shoulder to shoulder with several Italian students, then spent some time exploring the rest of the shops. We ventured into a fancy bakery, an artists' market, a vintage candy store, a place called Imports from Marrakesh featuring an intriguing assortment of clothing and decor, a quaint delicatessen, and finally a genuine independent bookstore called Posman Books. We browsed through the volumes and found nothing irresistible, but I did drop $5 on a little LED flashlight for my key ring. I'd been looking for something like this anyway, so I took the opportunity to support an independent bookseller and pick up a little souvenir of our trip at the same time.

After reascending to the High Line and continuing down it to the end, we wove through the streets and crossed the bridge to Little Island, an artificial island built out in the Hudson. It's mostly used in the evenings as a live music venue, but it was a fairly interesting place to walk or, more accurately, climb along sloping paths and natural stone staircases. After rambling up and down in the midday heat, we were feeling a little tired, so we stopped into Pier 57—another large, upscale food court—to have a cup of coffee and spend some time in the air conditioning.

Refreshed by our rest, we sallied back out and made our way to the garment district, where we strolled up 7th Avenue peeping into shop windows. I slipped into one store just long enough to check the price of a dress I'd seen in the window, which I'd guessed would be too rich for my blood at $278. Apparently I'd failed to account for the Manhattan conversion rate, because the actual price tag read $795, causing me to back carefully out the door and flee before a salesperson could spot me. 

The only store we actually explored in detail was the always entertaining Williams-Sonoma, home of pricey kitchen gear. (An amusing and very New York sales clerk at this particular branch described it as a "toy store for adults.") None of the on-sale items appealed to us, but Brian found one thing he thought he could use: a candy thermometer to replace the wildly inaccurate one we have now. Unfortunately, it was a $65 model equipped with Bluetooth, a feature for which we'd have no use whatsoever. So instead, I bought him a more reasonable $29 instant-read thermometer, suitable for a variety of applications, as my anniversary gift to him. (He's already used it once to test the temperature of an ice cream base he's preparing in our new-to-us ice cream maker.)

As the clock ticked past 5pm, we had to decide whether to stay in the city for dinner or head home. Deciding that we didn't want to wait that long to eat, we settled for a quick bite at New York Pizza Suprema right near the train station. Beloved City had described this as the best slice of pizza in New York, but I strongly suspect this isn't true; both the fresh mushroom and the vegan margherita were pretty good, but neither was superior to Brian's homemade pizza. (The crust was nicely crisp on the edges, but a bit soggy in the middle, and the cheese on the vegan slice had an odd, liquid texture, not nearly as good as our homemade vegan mozzarella.) Still, it was unquestionably an authentic New York experience, and at $12.50 for both slices, undoubtedly the cheapest meal we could have expected to enjoy in the city. After this light supper, we roamed just a few blocks farther north before heading back to the station and home again for cake.

Although we hadn't officially made a budget for this trip, my private goal was to keep the entire excursion under $200: $10 for each year of our marriage. As it turned out, we met this target with plenty of room to spare. Our expenses were:

• Two round-trip fares on NJ Transit: $64.40
• Lunch at Berlin Currywurst, including tip: $31.30
• Mini flashlight from Posman Books: $5.44
• Tip for a busker playing the erhu on the High Line: $2
• Coffee at Pier 57, including tip: $6
• Thermometer from Williams-Sonoma: $29.34
• Dinner at NY Pizza Suprema: $12.50
• Parking in New Brunswick, which saved us a long walk at the end of a busy day: $16.00
• TOTAL: $166.98

Even if you add in the $21.27 Brian spent on my anniversary gift (an amusing board game called Cat Lady) and the groceries we bought for our anniversary cake, our celebration still easily rings in at under $200. It's more than we'd usually spend for a one-day outing, but when you consider that Arthur Frommer's 1957 feat of seeing Europe on $5 a day would cost at least $125 today—or $250 for two people—New York on $167 a day doesn't sound so bad.

Good hunting at Goodwill

I've been a regular visitor to thrift shops for decades now. Based on a quick count, roughly two-thirds of the clothes in my closet are secondhand, including many unique pieces that I dearly love. But that doesn't mean that I normally have good luck at thrift shops. On any given thrift shop visit (including most of the ones I made during Thrift Shop Week in 2016), the most likely outcome is that I'll find nothing useful and walk out empty-handed. I've only managed to accumulate such a sizable secondhand wardrobe through perseverance; even if I strike out nine times out of ten, my occasional lucky shopping trips add up over time.

The same, however, does not hold true for Brian. In the past month, we've visited two different Goodwill stores: our usual store in East Brunswick and one up in Bound Brook that we decided to check out for our anniversary, because we're weird that way. And between the two, he has filled pretty much every gap in his wardrobe for less than $50. I, meanwhile, came away with a grand total of one item, but given my track record, I still consider that a victory.

Here's Brian's haul from the two trips combined. It includes:

• Two pairs of shorts. They're both cargo shorts, which aren't his favorite, but they both have the above-the-knee length he prefers, rather than the knee-length fit that seems to be all you can find in stores these days. The light grey pair is actually a 30 waist, so it's quite snug on him, but wearable. Both pairs cost $6.
• One pair of jeans. He actually found two pairs in his size, 32/30, on the trip we made yesterday—a rare occurrence for him, since usually he hunts through the racks and doesn't find any. But one of the pairs turned out to be skinny jeans, and he decided he couldn't quite pull that look off. So he bought only the more conventional Levi's for $8. They had a little splotch of paint on one leg, but he was able to scrape most of it off with an Exacto knife, reducing it to only a barely discernible smudge.
  
• One V-neck shirt. Brian's usual uniform for winter is jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt over that. He'll occasionally choose a sweater instead, but typically just for slightly dressier occasions. This shirt is kind of a middle ground between the two. It has an inner layer of comfy knitted material like a sweatshirt, but the outer layer is a woven fabric that's a bit more presentable. It also has a neater, trimmer fit than the typical bulky sweatshirt, so it will take his everyday look up a notch. Marked as a sweater on our receipt, it cost $6.
• One pair of sneakers. This was the biggest coup. Brian's favorite pair of shoes is a pair of classic canvas sneakers in a nifty plaid fabric, which he bought for $20 at Old Navy close to 15 years ago. They were the first pair of shoes he ever saw in a store and thought, "I want those shoes," as opposed to, "Well, I need new shoes, so I guess these will do." And other folks agree with him; he regularly gets compliments on them from friends, relatives, and even strangers. Unfortunately, after 15 years of on-and-off use, they're starting to fall apart. Mind you, that's a pretty impressive lifespan for a $20 pair of shoes, but it's clear he won't be able to use them much longer. But of course, after all these years, Old Navy no longer makes them, and until today, he couldn't find anything he liked nearly as much at a price he considered reasonable. But on yesterday's trip to Goodwill, he found three pairs he liked enough to try them on, and this was the most comfortable fit of the lot. Its solid green fabric uppers aren't quite as snazzy as the plaid ones, but the shoes have the basic old-school styling he likes and were well worth the $20 price tag. He might eventually find something else he likes better, but at least now he isn't at risk of having to go barefoot when the plaid ones finally give up the ghost.

So that's Brian's back-to-school shopping done, all for a grand total of $46. Add in the one item we bought for me, a white cotton turtleneck, and the total is still only $52. 

Just for fun, I calculated what we'd have paid for similar items purchased new from a good but not fancy retailer like L.L. Bean. My calculations: $50 each for Brian's two pairs of shorts, $60 for his jeans, $65 for the closest thing to his shirt, and $50 for his shoes (assuming he chose the color that was on sale). Add in $37 for my turtleneck, and the total for the lot comes to $312—six times what we spent at Goodwill. Even buying everything on sale at Kohl's would have cost us about three times as much.

Of course, if we'd had to buy everything new, we probably wouldn't have bought most of it in the first place.

What's the new Etsy for budget-conscious brides?

Sometimes I fantasize about having a little side business helping people plan ecofrugal weddings. I wouldn't be like a normal wedding planner, who makes all the arrangements from start to finish and charges a grand or two for the service; instead I'd let couples hire me by the hour to do exactly as much of the work, or as little, as they wanted taken off their hands. And I'd use the techniques I learned planning my own wedding, and all the tricks I've learned in the years since, to help them have the wedding of their dreams on a budget they could live with in real life.

Since one particular item that takes a big bite out of many wedding budgets is the dress, I'd want to have one of my services be helping brides-to-be (or anyone who wants a dress without the gendered label to go with it) find affordable alternatives. When I got married 19 years ago, I wore a Renaissance-style bodice I bought on eBay for about $35 and a skirt Brian's mom made for me with about $25 worth of fabric. But that was before Etsy existed, so I've always assumed that if I were trying to recreate the same look now, that would be the best place to look.

Recently, out of curiosity, I decided to check the site and see what kind of options it would offer these days for a bride who wanted the same kind of fantasy-woodland-Renaissance vibe I was going for in my dress. I'd done similar searches a couple of times in the past, and I'd found lots of interesting choices in a wide range of prices. But this time, that wasn't what happened at all. I did a whole series of searches on different terms like "white Renaissance dress," "white fairy dress," "white corset dress," and so on (specifically avoiding the word "wedding," since adding that to the front of any phrase usually adds an extra zero to the end of the price tag). And instead of seeing lots of unique designs by individual artisans, I kept seeing the same few listings over and over under different sellers' names. More frustrating still, no matter how carefully I tried to craft my search terms, most of the dresses Etsy kept showing me looked nothing like what I was describing. I knew there used to be lots of sellers on this site who had the kind of things I was looking for, so where had they all gone?

When I asked Google, "What happened to Etsy?" I discovered that this was not just my imagination. There were tons of Reddit threads discussing the problem, and the consensus was that the site had been taken over by "drop shippers" buying and reselling cheap manufactured goods from China. This flood of cheap stuff had completely drowned out the independent sellers who remained, making it impossible to find their wares. And since the site was also making no effort to make sure item descriptions were accurate, these resellers could slap as many popular labels as they wanted onto their products, so that even a search as specific as "white renaissance fairy dress corset top handkerchief hem" would turn up almost nothing that fit all those descriptors and many things that fit none of them. (Cory Doctorow argues in an essay that this same process, which he calls by a whimsical if rather rude name, is inexorably happening all over the Internet.)

But that still didn't entirely answer my question. It explained why I couldn't find the good stuff on Etsy anymore, but it didn't tell me where I could find it. Presumably, the home tailors who used to make these interesting garments were still out there somewhere. So were they still on Etsy, just buried in the search results? Or had they moved on?

To answer this question, I tried searching for "What is the new Etsy?" That turned out to be kind of dead end. There was a story that sounded promising about angry Etsy sellers creating a new platform called the Indie Sellers Guild, but when I checked that site out, it turned out to be more of an informal union for artisans than an actual platform for them to sell their wares. The site did have a directory of member shops, but it didn't provide any descriptions of what they provided. It might be useful for tracking down a specific creator you'd already heard of, but not for finding creators who sell a particular type of item. And a search for "Etsy alternatives" turned up mostly tools for artists to create their own stores, not marketplaces where you could search a whole bunch of those stores at once.

So I tried a different approach: I took the searches I'd been doing on Etsy and plugged them directly into Google. And this time, I started getting a few useful results. I had to get pretty specific with my search terms, but I started turning up thematically appropriate garments from a bunch of retailers I'd never heard of before, like Devil Inspired, Holy Clothing, Scarlet Darkness, Dolls Kill, and Rosegal. Most of these goods weren't handmade, but then, neither was my eBay bodice 19 years ago. The point is, these retailers had the specific styles I was looking for, and all of them had at least some pieces in those styles for under $100. 

The bottom line: affordable dresses for unconventional weddings are still out there. It just takes a bit more work to find them. And the same probably goes true for any of the other fascinating finds Etsy used to offer up, from woodwork to jewelry.

Now, if anyone would like help finding an affordable venue or assembling a tiered cake, I happen to know a bit about those topics too. Reasonable hourly rates!

Thrift Week (in one day) 2023: Stuff Green People Hate

If you've been reading my blog for several years, you may have noticed that I did not run my usual Thrift Week series this past week, as I have done every January since 2010. And you might reasonably have suspected that after 13 years, I had simply run out of good ideas for a whole week's worth of related posts. But actually, that wasn't the problem; I still had several possibilities in the pipeline that could have worked. The fact is that last Tuesday, when my birthday (which is also Ben Franklin's birthday and thus the official start of Thrift Week) rolled around, I happened to be busy with other stuff, and I just forgot.

Having remembered about this just now, on what would normally be the last day of Thrift Week, it seems a bit silly to start a weeklong series at this point. So, for this year only, I'm going to compromise by condensing a whole Thrift Week into a single post. Instead of seven short-to-medium posts on a single ecofrugal topic, you'll get one long post covering all seven ideas in list form. And the topic I've chosen for this Thrift Week blitz is: The Seven Least Ecofrugal Things You Can Buy. (It's sort of the anti-ecofrugal counterpart to my Stuff Green People Like series.)

When I first jotted down this idea, I planned to lead off the series with a Keurig coffee maker. This seemed like the perfect example of an anti-ecofrugal product, since it's both expensive and wasteful. The machines themselves start at $80, while a drip or French press coffeemaker can cost less than $20. Then there's the cost of the K-cups: $19.99 for 22 K-cups of Starbucks Breakfast Blend coffee, or 91 cents per cup. Compare that with the cost of the same coffee in whole bean form at Walmart: $13.24 for 18 ounces, which works out to 25 cents per cup assuming 47 cups per pound. On top of that, the K-cups are neither recyclable nor compostable, while the leftover grounds and filter from a press or drip machine (or my trusty Aeropress) can go straight into the compost bin. And they don't even make good coffee.

But this week's Washington Post presented an article on the topic that contradicted this view. As I noted last week, you probably can't read the article if you're not a subscriber, but the headline sums it up: "Single-use coffee pods have surprising environmental benefits over other brewing methods." It points to an environmental analysis published in The Conversation (which you can read with no paywall) that compared the carbon footprints of different brewing methods and found that the biggest factors are the coffee itself and the energy used to heat the water. The least wasteful method, assuming you use the recommended amounts of both, is instant coffee (though taste-wise it has even less to recommend it than the pods). But the much-maligned pod machine actually comes in second, since it limits the amount of coffee and water used per cup. The most wasteful method is the standard drip machine, which both uses the most ground coffee per cup and uses extra electricity to keep the pot warm. (The analysis didn't cover the Aeropress, but it did list the amount of coffee used in each method: 25 grams per cup for drip, 17 grams for a French press, 14 for a pod machine like the Keurig, and 12 for instant. I just now measured the amount I use in my Aeropress and it was 15 grams, so I'm doing about as well as a Keurig without all the plastic waste.)

This just goes to show that figuring out a product's ecological footprint can sometimes be a tricky business. So for my Least Ecofrugal list, I'm going to stick strictly to things that are so clearly wasteful (of money and everything else) that there's no realistic chance some smart bunch of scientists is going to come along and prove otherwise. And by that strict standard, my seven choices are:

1. A high-end sports car. I was originally going to say an SUV, since these vehicles are not only gas-guzzlers but are also more expensive to own than most other vehicles. But I have to concede that the data shows they are indeed safer for drivers (though they make the road less safe for everyone else). Sports cars don't offer even that benefit. 

In a 2019 Insider article on the nine most expensive vehicles to own, five of the nine were sports models. And on a 2021 list of the least fuel-efficient cars you can buy, sports cars also dominate. Some models are more efficient than others, but unless you're going for an all-electric (and really expensive) Tesla, they're never going to compete with a fuel-efficient sedan.

2. A boat. Everything that's wasteful about cars goes double for boats. I'm not talking about a little canoe here, obviously, but a big boat that costs money to fuel, maintain, dock, and insure. A longstanding joke among the yacht set is that owning a yacht is like standing in a cold shower tearing up hundred-dollar bills.

How many hundreds are we talking here? Well, according to Deep Sailing, the cost of boat ownership can be anywhere from $450 for a speedboat to $250,000 for a big yacht—per month. However, Watercraft 101 puts the cost much lower, saying that a boat that costs $20,000 to buy up-front will probably cost less than $3,000 per year to own. And Born Again Boating splits the difference, saying that a 23-foot boat will cost around $30,000 in its first year and $15,000 per year after that. The cost seems to depend a lot on what kind of boat it is and how it's financed. 

But here's the thing: unless you fish or run a ferry for a living, you don't actually need to own a boat at all. Unlike a car, a boat is used mainly for recreation, not transportation. So both the cost of ownership and the environmental cost of the boat's emissions are entirely unnecessary.

3. Cigarettes. This one's a no-brainer. At an average cost of $8 per pack, a pack-a-day smoker would spend over $2,900 per year on cigarettes alone. But that cost is just the tip of the iceberg. Smokers also pay significantly more for health care, health insurance, and home insurance, and they're less productive at work, reducing their ability to earn. According to a WalletHub study, the lifetime cost of being a smoker can be anywhere from $2.2 to $4.1 million. And from an environmental standpoint, tobacco not only pollutes the air that nonsmokers have to breathe, it's also responsible for habitat loss; soil degradation; pesticide pollution; deforestation; significant costs in water, energy, and transportation; and, of course, discarded cigarette butts all over the place.

4. Diamonds. You know who came up with the "rule" that a diamond engagement ring should cost two months' salary for the groom? Big surprise: it was the DeBeers diamond cartel, which has kept the price of diamonds artificially high for decades by deliberately restricting supply. One hundred years ago, most engagement rings didn't have diamonds in them at all. Then DeBeers launched a successful campaign to convince husbands-to-be that the only proper ring was a diamond, and moreover, a diamond costing a month's salary. This was such a success that DeBeers later bumped the figure up to two months' salary in the U.S. and three months' salary in Japan.

By 2021, according to The Knot, the average cost of an engagement ring in the U.S. had reached $6,000. (Granted, this figure may be skewed upward based on the magazine's readership.) And what do you get for that $6,000? Not an investment that produces any sort of return. Not an asset that you can sell for a profit, since the recipient is obviously expected to keep the ring as long as the marriage lasts. And definitely not a happier marriage, since a 2014 Emory University study found that the couples who spent most on their rings (between $2,000 and $4,000 in 2014 dollars) had a 30 percent higher risk of divorce than those who chose more affordable rings ($500 to $2,000). 

A big diamond ring is a pretty ornament and a status symbol, but it provides no tangible benefits whatsoever. And given all the environmental and human rights abuses associated with diamond mining, you're probably doing both the earth and your wallet a favor by choosing an old-fashioned ring with a different type of stone—or a modern one with a lab-created diamond. Or, if you're willing to break with this not-so-old tradition, doing what we did and skipping the engagement ring entirely.

5. An expensive wedding. You know what else that Emory study found increased the risk of divorce? Expensive weddings. Couples who spent between $10,000 and $20,000 on their weddings were 29 percent likelier to end up divorced than those who spent between $5,000 and $10,000; couples who spent over $20,000 increased their divorce rates by a whopping 46 percent. By contrast, couples who spent less than $5,000 (like us) actually reduced their risk. Couples who spent even less than we did—$1,000 or less—cut their divorce rate nearly in half. (Having a big wedding, with lots of guests, did not pose the same dangers: the couples with the most wedding guests actually had a lower risk of divorce than those with the fewest. Apparently, the real mistake is spending a lot of money on each guest.)

A frugal wedding like ours also eliminates many of the environmental costs associated with traditional weddings: elaborate invitations, single-use decorations, pesticide-laden cut flowers, gas-guzzling limos, and even one-use-only wedding attire. We didn't have any of that stuff, and we're still together after 18 years, so it clearly didn't hurt us any.

6. Marble countertops. I've complained before about the ubiquity and price of granite countertops, but marble is even worse. It's even more expensive than granite, at $15 to $190 per square foot, and even harder to care for. Since it's porous, you have to not only seal it but also use special, non-abrasive cleaners to avoid scratching it. It's also vulnerable to chipping and etching from acid. And it has all the same environmental problems from quarrying and transporting the heavy stone that granite does.

7. The latest smartphone. After many years of not owning a smartphone at all, I've finally come to accept that the benefits of these little gadgets outweigh their drawbacks. But there's a big difference between owning a smartphone and buying a new top-of-the-line phone every year. 

The financial costs are obvious. The latest, greatest iPhone has a starting price of $1,100; the latest Samsung Galaxy model costs $1,200. You could get around half of that price back by trading in last year's model, but you're still paying over $500 per year for new phones (not even counting the cost of the service). By contrast, my first smartphone, a bottom-of-the-line Motorola, cost $130, and I'd still be using it now if it hadn't developed a problem that I was unable to fix. 

But worse still is the environmental toll. Producing all those new phones requires a lot of rare materials like lithium, cobalt, and gold. Mining these materials is environmentally destructive, and disposing of them is hazardous. And while old smartphones can be reused and recycled, many users simply discard them when they upgrade.

It's clearly better for the environment to buy a decent phone, hang onto it as long as possible, and make sure it gets recycled when it finally becomes unusable. And it will clearly save you a bundle, too.

***

So there you have it: my selections for the seven least ecofrugal consumer purchases. If you think any of my choices are unreasonable, or if you think there's something even worse that I left off the list, let me know in the comments.

That's it until next Thrift Week, when I promise to be a little more on the ball about starting on the 17th. (This time, I'll get Google to remind me about it ahead of time.)

Money Crashers: Engagement Ring Cost – How Much of Your Salary Should You Spend?

Previously, in my work for Money Crashers, I've had a few words to say on the subject of weddings. Back in 2018, I analyzed a study finding that people who have low-budget weddings were less likely to end up divorced than those who had big blowouts. In that piece, I also noted that people who huge, expensive rings were more likely to split up than those who had more modest ones. However, those who had very small rings, costing less than $500, slightly increased their risk of divorce — possibly because they had lower incomes and were more likely to struggle financially.

Based on this work, Money Crashers suggested I write a second article, this one focusing specifically on how much it's actually reasonable to spend on an engagement ring. Spoiler alert: the answer is not "two months' salary," a number invented by the De Beers diamond cartel to sell bigger stones. In fact, there's no simple formula you can use to calculate it. Instead, you have to find out what your partner wants and expects in a ring, then balance that against what you can reasonably afford. And that means considering your partner's finances as well as your own, since you're about to merge your financial lives together.

This makes the purchase of the ring a good occasion to sit down and have the money talk with your partner — something every couple really should do before getting married anyway. Because blowing your financial future for the sake of a big diamond is no way to start living happily ever after.

Engagement Ring Cost – How Much of Your Salary Should You Spend?

Ecofrugal news items

As it happens, there's been no big news in our ecofrugal life this week, so instead I thought I'd share a roundup of news stories from the outside world. There's no particular thread linking them except that they all relate to money or the environment or both, and they were all interesting enough to catch my eye.

Story #1: The Skybrator   

Three weeks ago, a story popped up on The Guardian about a new, innovative design for a wind turbine. Actually, it's not really a turbine at all; it's a ten-foot tower that oscillates in the wind and turns that motion into electricity. This design has all kinds of advantages:

1. It's much smaller than a traditional turbine, so it can fit into smaller spaces where there isn't room for a full-scale wind farm. It could be deployed in cities or even in suburban backyards, perhaps as a complement to solar panels, since the wind is usually stronger at night when there's no sunlight. There are currently plans to fit it on top of existing streetlights along highways and power them directly, sending excess energy to the grid.
   
2. Because it has no blades, it doesn't pose a threat to migrating birds and other wildlife.
3. It's quieter than big turbines, and the noise it creates is at a frequency barely detectable to humans.
4. It's unobtrusive, eliminating the "it's ugly" objection so often raised to traditional wind turbines.

And if it happens to resemble a giant vibrator, well, that's just another selling point as far as I'm concerned.

Story #2: The Rise of Non-Dairy Cheese

It was a big breakthrough in our quest for a more plant-based diet when we learned how to make a non-dairy cheese that actually tastes like, melts like, and stretches like the real thing. Prior to this discovery, we'd tried all kinds of different commercial cheese substitutes available in the store and found all of them distinctly lacking in taste, texture, or both.

But apparently, according to a recent story in Eater, there are much better non-dairy cheeses available commercially that we've never tried. In fact, the entire field of vegan cheesemaking has undergone a revolution in the past five to ten years, all without our knowledge.

According to Eater, these days there are three tiers of products sold as vegan cheese:

• The stuff found in most grocery stores, like Daiya. It's "made from a combination of fat, starch, and flavors that have been emulsified and solidified," and it has a texture that a vegan chef interviewed in the article describes as "melted crayon."
• Cheese made from cultured or fermented plant milk, usually cashew. This is made somewhat like traditional cheese: by adding enzymes to the plant-based milk to create curds and whey. The article says this type of cheese has "some of the funky notes and textural complexity" of the dairy-based kind. It says the best-known brand is Miyoko’s Creamery, which I've seen at the Whole Earth Center but never tried, mostly because it costs somewhere on the order of $20 a pound. Yet even, this, apparently, isn't the true top tier of vegan cheese. That honor goes to...
• Artisanal vegan cheese. This is made just like traditional cheese: you make a nut milk, then let it ferment to form curds, drain off the whey, and mold it. Eater says this type of cheese "oozes, stinks, and blooms as convincingly as its dairy counterparts, " although its texture tends to be on the soft side. It's sold mainly at vegan cheese shops (yes, those exist, apparently) at prices I shudder to contemplate. (The online ordering section for Riverdel, a "vegan cheesemonger" in Manhattan, shows selections ranging from $4 to $18 for a quarter-pound. Yes, that does work out to $16 to $72 per pound.)

All this is interesting to hear about, but from an ecofrugal perspective, not actually all that useful. Based on my calculations, our homemade mock-zarella costs roughly $9.12 per pound, half the price of most higher-end vegan cheeses, and it's been good enough for every recipe we've tried it in so far. I admit that it would be nice to find a vegan cheddar that's equally good for use in our Cheesy Rice Casserole and Potato Apple Skillet, but not so nice that we're willing to pay twice as much for it. We'd be more inclined to try modifying the vegan mozzarella recipe with more cheddar-like seasonings (perhaps the ones from this cheddar substitute on the same vegan blog) and see how it serves us.

Story #3: The Wedding Industry Strikes Again

Finally, a story I feel somewhat ambivalent about: I learned today that Netflix has introduced a show called Marriage or Mortgage. The premise is that a wedding planner and a real estate broker both meet with engaged couples and compete to convince them that they should spend their life's savings on their dream wedding or their dream home, respectively.

The reason for my ambivalence is that, if I'm being truly honest, I have to admit I would probably enjoy this show. It's mindless fluff, obviously, but it's my kind of fluff. Yet I must also admit, even more shamefacedly, that a good portion of my enjoyment would come from my own feelings of smug superiority. I would watch the couples struggling to choose between the Most Beautiful Day of Our Lives and the American Dream Home, and I would think to myself, "Ha ha, I got my dream wedding and my dream home without going broke over either one!"

But underlying this smugness is an important point: both weddings and homes tend to be oversold. Admittedly, I would say a home is always a better investment than a one-day event, no matter how special, because it's a tangible asset that will, you can reasonably assume, grow in value, and one that you can sell to recover the money if you have to. But if HGTV is any guide, there seem to be lots of Americans out there buying way more house than they really need, and overextending themselves on their mortgage as a result. A childless couple does not need a five-bedroom house; a family that never entertains does not need a formal living room and dining room; a person who never cooks anything more complicated than a pot of spaghetti does not need a gourmet kitchen. And the same thing goes double when it comes to weddings; people are assuming they "need" a four-figure dress and a limousine and a videographer and all the other stuff we didn't have and didn't miss, without really stopping to think about what they want.

Ultimately, I think, this would end up making the show more frustrating than enjoyable for me. I would always be wanting to yell at the screen, "You don't need all this stuff!" (At least I wouldn't be alone; the reviewer for Wired had exactly the same reaction.) Every episode, I would be hoping for just one couple to push back against the show's assumptions by announcing that after seeing just how much house and how much wedding they can buy on their budget, they've decided they can afford both by just scaling back a bit. But based on a Chicago Tribune article (via NNY 360) about the show, which wonders why "no one suggests the possibility of buying a home and then having a small wedding there," this hope would never be fulfilled.

Has anyone, I wonder, ever made a reality TV show about small weddings? About having the day of your dreams without spending away the down payment for your first house? Or would that never work because these shows all rely on the "wedding-industrial complex" for their advertising dollars?

Frugalversery 2020: Homemade chocolate raspberry torte

Brian and I didn't exactly have a traditional wedding, so it seems only natural that we've never really gone in for traditional anniversary celebrations. For years, we celebrated by ordering a miniature version of our wedding cake from the bakery that provided it, then going to the park where we got married to eat it. Then the bakery stopped selling small cakes, so we started making a trip into Princeton instead, going to the bakery in person, and getting a slice either to go or to eat in. Unfortunately, their selection of cakes varied from day to day, so sometimes we'd make the trip and find it wasn't available. So by the time our tenth anniversary rolled around, we'd switched to visiting IKEA and having lunch in the cafe (where we knew we could get a good slice of cake, even if it wasn't the cake). But we'd still make a point of swinging by the coffeehouse whenever we happened to be in Princeton and picking up a slice of our very own special cake as soon as it was available.

This year, however, the routine fell apart completely. Our local IKEA has reopened, but it let us down so badly last year that we've given up on going there at all. And the bakery in Princeton, even if we wanted to take our chances on it, appears to have closed down its cafe entirely during the pandemic and is now offering takeout only.

So, if we wanted to enjoy the fabulous Chocolate Raspberry Torte we had for our wedding as part of our anniversary celebration, we had only one option: make it ourselves.

Well, to be more accurate, Brian would make it, since he's the one who does the baking. My job is usually reading aloud to him while he works, so I asked him if he had a request, and he asked for The Tempest. So I read him that in its entirety, doing my best to present distinct voices for each character (Tim Curry as Sebastian, Aidan Turner as Caliban, etc.), while he worked his way through the complicated process of reproducing this cake from scratch.

Fortunately, we'd anticipated that we might have to do this some day, so we'd already made some notes on just how the cake is constructed. From top to bottom, the layers are: white sponge cake, chocolate mousse, cake, raspberry mousse, cake, chocolate mousse, cake, raspberry jam. It's finished with chocolate curls all around the outside and fresh raspberries on top. So, to recreate it, Brian would have to produce four distinct components — the cake, the jam, and two types of mousse — and then assemble them in the proper order.

At first, I tried simply Googling "chocolate raspberry torte" in hopes of finding a cake more or less the same as ours. Unfortunately, all the recipes I found were chocolate cakes layered with raspberry, rather than white cake with both chocolate and raspberry. However, one of them, from Taste of Home, did include a simple recipe for raspberry mousse that we thought we could use — basically just raspberry jam, sugar, and a touch of raspberry liqueur (which we skipped) folded into whipped cream. This would mean breaking our abstention from dairy products, but we figured for such a special occasion, we could make an exception. And since we needed raspberry jam for the cake anyway, using it to make the mousse would simplify the process.

In fact, as luck would have it, we already had some homemade raspberry jam. After our success putting up our first batch of plum jam last summer, Brian tried preserving some of our raspberries the same way, so he had a couple of small jars of the stuff set aside. And he found a recipe for Genoise sponge cake in The Joy of Cooking and an "easy two-ingredient chocolate mousse" recipe at Kitchn. This recipe starts with a chocolate ganache, which gets folded into whipped cream, so he figured he could make a little extra ganache and use that to stick the chocolate shavings to the side of the cake.

Since the weather has been beastly hot lately, Brian opted to do the actual baking part of the process the night before, when it was cooler. Instead of actual cake pans, he used two of his small deep-dish pizza pans to make two sponge cakes that he thought would be small enough for him to hold upright while slicing them, which would be much easier than trying to torte them horizontally. He lined the bottoms of the pans with circles of baking parchment to make it easier to turn the cooled cakes out in the morning.

Since the sides of these pans are not quite vertical, he had to trim around the the edges of both cakes to make them cylindrical, as well as shaving pieces off the top to make them roughly flat. But eventually he got two layers that he was indeed able to slice in half vertically — kind of like slicing a bagel. This gave him four thin layers to work with.

 Next, he whipped up the chocolate ganache, which would serve as both the outer coating and the basis for the chocolate mousse. Scaling the recipe to fit the size of the cake we were baking, he used 1/4 cup of heavy cream to 1/2 cup of bittersweet chocolate chips, following the procedure in Kitchn's chocolate mousse recipe.

But before actually making the mousse, he turned his attention to the raspberry jam. The batch he'd made hadn't been strained to remove the seeds, and he feared they'd interfere with the silky texture of the mousse, so he put the whole contents of the jar through a small sieve, muddling it with a spoon to get it through. The seedy parts went back into the jar, along with all the leftover strained jam that didn't get used in the cake, and he mixed it together to make a slightly more seed-heavy jam for later consumption.

Next, he whipped the cream and folded ganache into one batch to make the chocolate mousse and jam into the other to make the raspberry mousse. He used 1/4 cup of ganache to 1/3 cup of heavy whipping cream for the first batch, and 2 tablespoons of the strained preserves plus 1 teaspoon of powdered sugar to 1/4 cup of whipping cream for the second. Since he'd made the preserves using a low-sugar recipe, the raspberry mousse tasted somewhat tarter than the filling in our actual wedding cake, but we decided that wasn't a problem; since all the other components were so sweet, the brightness would set them off nicely.

And finally, he got out our smallest grater and started shaving off pieces of chocolate from a Trader Joe's chocolate truffle bar to decorate the outside of the cake. He grated off approximately one ounce of it to make a pile of shavings that looked like roughly the right amount. They weren't so much chocolate curls as chocolate fragments, but they'd have the flavor and texture we were going for.

With all the components now ready to go, it was time to begin assembling the cake. He started with one of the sponge layers, then spread on a fairly thick layer of chocolate mousse, followed by another cake layer and an equally thick layer of raspberry...

...and continued with cake, mousse, and cake until he had the entire stack assembled and ready for decorating. Since he just eyeballed the layers, he ended up not using quite all of the mousse he'd made; there was maybe a third of a cup left of each type. But he probably could have used all of it without hurting the flavor balance any.

Next, he applied the remaining chocolate ganache to the outside of the cake with a rubber spatula. He had just enough of it left to coat the entire cake.

He then applied the chocolate shavings by the simplest method he could think of: tilting the entire plate and sprinkling the chocolate bits over the ganache. He just kept going round and round the cake until he'd used the entire pile of shavings.

And finally, he took the remaining strained jam and spread a thin layer over the top of the cake. And there it was — an approximate reproduction of our wedding cake, made at home. The only component missing was the fresh raspberries on the top, but our raspberry canes aren't producing at the moment (we're in between the summer and fall crops), and we didn't want to buy a whole pint of pricey fresh berries just to get six of them for a cake decoration.

He did all this in the morning, and the cake spent the rest of the day chilling out in the fridge. In the evening, after a dinner of our favorite Pasta a la Caprese (the first of the summer, made with homegrown tomatoes, basil, and garlic, and our homemade vegan mozzarella) and an after-dinner walk, we cut into the cake...

...and found that it had just the same neat, layered structure as the original. And the flavor, while not identical, was pretty darn close. The raspberry mousse was indeed a little more tart than the original, and possibly the chocolate mousse was a little more bitter, but with the sweetness of the sponge layers in between, the overall flavor seemed perfectly balanced. The cake was also a little bit drier than the bakery's version, possibly because the layers were thicker, or possibly because they used a different type of sponge. But again, that was no problem; I always felt the original, if it had a fault, was a little too moist, inclined to become slightly soggy when left over. This version, we hope, will hold up fine, since we still have two-thirds of it left to enjoy.

Brian has written out the full recipe for what he did to create this cake and saved a copy, so on future anniversaries, we no longer need to be at the mercy of the bakery. We can celebrate right at home, with our very own homemade anniversary cake. (He might even attempt a dairy-free version next year, using Coco Whip — the stuff we used in our vegan raspberry fool — for the mousse.) And for my part, I still have 36 more Shakespeare plays to get through.

Money Crashers: Why a Cheaper Wedding Can Mean a Better, Happier Marriage

This summer, Brian and I will celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary. We were married in 2004 in the picnic grove in a state park, which we reserved for $50. I wore a bodice I bought on eBay, paired with a skirt made by Brian's mother, and a wreath of ivy on my head; Brian wore his good suit. We served a light lunch of sandwiches, fruit, cheese, punch, coffee/tea, and wedding cake, which we ate at picnic tables covered in dollar-store tablecloths and decorated with flowers from the local farmers' market. Planning this green and frugal ceremony, I often think, was what first got me interested in the topic of ecofrugality. (It was later featured in a story by American Public Media about wedding costs.)

All this has given me a lingering interest in the topic of weddings and, specifically, the cost of weddings. It led me to do a post on budget weddings (many of them ones that I learned about while planning my own) and a more recent one on how to find dresses for a beach wedding at a reasonable price.

So, naturally, I was interested when I first read about a study at Emory University that found the cost of a wedding is inversely related to the length of time the couple is likely to stay married. Spending big bucks on an engagement ring is also a predictor of shorter marriages. On the other hand, this doesn't mean a small private ceremony is the best way to start a lasting marriage; couples who didn't invite friends and family to their weddings were also more likely to end up divorced.

All this was so intriguing to me that I decided it was enough material for an entire Money Crashers article. In the piece, I go over the findings of the Emory study, one by one, and translate them into practical advice for couples. It's useful advice for anyone planning to get married in the near future, and interesting stuff to know for everyone else.

Check out the article here: Why a Cheaper Wedding Can Mean a Better, Happier Marriage