Back home, Mrs. Kitzke said, "A venue by itself is roughly $3,000 to rent for one day," not including flowers, food, music and all the other wedding standards that can quickly add up to $15,000 or more.
Our reception would be ridiculously cheap by anyone's wedding standards.
"Zopilotes," in waltz time with a chiming guitar line, sounds like a future wedding-dance standard, though the words describe buzzards circling in the sky.
Not that Mrs. Sollar spent much by today's wildly priced wedding-dress standards, where something from the couturier Monique Lhuillier's Platinum Collection can sell for upward of $20,000.
The standard wedding package costs an additional £980, including all formalities and a decorated wedding location.
"I wanted our marriage to be as official and real as anybody else's standard wedding," she said.
When Toni DeLisi got married, in 1986, her wedding met the standard criteria of the day among Italian families in New Jersey.
Dr. Biggers, who teaches at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, named each of the 26 tables at her wedding reception after standard love songs -- "My Funny Valentine," "In a Sentimental Mood," "Misty," "Stardust" -- and put the lyrics on the table.
Ms. Miller said couples who are intent on avoiding the standard wedding shots can rent the kind of photo booth found in arcades for about $2,000 a day (Photo-Me U.S.A., www.photo-me.com).com
For generations of middle-class Englishwomen, her encyclopedic "Book of Household Management" was a standard wedding gift, the final word on cooking, sewing and the fine art of hiring a servant or paying a social visit.
