1.3 Mile Long Wedding Dress Shows China Is Ready For Gross Consumerism, Too!
A Chinese bride recently walked down the aisle wearing a 7,083-foot-long wedding dress that took 200 guests over three hours to unfurl. The $5,800 dress could be a sign of China's potential to threaten America's reigning status as the capital of gross consumerism, if only the bridegroom hadn't personally designed the dress with his family's help. Explaining the lavish garment, he said: "I do not want a cliche wedding parade or banquet."
After the event, he cut the dress down to 1,984.1022m, to represent his bride's date of birth, and added 608 crystals, one for every day they had dated.
Mr Zhao said he had submitted his attempt to Guinness World Records in London and would also be sending video footage.
"Both the length of the dress and the number of silk roses pinned on the wedding dress can make history," he said, but added that it did not matter to him whether he was successful or not.
The whole effort cost Mr Zhao about 40,000 yuan ($5,800; £3,470), but his schoolteacher bride was reported to have "laughed and cried at the romantic gesture".
Maybe Americans could learn from the relatively inexpensive do-it-yourself extravagance. It actually is quite romantic, even if it didn't win over everyone.
Mr Zhao's mother appeared less impressed.
"It is a waste of money in my opinion," she told Xinhua.
Chinese bride wears 2.2km dress [BBC]
(Photo: Reuters)
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Comments:
I like Mr. Zhao's mom. She sounds like my kind of people.
People will do anything to get in Guinness World Records.
problem, They had made it themselves..... Not much in the way of "consumerism"
Isn't that about par for cost for a wedding dress anyways in the U.S. at least?
@Skankingmike: Making something yourself doesn't necessarily make it not consumerism. It may be smart consumerism, because it saved them lots of money. Not to mention, I doubt they were involved in every single step to take it from raw material to train. They probably purchased the fabric and flowers an assembled from there.
@Skankingmike: They had to buy the materials and other things and used it to make something that really had no use, sounds like gross consumerism to me.
@Shappie: Yep.
(not for me though... Cream wool suit from Banana Republic, $200 at the time. Still fits, too!)
@Skankingmike: and you know if they hadn't made it themselves everyone would be on here saying the should have, and detailing everything they did wrong.
@Darkwish: No consumerism is paying $5k for a normal dress made with $100 of materials in a sweatshop in Vietnam. Bonus points if you had to wrestle with other women to get it on sale. This was just extravagance
Ack - gross! I'm not a fan of wedding crappola. When I got married I really wanted to elope, but had a small church ceremony and luncheon just to make the husband and parents happy. I still wish we had eloped. My dress was $350 (what a waste). I haven't looked at it since that day, I think it's at my mom's house but not really sure.
@Ihaveasmartpuppy:
Since most marriages end in divorce anyway, I couldn't justify spending a lot on a wedding. We eloped in Virginia Beach when my ex and I got married.
@Ihaveasmartpuppy: sometimes it's not an option.
My wife had over 80 people in her family who attended. She's Spanish and extremely Catholic.
So a non church non large wedding wasn't an option for us.
@Shappie: I think the current average cost for a wedding dress in the U.S. is closer to $800-$1000. Still not cheap, but significantly less than $5800.
Ah - conspicious consumption is so rarely elegant.
^rarely as in never.
@Shappie: Did some quick number crunching. Mind you, using the internet in the US for my pricing than directly through a Chinese textile mill, but I'm not calculating thread or other notions and incidentals. Assuming the train was simply bolts of plain tulle stitched together, they'd need 2361 yards of it. A quick Google search came up with $0.79/yd to be a rough price. (54" wide which seems most likely as it normally comes in this or 6" width) If they used the full width, that'd be about $1865 just for the tulle train. It's possible he used half that width and thus half the price.
The silk roses are quite a bit more difficult to calculate: Did they mean silk rose petals, or actual formed silk roses? If the latter, what size, and were there stems attached? Silk rose petals are about a nickel a piece, this site shows roses that would seem about the correct proportion for pinning to a train, though pre-assembled into bushes. If one pulled these apart into individual roses, they'd be about $0.18 a piece. Let's shoot for about a dime a piece for small silk roses with short stems to pin onto a train. For 9,999 of them, that'll be $1000.
The crystals are even harder to guesstimate. Rhinestones, glass, Austrian, Swarovski, cubic zirconia? Going to cop out here and guess Austrian crystal beads at about $0.10 a piece, multiplied by 608, and we're looking at about $61.
Anyway, a 1.3 mile long bridal train, using no frills tulle, tiny silk roses, and crystal beads is going to cost about $3000 by itself. Upgrade from tulle to chiffon and you'll easily double the fabric cost. And all of this is just the base materials, no design, no labor, nor does it factor in the dress itself. But to be fair, typing "wedding gown" into Google's product search, the most expensive match, comes in at just a little over $2000. So there's some wiggle room in bedecking even that train.
@Shappie: Depends on the bride; mine was an off-the-rack cream coloured non-wedding-themed dress and it cost less than most brides probably spend on wedding magazines!
@Ihaveasmartpuppy: I intentionally bought a dress that could be easily worn again. One dye job later, and I have the perfect dress for any formal occasion!
Now I just need one to attend. . . .
Dear China: Japan called. They say they've seen this movie, and it doesn't end well.
Gross consumerism with a $5800 wedding dress? Eh, not even close. Bridal consultants cringe at a $6k budget on shows like "Say Yes to the Dress" where brides often walk off with dresses that cost more than a brand new car.
You don't need to elope to save money. Our entire wedding cost $350 and I invited all the family and some friends.
~$200 for the service at city hall, and ~$100 for sandwiches at home afterwards.
Nobody was disappointed and nobody complained at all. My wife didn't mind because, quite frankly, that was our last $350 at the time.
My wedding was a socks and angry parents affair with no ring, no flowers, no cake, no suits, and a very annoyed Justice of the Peace who took himself way too seriously, two witnesses and a whole lot of giggling. Too bad you couldn't just go down to city hall for a quick and dirty one here!
Weddings are over rated and I am glad I don't have to look back on tens of thousands of dollars blown on a tacky event that could have easily been a down payment on a house.
Although pricier than anything I would have been willing to spend, in the grand scheme of wedding insanity, the cost of this dress wasn't that outrageous. Only if they get divorced in the next two years are they truly giving American couples a run for their money.
Where did they find enough lead to make that dress?
This is going to be _hilarious_ when they divorce in a few months.
@morlo: Extravagance is another way of saying conspicuous consumption...which is awfully close to consumerism...
Just sayin'...
@Shappie: $5000 would be a very high-end gown in the US; some women do buy them but not the majority. Most brides are spending between $100 and $2500 on their dresses these days.
(Why yes, I am getting married in 8 weeks and have been completely mired in all of this stuff for months now.)
9,999 roses? did they forget one?
@elcrapitana: Weddings are over-rated to you so great you didn't have one a big one. But some of us loved our big weddings and could afford it.
@Skankingmike: You don't need to make an excuse. I'm so tired of people complaining about big weddings. Don't like them and can't afford it? Then don't have one. Nothing wrong with having a lovely wedding - big or small - that fits the budget you have - big or small.
@Shappie: So how much you think this would cost if it were made by "professionals" instead of do it yourself?
No, probably not. The number 9 in mandarin is considered lucky, because it is pronounced the same as the words for "wine" and "time"- that is, '9' is associated with celebration, long life, and so on.
I wonder why that china man asked if I knew where I could get 122 white tents and some thread.
@Charlotte Rae's Web: Likewise, I'm tired of people complaining that big weddings are a waste. Don't like it, don't go! No one wants you there anyway, you old crank. :)
@Charlotte Rae's Web: I agree. I loved my wedding, and didn't want a down payment on a house, cause my wedding didn't cost so much it could have been a downpayment - also, we didn't want to own a house.
@Ihaveasmartpuppy: My wife and I were dreading the wedding (neither on of us relishes being the ctr of attention) but we realized that it wasn't really for us, it was for the family. We did it for them, and they were really pleased.
10 years later, we still love being married! It was just the big hoopla of the wedding that we didn't enjoy.
@elcrapitana: I think this dress was an incredible show of affection. I mean really. He made the dress for the first part and then carefully cut the length after the wedding to represent her birthdate? True, $5k for a wedding dress is a bit much. However, if he had hired a seamstress to make it in America, $10,000 later you still wouldn't had have a complete dress. I'd consider that frugal, despite the extravagance of the dress.
@oneliketadow: THAT is the funniest comment I've read on Consumerist, so far. Thank you for that! :)
@pecan 3.14159265: Yup, that's exactly why I didn't attend a recent wedding to which I was invited. The one with the 15-part invitation, "save the date" magnets, held in a mansion 60 miles away, that came with a 20-page "our wedding guide" book with instructions as to which gift cards were acceptable and which clothes were not (apparently the couple knows enough idiots that "no t-shirts" had to be explicitly stated), and was going to last for SIX HOURS. I didn't attend their $12 per person (paid by the attendees) rehearsal dinner, either.
@elcrapitana: Our wedding was an awesome, big party for all our friends and family, and it was the last family event attended by an elderly aunt before she died. So sorry you think any celebration above the basic is automatically 'over rated' and 'tacky'; bet parties at your place are a real laugh.
@Triterion: It reminds me of the game Katamari Damacy (there's a mission where you have to collect a million roses).
That is a lot of fabric for one woman to haul! I'm hoping the material went to making curtains for their house afterward or something like that; even if it did, I rather agree with his mother.