Pretty much everyone these days has bought into the idea that weddings have to be costly, and that a marriage that doesn’t begin on a fairly lavish scale probably won’t last. Prospective brides in particular believe that a modest and simple ceremony (i.e., a dawn wedding in Monument Valley, let’s say) would be an omen of a problematic marriage. The wedding racket gets an average of $27K per wedding. Prospective brides want romantic splendor and an exorbitant send-off, and that’s that. All to say that the October 1987 wedding between my ex (the robust Maggie Wells, the mother of Jett and Dylan) and myself, which happened in Paris, cost maybe $5K, all in. Round-trip air fare from Los Angeles plus hotels and whatnot, a ceremony at St. Julien le Pauvre, a reception at Les Deux Magots plus a honeymoon in Communist Eastern Europe (East Germany, Czechoslovakia). We did it “big” in a sense and certainly in a “special” way, but outside the reach of the wedding industry.