It’s 9:30 a.m. on a late-spring Saturday morning in a Kyrgyz village called Chykalov. Sun streams in from behind white curtains and I’m sitting on the floor eating breakfast with my friend and mentor Dinara, who learned English just a decade ago, now speaks it near perfectly, and will turn 50 this year.

“Do you think about getting married?” she asks me. “Do you want to get married?”

“I do, eventually,” I say. “But we probably won’t for awhile.”

“Weddings are expensive,” she says.

“That’s part of it!” I say. “We want to be able to pay for our wedding ourselves. In America the average wedding costs more than half the average yearly salary. Not that we would have a $30,000 wedding anyway. What do weddings cost here? They’re super expensive, right?”

Dinara sighs. “Yeah, usually 200,000 som,” she says, which is the equivalent of $4,500.

“What’s the average salary here again?”

“Per year? 60,000 som,” she says, or $1,300.

“WHAT?” I yell.

Dinara’s son, asleep in the corner on a pile of cushions, twitches. “Sorry,” I whisper.

“And then there’s the price for the kelin,” she says, meaning the new wife, the daughter-in-law. “The boy’s family also has to pay about 200,000 som.”

“You said no to your own dowry, though, didn’t you?”

“Oh yeah,” says Dinara. “Absolutely. I said I didn’t want all that fighting between the parents. I guess I’m cheap!”

“I can’t believe these numbers,” I say. “This is the equivalent of an average American wedding costing $170,000. How do people pay for this? Do they take out lines of credit?”

“Yeah,” says Dinara.

“I guess they do that in America too.”

“You can make your money back in presents,” Dinara says. “But it’s so stupid. At best everyone ends up with no money. In Uzbekistan and Tajikistan there are new laws where they send a police officer to every wedding to make sure that no one spends more than, say, 15,000 som. It’s better for the economy. But no one would listen to that rule here. Imagine a police officer, some billy goat, at a big wedding counting bottles of vodka.” She laughs.

“Who pays for weddings in Kyrgyzstan? The bride’s family or groom’s family?”

“The boy, of course,” says Dinara.

“In America it’s the opposite.”

“Nooooo,” she says. “Why?”

“I don’t know why. The bride’s family doesn’t always pay, but that’s definitely the custom.”

“Here the kelin’s family has to make lots of presents,” Dinara says. “They have to buy a TV, and lots of furniture, do lots of things for the new couple.”

“So they get all that money but then have to pay it back in gifts,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, shaking her head. “And the mother-in-law is always saying, We need a bigger TV, what about this new refrigerator.”

“Yikes,” I say.

“I hate weddings,” Dinara says. “Everyone fights and there’s too much responsibility to make sure people are having a good time. And everyone gets so drunk! There’s this one woman, she’s very fat, and at every party she takes too much vodka and falls on the floor and lies there like a seal.”

As Dinara demonstrates I try not to laugh because I don’t want to wake her son up.

“Let’s get rid of weddings,” Dinara says. “Each one is a bloodless war.”

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr. Photo by Evgeni Zotov.

Mike: Logan, it finally feels like spring! This is how spring affects me: iced coffees/teas (I already bought three in the last two days), rooftop bars or sitting outside for a drink or bite. Free time in the park, or walking along the Hudson, which I’ve missed doing because it’s been too cold to really enjoy it.

Logan: I’ve started going on walks again, which I hadn’t really realized I’d stopped doing. But yeah. Walking places instead of taking the subway is really nice. Noticing what flowers are blooming is nice. Spending a couple of hours doing something nice without spending money is nice.

Mike: Also, what I’m really glad about this year compared to last year is that I can enjoy it a little bit more, because last year most of my money was being spent flying around the country attending weddings. Not a single wedding yet this year! Everybody is basically married!

Logan: Oh I didn’t tell you about my destination wedding in Fiji? You’re invited. You’re also paying for it.

Mike: How much is a destination wedding in Fiji?

Logan: Google says tickets are $1,300. But you know me, I’m low maintenance. Everyone is going to camp on the beach. The flowers will be foraged. We’ll all be barefoot so that’s like, hundreds of dollars in shoe savings. And there’s no groom, so you know, half the people, half the little figurines to go on top of the cake (full cake). Super cheappppp.

Okay. Mike. For real though. You said you saw Jon Hamm but then you DIDN’T GIVE ANY DETAILS. Remedy that.

Mike: I attended a Broadway play last night (the one starring Alec Baldwin), and Jon Hamm came walking in all Hollywood handsome dressed in a suit with five other people. I like that Jon Hamm wears a suit to watch a Broadway play. We should all dress up to go to the theatre! Anyway, one lady freaked out and she ran up to the bar area and asked, “WHAT DID JON HAMM ORDER?” The bartender said, “I’m not sure. A glass of cabernet?” And she said, “I WANT TO HAVE THAT TOO.” Which was funny to me—it was like a movie scene or something.

Logan: “I’LL HAVE WHAT SHE’S HAVING.” Wonderful. Wonderful. Jon Hamm. A+ celebrity sighting, well done. Were you dressed up to go to the theatre?

Mike: I usually dress up, but I only had a nice shirt on with jeans because my friends and I had been running around the city for six hours before that. But I do want to see Lucky Guy the Nora Ephron play starring Tom Hanks. And if I can find an affordable ticket, I will wear a suit like Jon Hamm to the theatre.

Logan: A few weeks ago a friend was in town and we spent the afternoon in Central Park just lazing around (immediately I was like, I want to spend every afternoon in Central Park, lazing) (number of afternoons since then I’ve spent in Central Park, lazing: none). ANYWAY we walked over to Lincoln Center after and sat in the plaza there for awhile, and we got there just as people were getting there for that evening’s show, and it was really fun to see everyone meet up outside the theater and exchange tickets and go in, and it was also really nice to see that some people were in shorts and sandals and some were in longer evening gowns (okay, one was in an evening gown), but there were all types. And it was nice! Democratic! Our classless society! I mean okay so it was actually mostly like, older people who obviously had a lot of money and some young people who obviously had a lot of money and then some students and then also many foreign couples with knapsacks, who’d been like, being tourists all day. But still. I like that all are welcome to the theaaattttterrr.

Mike:A lot of the shows have student rush tickets so young people can go to the theater and pay around $30 and sit in the front row or next to Jon Hamm. We got regular discounted tickets the day of. I don’t really go to the theater because it costs a lot, but I may try just going to the box office every now and then to see if they have discounted rush tickets. Spring is the best time for dramatic plays! someone said in the theater.

Logan: As soon as I typed, “all are welcome,” I was like, wait, that’s not true, tickets are one million dollars.” I saw a play a few weeks ago because a friend had free tickets. It was THE NANCE with NATHAN LANE and it was really wonderful and the sign in the lobby was like, buy a ticket if you want, that’ll be $200. And right before I saw that sign, I was like, why don’t I go to the theater it’s so nice to go to the theater. And then I saw that sign. And you know, it answered my question to myself. But if I was a person who had money, I would go see THE NANCE again. Really! So like, if you have money, you should go see it. THAT IS MY PLUG. Should people spend money to go see the play you saw?

Mike: No. I didn’t really like it (ORPHANS). But maybe yes if they like Alec Baldwin, who was still fun and great? I would have been disappointed if not for Alec Baldwin and Jon Hamm. Hamm saved the day.

We got married in a judge’s private office on a Friday afternoon. Besides my husband, the only other people present were my sister and three close friends. I told my parents a week before we got married what our plans were, and they asked, “Why so quickly? What’s the hurry?” It wasn’t quick or sudden for us; we’d been talking about getting married for months. The major impediment we kept circling around was that we didn’t want a wedding.

There were practical reasons: Neither of us had any desire to plan a wedding, and we’d seen friends’ “simple,” “easy,” “low-key” weddings take up nearly as much energy and planning time as the overblown productions now considered the norm. I was also adamantly opposed to ever being engaged. I had no problems with being married (beyond my general ambivalence about the institution itself), but I didn’t want to spend any time in engagement limbo. I aspired to never have the word “fiancé” pass my lips, and to have exactly zero conversations with friends or strangers about rings, dresses, venues, guest lists, showers, or registries.

There were personal reasons: Our marriage formalized a commitment we’d been living for several years. That formality is far from inconsequential—there are concrete legal and social changes that happen when you go from “cohabiting” to “married.” But rather than marking that formality with a huge break from the everyday, I wanted to fold it into our daily lives, to integrate the act of getting married with the business of being married. For many people, a wedding serves to signify the start of something new, something different. For some people, a wedding declares, “We are adults now.” For others, it announces, “We’re getting serious about this relationship.” And for a lot of folks like us, it says, “Let’s stop what we’re doing for a moment and recognize the relationship we’ve been building.”

Those are all very good statements, but they weren’t what I wanted to say. I wanted the act of getting married to say, “This life we are living is good, and we want to keep living it the way we have been for a very long time. Getting married is special, but so is the daily life we’ve built together.” For me, that meant making getting married fit seamlessly into being married, not because getting married wasn’t important, but because the act, the formality, the commitment had value only in the context of the daily practice of marriage. So we woke up on Friday (just like any other day), went to work, ate lunch, and did all those other mundane things you do on a typical day (note: on Fridays I work from home, so on this particular Friday I slept in a bit and ducked out at lunchtime to get a manicure). And then we met up downtown, and, in the presence of four of the people most involved in our daily lives, repeated the shortest, most streamlined set of vows the judge had. We snapped a few pictures for posterity and then took everybody out for a long and indulgent meal.

When you don’t want a wedding, you risk appearing as if you think marriage is trivial. Weddings, it seems, have become inseparably fused to marriage. And that’s not entirely a bad thing: one of the functions of the over-the-top wedding, in all its ridiculousness, is to force a recognition of the importance of marriage. All these people come to town to see you say a few words and exchange some rings, at huge expense to themselves and to you. There are a lot of things that shout, “Hey, you! The one getting married! Take this seriously!”

Obviously, that doesn’t always work. But I guess if a wedding helps a couple take their marriage more seriously, then it’s a good thing. But—and try not to misunderstand me when I say this—the ceremony itself wasn’t all that important to me. More than that, I didn’t like the idea of ladening it with significance, of insisting that this one moment be perfect, or even immensely memorable. I don’t want to forget it, but I don’t want to reify it, either. If the day fades or changes or hazes in my memory, that’s okay. It was one day. A day when something important happened, sure, but still just one day out of the many that make up our lives together.

Getting married was as simple and unadorned as we could make it. It fit easily into our lives. The celebrating will be more disruptive. We’ll travel to where our families live and have parties and be the center of attention. And that’s fine. Celebrations are meant to disrupt, to distract, to break into our daily lives. Marriages aren’t. And I’m glad mine started the way I want it to continue: with ease, grace and careful attention to the practice of daily life.

But what about the numbers? I promised an accounting, not a long-winded defense of my views on the wedding-industrial complex. If all you want is a marriage certificate and state recognition, that’ll run you about $125 in Texas. Of course, you’ll probably want a few more frills than that. Our wedding-less (but not celebration-less) marriage costs were:

$75: Marriage license. Procured at least three days before the ceremony. In Texas, all you need is a driver’s license and social security number and you’re good to get hitched.

$50: Somebody to marry us. We chose a semi-retired judge with a lovely office. Since we got married during business hours, his fee was very modest.

$594: Rings. We tried to get them from a local jeweler, but nobody stocks plain yellow gold wedding bands. Since any jeweler in town was going to have to order them from a supplier anyway, we went ahead and bought them online, at significant savings.

$440: Dinner for seven on Friday night. We’d been planning on financing the meal, but my parents insisted on footing the bill in absentia.

$160: Drinks for seven before and after dinner, also paid for by my folks.

We’re also having a party at our house for local friends and have budgeted about $350 for beer, wine and pie for 30 or so people.

So there you have it: $1,670, give or take, and worth every penny.

Sydney Bufkin lives in Austin and tries not to let her dissertation take over her life. Sometimes she even finds time to write about other things.

This is a little humbling, because I never thought I would be the type of person to write this: My most memorable purchase in 2012 was definitely my wedding. It was dirt cheap by wedding industrial complex standards (around $13,000 all in), but still a large sum of money as far as my now-husband and I were concerned.

I kept track of actual and anticipated expenses throughout the planning process, but we actually never set a firm budget. A lot of people would say this is a bad idea, and they’re probably right, but it worked for us.

Basically, we just approached wedding planning with as much sanity and commitment to our honest preferences as we could. Luckily, we also have sane families, both of whom helped us a lot throughout the process. We paid for the wedding ourselves, which I’m really proud of. This also meant we had a strong incentive to only spend money on things that mattered the most to us. The wedding and the week leading up to it were even more fun than I had imagined. The sun shone, there was a big tent, everyone danced. The dearest people in the world to us were all there.

It’s easy to get worried, amidst the muck and mess of wedding planning, that the event you’re creating may not end up being, say, thirteen thousand total dollars worth of fun. I know I had that concern. What does that amount of fun even look or feel like? Might you regret spending all that money? I don’t feel any closer to quantifying it for anyone else, but for me it was completely worth it.

Courthouse affairs aside, I think it’s impossible to have a wedding without accidentally spending some money on a few things you ultimately don’t need or use and, being a worrier, that stressed me out a little at the time. Despite our best planning, some things did go wrong. Ultimately, none of it mattered.

Leda Marritz is the Creative Director at DeepRoot Green Infrastructure. She lives in San Francisco.

One thing you can be certain of is that your life will never appear more uninteresting than when it is being enumerated to you over the phone by the woman from fraud protection at your bank. I did not know who had stolen my debit card and made out with $600 worth of sneakers in the Bronx, but I felt sure that he or she was sucking a lot more joy from the world than I was, with my $7 of off-brand fiber cereal, because a deal like that doesn’t happen every day.

It feels counterintuitive to say that I’ve made financial progress this year by becoming more cavalier about money, but at some point, if you’re living in New York and you’re in your twenties and you have no one to support but yourself and you’re lucky enough to have made it this far without much debt and you work at a job where even if you tried (and I mean really, really tried), you could never save money, not even a little bit, really, none, then at some point you realize that you’ve made all of these choices, and here you are, and the only thing to do is live it. Really live it.

Spend $14 on that absurd elderflower cocktail at the faux-speakeasy in Williamsburg because it will, genuinely, make you feel a little bit better about your life, and because fuck it, you live in New York, and you’re in your twenties, etc. etc.

This year was my attempt to work toward soothing the gut-clutching financial guilt. I got my first credit card with an adorable $2,000 limit and grew obscurely fond of the snug pocket of debt I collected. That credit card allowed me to travel across the country to celebrate with my far more grownup friends, the ones who launched alarmingly into married life this year.

And what a waste it would be, at a barn in Montana or under a wide summer sky in Maine, to stand beside friends who have crawled with you all of this way and to be mentally calculating just how much it cost—this dress, these shoes, that airfare, the slightly-mildewed cabin, the top of the line twin sleeping pads from their registry—rather than staring in heart-gaping wonder at these people you love declaring their love for each other. It is not, like the commercials say it is, priceless—my love for them is roughly $745, and it is worth every penny. For the first time in my life, I’m learning what things really cost.

Meghan Nesmith tweets her feelings.