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“Hello?”“I'm, uh, planning a wedding for next spring.”“A quick quote on a venue for a family gathering”
“您好？”“那个……我打算明年春天举行婚礼。”“请问要是租个家庭聚会用的场子，大概需要多少费用啊”
“between 120 and 130 guests." “For 125 people”
“120到130个人的样子。”“125个人。”
“we're aiming for April 16th”“the 16th”
“我们计划的是4月16号。”“16号。”
“That's going to be a $15,000 food and beverage minimum” “The food and beverage minimum is gonna be $17,000." "Ok"
“酒水加餐费最少1.5万。”“酒水加餐费保守估计1.7万。”“好的。”
This 2000 dollar difference is what's known as the “wedding mark-up”,
这两千美元的差价就是所谓的“婚礼涨价”。
where some venders charge a higher price for weddings than for other similar parties.
意思就是相比其他聚会，商家们会收婚礼更多钱。
So why are weddings so expensive?
婚礼怎么就这么贵呢？
The wedding website “The Knot” surveyed thousands of its members and found that the average cost of their weddings was thirty-one thousand dollars last year.
婚恋网站The Knot针对其网站上万名会员做了一个调查，发现他们去年的婚礼的花费在3.1万美元。
That's not including honeymoon.
这还不包括度蜜月的费用。
Wedding dresses average at thirteen hundred dollars and catering comes in its $68 dollars per person.
礼服平均价格也在1300美元左右，餐费人均68美元。
And those numbers are a lot higher if you live in places like New York, Chicago, DC or San Francisco.
如果你是在纽约，芝加哥，华盛顿或者旧金山，这些费用还会贵得多。
The wedding industry is kinda weird and it's an industry that I have quite a bit of experience.
婚庆是个奇怪的行业，我正好有这方面的经验。
My wife Isabel and I run a wedding videography business in Washington DC and here's my take on why weddings are so expensive.
我和我妻子Isabel在华盛顿开了一个婚礼拍摄工作室，下面是我对婚礼为什么这么贵这一问题的感受。
There's this economic concept called asymmetric information.
这里面涉及一个叫做“信息不对称”的经济学概念。
With most things you buy, you have a pretty good gauge in what you're getting for what you pay for.
大家平时买东西基本都对自己要买的东西有一个比较清楚的判断。
you pretty sure that an 8 dollar avocado is way too much because you've bought avocados before.
你之前买牛油果过的话就知道八美元一个的牛油果就太贵了。
Familiarity with a market produces balanced information between buyers and sellers and so they can settle on a fair price, this is like economics 1-1.
对市场的了解能够让买家和买家信息对称，这样双方才能定下公平的价格，有点儿经济学里一对一的味道哈。
but most people shopping for wedding stuff have very little, if any, experience with what they're buying.
但买婚礼用品的人对他们买的东西并没有什么概念，即便是有也是微乎其微。
Cake, dress, napkins, catering, venues, flowers, this is something you just don't buy very often.
蛋糕，婚纱，餐巾，菜品，场地，鲜花，这些东西都不是大家经常会买的东西。
So you have a very good gauge on what should be paying.
所以大家对这些东西的价格没有一个清楚的概念。
This is made a lot harder by the fact that us wedding vendors have a hard time posting prices on our website.
婚庆公司也很难在他们网站上公开价格，这样一来大家就更难弄清婚礼的价格了。
You usually have to reach out and inquire to get any sort of pricing information.
大家通常都要自己四处打听，而打听到的结果也是千差万别。
Imagine if you had asked for pricing for every item in the grocery store. Shopping would be a lot harder.
假设大家去超市买东西，每个东西的价格都要问的话买东西就会变成很困难的一件事。
When I first was starting my business I read a ton of blogs about marketing to prospective clients.
一开始筹备工作室的时候，我刷了无数关于如何招揽潜在客户的博客。
And overwhelming message that I kept reading is “steer away from talking about price”
那时我反复读到的一条建议就是“避开谈论价格。”
“We've put together a free report that shows you how to answer the 'price question' with those email that leads in a way that shifts them away from price quickly, so you can get them on the phone or to a meeting where you can book them!”
我们做了一个免费的调查，帮助大家回答“价格问题”，邮件可以帮助大家快速地转移客户对价格的注意力，这样大家就能给客户打电话或者当面跟他们谈，从而拿下订单。
And then there's Pinterest.
下面是来自Pinterest网站的建议。
“Pinterest can be really useful, I think, using it as a starting point”
“我们的网站真的非常有用，能够在准备婚礼的时候帮大家搞定一个良好的开端。”
It's an amazing tool for wedding inspiration or if you have an experienced wedding planner by your side, but usually doesn't help with the price question.
这个网站确实提供非常好的婚礼策划方面的灵感，如果你认识有经验的婚礼策划也可以，但这些还是无法帮我们回答价格问题。
“…and you see all these like amazing dresses and you can click on it to like get more information.
网站上有非常漂亮的婚纱，点击图片还能获取更多详情。
you're going to get a lot more pictures , but you're not gonna find any pricing information.
打开之后会看到更多图片，但就是找不到价格方面的信息。
And of course there's always the option to “repin” it if you'd liked to.
当然了，一般情况下大家也都可以“定制”婚礼，如果大家有这个意愿的话。
But if you are like any normal person with on a budget like you're setting yourself up to be let down.
但如果你只是一个普通人，手头又很紧，那你就做好失望的准备吧。
Another thing that makes wedding so expensive is the once in a lifetime mentality.
造成婚礼如此昂贵的另外一个因素是人们“一生就一次婚礼”的这种心态。
The classic line for brides shopping for a wedding dress is:
新娘们在选婚纱的时候，最经典的台词就是：
“It's the dress of your life, and if there's ever one picture your ancestors have of you, it's the one in your wedding dress."
“这是你一辈子的婚纱，如果你的长辈要留一张你的照片的话，那就是你的婚纱照。”
That's wedding dress designer Anne Barge talking on Planet Money.
这位是婚纱设计师Anne Barge在接受Planet Money采访时发表的看法。
I'm as guilty as any one of this: Here's one of our very first ads.
在这个问题上我跟大家也是半斤八两：这是我们最早的广告之一。
it's all about that once in a lifetime feel.
这个广告从头到尾也，都在强调“一生一次”的感觉。
It's just really hard not to splurge when you put so much weight into one day.
当你过于重视某一天的时候你很难不对自己大方一回。
So, it's easy to look at this and think there's no doubt that wedding vendors are ripping off their clients.
所以，认识到这一点，就不难发现婚庆公司其实是在敲客户的竹杠。
But there's another side to the story that I think is important to mention.
但是，还有另外一个值得一提的问题。
“Corporate flowers, for example, all there's probably going to be direction,
"就拿捧花来说，我们的设计可能会有一定的方向性，
but maybe there's a little bit more flexibility where as a bride has dreamt up a certain flowers
但也有一定的灵活性，比如新娘子想用自己喜欢的花，
and she has been pining it, and she wants to talk to the florist multiple times about the bouquet and the ribbon treatment
人家已经计划很久了，她要跟我们的鲜花布置工作人员反复沟通捧花的选用以及缎带的缠绕方式。
and the fact that her grandmother's broach gonna be on that Bouquet.
还要把她外婆的胸针也放在捧花里。
It's a lot of time and energy spent on those flowers and that's gonna be reflected in the cost."
所以就连一束捧花都要耗费很多的时间和精力，这些劳动当然要体现在价格上了。”
The upshot of this is that the emotional weight of weddings usually means more work for vendors, and thus higher prices.
重要的是人们在婚礼上的情感投入通常就意味着商家筹备婚礼要比其他聚会投入更多的精力，所以婚礼会更贵。
And the most demanding clients are the ones that set the prices for everyone.
最苛刻的客户就是那些什么东西的价格都要弄清楚的人。
So the best thing you can do to avoid being swindled is to demand the price range before hearing a sales pitch.
所以，要想避免自己被骗，最好的办法就是在听销售跟你推销之前主动提出你能接受的价格区间，
we vendors might hate it but it's the fair thing to do.
毕竟这样才公平，虽然我们商家可能会不乐意。
