"Say Yes to the Dress" But At What Price?

I watch the show Say Yes to the Dress frequently with my mom when I am home from school. Like many women, I enjoy the show because I like to dream about my future wedding dress. But does the show portray the wrong image about wedding dress prices? On the show, the bride meets with a consultant to discuss budget and the type of dress they are looking for. Research has shown that the average price tag on a wedding gown from Kleinfeld’s is $4500; quadruple the amount that the typical New York woman spends on her dress. Whereas, the average wedding dress price at David’s Bridal is only $550 (which is still expensive for one day!).  So why is it that women feel the need to spend so much money on one dress? Moreover, why are women so willing to fall for the wedding industry’s marketing schemes that weddings need to be extravagant and expensive? I think part of it is relationship marketing: establishing a long-term, mutually satisfying buyer/seller relationship. When a bride goes to Kleinfeld’s to buy her wedding dress, the consultants do everything in their power to make that bride look as beautiful as possible. They build up the relationship to help encourage the bride to purchase the ‘dress of their dream’. When in reality, that bride could probably find a similar dress for half the price somewhere else. I think Kleinfeld’s is a successful company because they have a centralized organization and they focus on finding that dream dress for the bride. They establish performance standards and actually match up to those standards by doing whatever they can to make the bride happy. This definitely helps encourage brides to spend those extra thousand-or-so dollars to find the perfect dress. Can you think of another company that is so successful because they are good at what they do?