Hey Ladies,
I just wanted to know your thoughts on this. Whenever I hear about the cost of a wedding, I cringe. I know it's meant to be the best days our lives, but surely if it was with the one you love most, it'll still be the best day of your life no matter how much the wedding cost. So, here is my question to you. What would you say, if your fiancé asked you if the two of you could spend less money on the wedding than what you, the bride would have liked (I.e smaller wedding, including less expensive/fancy ring), and instead spent the money in taking you, the love of his life, on an around the world trip. So rather than have a great big fancy lump of metal on your finger, or spending $900 on a cake, you instead had memories of wonderful places you'd been to, people you'd met, and cultures you'd experienced.
Am I just a tight arse, or is it something ladies you'd consider?

I would assume one would, perhaps, want to make the day very memorable, no?

No matter how you do it there will be memories.

OP, I see a tendency here. You want to exchange a ring and a big wedding cake for a nice trip around the world.

I fear, but can't predict or give my opinion punch, that after you talk her out of the ring and the cake, you talk her out of the round the world trip, too. You will say something, like it's stupid to waste so much money on a trip all at once, let's go aroudn the world in seven sections, one section in every year, when the cows have birthed and their milking is stablized.

Then when she forewent the ring, the cake, the trip, she gets pregnant and all future plans are shot. "You see, honey, spending money on a round-the-world trip for three (or four, or five, depending on the pregnancies), is more expensive than on two... let's put the money to better use, like in an education or wedding fund for our children.

So she foregoes the ring, the cake, the trip, the whatever, and eventually she'll end up with seven boys to marry, who all have oodles of money in the wedding fund, and they will be too cheap to spend it too.

No. I would say no, if I were the bride. C'mon, big guy, you only buy a diamond ring once; it is totally symbolic, there is nothing useful about it, not even in the sense of investment. The more money you spend on it, the more you symbolically state that you are putting your mouth where your money is, when you commit to the bride.

So don't bargain on the ring, coz it's a slap on the face to the girl. The bride. In fact, it's the dirties, doggone craziest thing to jew her down on an aleady agreed-upon weddign jewellery.

The cake... another symbolic, but it has some historical elements. The big wedding is for people to witness how much you commit to each other. That was the original idea behind wedding, before marriage certificates or church officiation started. The entire wedding party was large, full of relatives and people of status whom the couple valued and respected, to show them, "hey, we're getting married, we won't screw around any more, come and see it happen, so we will have the fear of losing face if we divorce. The more people to witness, the bigger the fear of losing face."

That is the culturally logical reason behind big weddings and for the bride's behind.

These days legal sanctions protect a holy matrimony, or secularly committed couple, so no big deal.

But don't backtrack on the promise of a ring. Remember!! "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorn'd."