British Wedding Buyers

Have just come home from a weekend wedding and thought to myself, I just spent all that money on clothes I'll probably never wear again, but it was all worth it.
The wedding dress is quite a strange concept as well; it's something you can spend hundreds, even thousands on but will only wear once. Even if you re-marry, you'll probably buy another dress because you don't want the wedding to be the same as before. So why spend so much? Are weddings really the only time you can lavish out on spending and not worry about it? The actual cost of a wedding is huge, even a small one. The best way to keep the price down is to elope!
Take my outfits for example. I had to wear something for the night before dinner and the wedding day. Bearing in mind it would be a cold winter wedding, it was hard to choose the outfits. For the first night I'd planned to wear a black dress I'd worn for my 21st as no one from the wedding had seen me in it before. so why is it that when I went shopping for a cardigan to wear with the dress, I'd bought another dress from H&M to wear instead? I only wanted to spend about £15 on the cardigan, and ended up buying a £30, with £3 earrings and an £8 cardigan, even though I'd already had my outfit sorted.
So why did I buy it? Because I looked good in it and it was Vivienne Westwood-like. But who would have known I'd looked better in this dress than my previous LBD? It didn't even fit properly, my bum was too big so it kept riding up and there was no way I'd be able to eat anything in order to fit into it. So why buy it? I'm usually so level headed with buying! Perhaps it was to seek compliments, and I'd felt I'd get more from this dress than the former. Funnily enough the only comment I'd had was from my boyfriend with a simple, you look nice.
And what about the day dress? I'd bought it about 4 months after they got engaged for goodness sake. It was the one thing to look forward to and it wasn't even my wedding. Seeing as it was a winter wedding, I wanted to be warm (which I wasn't in the end) but there were two colours to steer clear from: Black, because it's not a funeral and White, because it's the bride's colour choice not the guest's. You can imagine how disappointed I was to find people wearing these two colours. I asked one woman why she wore white, she said it's an old dress she liked, (I don't think she was very close to the happy couple) and the women wearing black said they were cold and it's smart.
It was interesting asking people what they were wearing and why. Those close to the bride and groom bought outfits especially, planned for months in advance, whereas those not so close were either borrowing clothes or wearing something old. Does that mean that shopping for clothes is meant for one reason alone; to have people you know compliment you? Possibly.