Doing it like Warren Buffett

There are so many reasons to love Warren Buffet. Seriously. The dude is pro-choice, and puts his money where his mouth is by funding agencies that bravely champion the cause. (It would be great if some of that money could also go to abortion funds, which are sadly desperately needed by low income women who can’t afford an abortion and who have no health insurance, but I’m being nitpicky here.) Mr. Buffett is against the ridiculous amount of money that CEOs have been raking in, especially as other workers see their piece of the pie shrink to ittty-bitty crumbs. He also is dedicated to giving vast sums of wealth to legitimate charities over time, instead of being all Hilton and keeping it in the family so that his offspring wind up being useless wastes of precious oxygen. Finally, as I saw in Friday morning’s NewYork Times, he is a man of my own cheap heart. The headline: “How Does Warren Buffett Get Married? Frugally, It Turns Out”

Ah, yes, frugal weddings. This brings me back to my own little marriage extravaganza, which was anything but frugal. Sure, it was not Melissa Rivers’s multi-million dollar blow out, and unlike Melissa, I’m actually still hitched, but it was still a bit over the top for my tastes. Let’s put it this way: in the three years before we got married, Husband and I lived in a 200 square foot apartment with no stove or oven. Yes, you read that right. The apartment was two hundred square feet. It had no stove and no oven. We lived there for three years because it was relatively inexpensive. (I wish I was kidding when I say that “relatively inexpensive” means $1,000 a month for a 200 sq. ft. apartment in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, but it is no joke and I am not being sarcastic.) To cook, which we did infrequently anyway, we had a two burner hot plate, a toaster oven, and a microwave.

See, Husband and I are frugal. We lived this way despite the fact that Husband was an investment banker and we probably could have lived in a (slightly) larger place that had appliances. We saved money, which was good. Then we planned the wedding, and Husband and his New York expectations broke the bank. Oy vey.

Husband was a Bridezilla of sorts. He kept talking about how the wedding was his special day and that it needed to be perfect so that he would remember it forever. I assumed (hoped?) that we would remember it forever regardless of whether, for example, our centerpieces cost $150 each. The cost of the wedding was making me very upset. Many times I threatened to call it off because I could not stand to see such a large amount of money poured into a mere night, making me some sort of strange anti-Bridezilla Bridezilla. Granted, it was an important night, but still only one night of what I expected to be many nights together.

The long and short of it was that compromises were made, as should happen in any good marriage, and the show went on. It was no Buffett-style example of frugality as I would have like, but various things were done to bring down the cost, so it was OK. Most importantly, everyone had a great time.