Review;Wedding dress

Do you know? Shopping for a wedding dress is strange. You have to make an appointment. You're expected to bring family and friends. The salespeople say things like, "You'll remember this forever."

When I bought my dress a few months ago, I couldn't stop thinking about how emotional it all was — and how expensive.

To figure out why wedding dresses cost so much, I went to ..., a big trade show for the wedding-dress industry.

That's where I met Anne Barge, who has been designing wedding dresses for over 20 years. She has her own line, and she also designs for the Badgley Mischka label.

"It's not just a white dress," she says. It's the fabric, and it's the workmanship, and it's the lining, and it's the fit." Ho!

She points me to a dress on one of her many racks. The dress was made with 25 yards of pure silk satin in it; that material costs $100 a yard, she says. The embroidery on top comes from India; it costs thousands more, Barge says.

That adds up to real money, but it doesn't account for the total price tag: $8,000.(very expensive!)

A lot of that extra cost comes down to the word "wedding."

Thanks!