As a woman who is married, the dress is important to some women, not to others.  Mine was important because I never really felt beautiful.  I felt beautiful in my dress, and that's important. I got my dress during a trunk show, already had an idea what I wanted, and fell in love with it.  The dress will be in your wedding pics so it's important because those pics do last forever  For me, mine was like $1800, but I payed for it myself.  I took my gay best friend with me, not my mother.  It was fun, I tried on like 3 dresses in total.  When everything looks good on your body,it's not hard to find one.    I spent a lot of time on my vows though (we wrote our own) and had a fairly casual wedding (at his parents' home, local deli catered, etc).  I'd say we spent maybe like $5000 in total and that's including the dress.  But for me the dress was important, having suffered an eating disorder and low self esteem, feeling like a princess for a day and not so self critical on a day all about US was a wonderful gift, and a price I'd pay again.