There was a lot of fuzz and buzz that surrounded the royal wedding this past weekend. Prince William, second in line to the British throne, finally married his longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton. For most of us, including myself, this was the first prominent royal wedding in our lives. As we saw on TV and images all over the web, the wedding was full of glitz and glamor and had me wondering how much it cost to put on such a wedding.

According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, the wedding cost approximately $50 million. With the global economy still yet to fully recover from the recession, was that kind of money really necessary for a wedding?