Behold, the latest must-have wedding accessory: dead butterflies | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

There are many things to find distasteful about the wedding-industrial complex, but the fact that it is now causing the deaths of butterflies surely takes the (naked) cake. According to Butterfly Conservation, the trend for releasing butterflies from a box during wedding ceremonies, known as “butterfly confetti” (me neither), could be spreading disease as well as diverting vital conservation resources away from protecting species under threat.

This is how it works: you pay £350 for each of your 50 guests to hold a box with a butterfly in it while a Native American poem is read out (“If anyone desires a wish to come true they must first / Capture a butterfly and whisper that wish to it” – sounds totally authentic to me) and, presumably, that perfect picture is captured as a cloud of beautiful insects flutter blindly towards the air-conditioning unit as you embark upon your married life in a whirlwind of everlasting love, fidelity and dismembered butterfly parts. Such a lovely service.

As a newlywed freshly liberated from planning my own nuptials, I have encountered my fair share of wedding bullshit. This is an industry that is determined to eke every last penny from your expensively manicured hands. Never mind the fact that you have never collapsed with offence at the sight of a naked chair before, you simply must have seat covers – though of course they will set you back £12 a pop. And what do you mean you’re not having an owl as a ring bearer? Never mind, you can always invest in a hand-painted leather jacket with “Wifey” written on the back for when it gets a bit chilly in the £10,000 tipi you’ve hired.

The average UK wedding now apparently costs an utterly preposterous £27,161. As of 2015, a quarter of couples fall into debt in order to fund their wedding. One couple made headlines this week for asking guests to pay up to £150 to attend theirs, which they described as being like an “all-inclusive holiday”. (So we can presume it involved much sunburnt brawling over unfairly colonised sun-loungers while holding a flask of pina colada in one hand and a partially defrosted mini pizza in the other, as a monkey in a sombrero rides a donkey on stage in the background – or is that just me?)

While I am very much in the “you do you” school when it comes to what we spend our money on, I was less impressed by the world of sexists, sharks and upsellers I encountered while trying to plan my own wedding. One bridal boutique tried to convince me to order a £2,000 dress despite the fact that its tiny sample didn’t fit, so it was impossible to know what it would look like. This is having already been charged £25 to try the dresses on.

I know what the inevitable comments will be. “Oh, me and the missus got married for a fiver after the rag-and-bone man gave us a lift down the town hall. We had our honeymoon in Pwllheli Pontins and have been together 60 years.” And it’s a fair point. There’s no doubt that £27,161 is crazy money.

But it is extremely difficult to organise a cheap wedding these days. While I was searching for a reasonably priced place in which friends and family could have a knees-up, one north London pub quoted me a minimum spend of £13-27,ooo, depending on the season. I know a couple trying to plan an affordable village hall wedding who are on the verge of tearing their hair out. When the sums you are being quoted could pay for several round-the-world trips or the bulk of a house deposit it’s no wonder lots of people don’t even bother.

Eventually, we found a pub so reasonable we thought it was a hoax, and had a wonderful, happy day surrounded by friends and family. We laughed a lot and danced a lot and emerged solvent and ready for our next adventure. It’s a shame, not being able to afford a meal for all your guests (hence evening-only invitations becoming more popular) or not being able to have the free bar that many still expect .But most reasonable people understand that times have changed and, with housing so expensive and many couples paying for the party themselves, weddings will reflect that.

As with many things, celebrity culture and social media can be blamed for this obsession with having the perfect wedding, as well as the urge to buy everything on offer in the process. Weddings represent a whole new shopping wonderland/circle of hell, and I have no doubt some will get a dopamine hit with every click of the “add to cart” button as they stockpile favours and decorations. It’s the reason so many weddings now blend into one another – everyone is looking at the same websites.

Many people now seem less concerned with celebrating their love for one another than they are with keeping up with what’s fashionable on Pinterest. And if that means endangering a beautiful creature, so be it. Call me superstitious, but starting your life together with an act of animal cruelty strikes me as somewhat portentous, if not an explicit sign that the human race is approaching its end days. But like I said, you do you.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a freelance writer