Wedding article from CNN causes headache behind my eye

(CNN) -- Leza Dabit spent more than $2,000 recently to attend a friend's wedding in Jamaica with her boyfriend. The weekend before, she was in Columbus, Georgia, celebrating nuptials, and the weekend after was spent feting another couple's marriage on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

And Dabit is just getting started. She's got four more weddings to go before mid-December. Dabit, a business development manager for an IT staffing company in Atlanta, receives only 10 days of vacation.

Weddings are lovely, one of the few occasions when people still get dressed up, tuck their gadgets away and observe longstanding traditions. But my, can traveling to a wedding get expensive. And the preceding engagement, bachelor and bachelorette parties and showers will slash into your savings too, should you choose to run that gantlet. The ensuing baby showers and family reunions may lump on another travel expense for our increasingly mobile society.

These obligations are eating up vacation days and discretionary (and not-so discretionary) income, but it's often nearly impossible to say no. And there are very good, fabric-of-our-society reasons for that. Still, what is a mere mortal to do in the face of seven weddings?