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According to an American Express survey of 1,518 people, guests will spend an average of $539 per wedding this year — and that's just to attend the event, not to be a member of the wedding party. The wallet-busting figure is up $200 from 2012, when guests reported shelling out an average of $329 on clothes, hotel rooms, and gifts.

The real cost is probably even higher given the estimates for some of the costs. The credit card company says that guests will budget just $57 for new clothes, $27 for a babysitter or pet sitter, and $95 for a hotel room—all of which seems astoundingly low, even for a local event. Members of the bridal party can count on spending a little bit more, thanks to slightly higher clothing costs: about $577 per wedding, according to American Express.

Attending a wedding soon? Learn a few money-saving tips after the jump.

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Jennifer Wayland, 15, who attends Parkway Central High in Chesterfield, MO, quietly existed in a lonely well of low self-esteem, shame about her body, and, as she puts it, the feeling that she "took up too much space." Then she found the courage to tell her mom, and so began the tough road back to regaining control of her health and self-confidence.

The ninth grader earned a prestigious award for the compelling essay she wrote on her struggle with body image and disordered eating. On May 1, Sharon Robinson, the daughter of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, presented Wayland with the grand prize in the Jackie Robinson Breaking Barriers essay contest, sponsored by Major League Baseball and Scholastic. The other grand prize winner was Luke Lunday, a fifth grader who has cerebral palsy and shared his determination to ride a bicycle on his own. The contest received more than 18,000 submissions.

Read on to learn more about Jennifer's heartfelt story.

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Ever feel that your relationship suffers from a unique brand of frustration, tension, distance, or any number of other troubling feelings? The reality is, there is struggle in every romance. "If you are experiencing disillusionment, well, join the human race," relationship expert Helen LaKelly Hunt tells Yahoo! Shine. LaKelly Hunt and her husband, Harville Hendrix, PhD, are cocreators of Imago Relationship Therapy and have been helping couples for more than 30 years.

More on Yahoo: Is This the World's Most Epic Marriage Proposal?

Hendrix, author of the bestselling book Getting the Love You Want, started examining the question, "why do couples fight" in the late 1970s. After studying and working with thousands of couples, he and LaKelly Hunt have found that there are 10 common bad habits couples engage in that make relationships miserable and can lead to a breakup or divorce.

Avoid a ruined relationship by steering clear of these 10 bad habits.

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When she appears in public in a particular dress, retailers scramble to keep the frock in stock (and designers work overtime to create knockoffs). But the Kate Middleton effect goes far beyond the fashion world — so much so that the royal family's foundation has moved to stop others from capitalizing on her name recognition.

According to the Telegraph, St. James's Palace confirms that it has applied to the UK's Intellectual Property Office to trademark her name, along with Prince William's and Prince Harry's.

Related: The Kate Middleton Nose Job Is Now a Thing

Originally set up by Princes William and Harry in September 2009, the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry received a record number of donations after Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement. (The foundation's name was changed to include the duchess's title after the royal wedding in April 2011).

Find out more about the royal family's latest philanthropic efforts after the jump.

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Country music superstar Carrie Underwood has discovered the secret to a happy marriage, and it's kind of retro: Look hot, have date nights, and let your her husband call the shots.

Sheryl Sandberg, avert your eyes: Underwood, a six-time Grammy Award winner, says she would totally "lean out" of her career if her husband, professional ice hockey player Mike Fisher, wanted her to.

RELATED: 12 Actors Who Say They've Quit Acting

"If Mike ever told me he needed me to quit, I'd quit," she tells People magazine this week. "When you make that promise to somebody, and you stand before God and your family and friends, you've got to do everything that you possibly can to make that work."

Read on to find out more.

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While many college students across the United States are looking at the calendar and getting ready for a booze-fueled spring break, some students are planning a different kind of vacation bash: their weddings.

Also on Shine: Is 21 Too Young To Get Married?

It's not uncommon for teens attending small religious schools to forgo the typical drinking-and-partying college experience and instead focus on finding their soul mates. At Walla Walla University in Washington state, the idea of "dating to marry" is so much the norm that students have dubbed the school "Western Wedding University."

Is this a match made in heaven? Read on to find out.

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Take a look at Pinterest and you'll find plenty of boards dedicated to amazing weddings. The perfect dress. Gorgeous engagement rings. Romantic up-dos. Awe-inspiring do-it-yourself decorations that would put Martha Stewart to shame. But among all of the wedding offerings, certain boards stand out: Ones created by women who are proudly and publicly planning for the big day even though they're still single.

LOOK: Celebrity Wedding Dresses -- What Should They Wear?

They're not pretending otherwise, either. With titles like "How single girls plan their wedding," "Planning my wedding while single," and "Single with BIG wedding plans," the boards are packed with Cinderella dresses, party theme ideas, and pictures of enormous diamond solitaires -- playing up the myth of the perfect wedding while ignoring the reality of real-life marriage.

Keep reading to find out more about this growing phenomenon.

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We scoffed earlier this year when we heard that "The Rules" — the 1995 dating guide that encouraged women to be passive and pleasing and play hard-to-get — was making a comeback. But new research shows that the rules may be right after all: playing hard-to-get actually works.

Related: Study Shows Men and Women Can't Just Be Friends

Published in the European Journal of Personality, the data from hundreds of people in four different experiments showed that college-age men and women who played hard to get ended up with a higher-quality partner.

"We all would want honesty in dating, but this is never going to happen," the study's author, Peter Jonason, who teaches psychology at the University of Western Sydney in Australia, told NBC. "We are not overtly lying, but we're always trying to marry up."

A little skeptical? Read on to find out why playing hard to get might actually work.

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I can pinpoint the year my mother lost all credibility as a dating expert. It was 1995, the year Ellen Fein and Sherri Schneider's The Rules was published; the year my sister and I came home to find two copies of the bestselling book;based on a list of seduction tenets from 1917; waiting for us on the kitchen counter.

"Nineties women have simply not been schooled in the basics the rules of finding a husband or at least being very popular with men," read the introduction.

Related: World's Unluckiest Bachelor? 6 Matchmakers, 250 Dates, and Larry Greenfield's Still Single. Here's Why...

What followed was advice like "Don't stare at men, don't talk too much, don't call him, let him take the lead" --and the inexplicable--"be easy to live with."

Read on to learn more "outrageous rules" woman should live by in order to score a husband.

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Last week, an Ohio hospital transformed into a full-service wedding hall for a pregnant patient's special day. Nurses became wedding planners, patients provided bridal accessories, and the gift shop catered the whole affair. Just hours later, the bride became a patient again when the staff delivered her baby.

Related: Kate Middleton's Maternity Style: What Will the Royal Mom-To-Be Wear?

It wasn't every bride's fantasy venue, but for Cynthia Reese it was perfect.

"Everything went so well with the wedding, that the baby wanted to come see it too," joked the exhausted new mom during a phone interview with Yahoo! Shine.

Reese, 27, was seven months pregnant last Monday when her water broke.

Read on to learn more about Cynthia's big day.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Monday recommended that doctors talk to their adolescent patients about emergency contraception and offer advance prescriptions of Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, to girls younger than 17.

Related: Should parents allow teens to have sex at home?

"Despite significant declines over the past two decades, the United States continues to have teen birth rates that are significantly higher than other industrialized nations," reads the group's new policy statement, which will be published in the December issue of the journal "Pediatrics." "Adolescents are more likely to use emergency contraception if it has been prescribed in advance of need."

Related: Parents Punish Teen by Posting Goofy Photos on Her Facebook Page. Epic or Awful?

Susan Wood, the former assistant commissioner for women's health at the Food and Drug Administration, called the AAP decision "significant."

Read on to find out more about this pressing topic.

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Looking at the photograph of Valeria Lukyanova, left, you might wonder if this Ukrainian Internet star really exists outside of the strange land of YouTube, where "living doll" beauty has become a trend. The picture, however, is from the new issue of V magazine, which flew Lukyanova, known as "the human Barbie," to New York for the shoot, proving her existence and giving us a glimpse into her bizarre brain. At Shine, we've profiled many doll-like ladies, from 19-year-old Anime queen Anastasiya Shpagina to 15-year-old London YouTube sensation Venus Palermo to English native Sarah Burge, who currently holds the world record for spending over $500,000 on cosmetic surgery. Even so, Lukyanova's story stands out.
Learn more about this "living doll" after the jump.

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When the world tuned in to watch Kate Middleton marry Prince William, people were almost as fascinated by the bride's sister, Pippa Middleton, as they were by the newly minted Duchess of Cambridge. Now Pippa is coming out from under her sister's royal shadow—or perhaps using it to launch her own career as the Martha Stewart of England—with her first book, "Celebrate: A Year of Festivities for Families and Friends."

Related: Royal wedding mysteries, solved

"It's a bit startling to achieve global recognition (if that's the right word) before the age of 30, on account of your sister, your brother-in-law and your bottom," Pippa Middleton writes in the introduction. "One day I might be able to make sense of this. In the meantime, I think it's fair to say that it has its upside and its downside."

Read on to learn more about Pippa's first book.

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Christopher Brya and Miguel Almaraz, professional market researchers and authors of the new book 'WTF Are Men Thinking?,' didn't set out to coax 250,000 men into spilling their guts about hooking up, in-laws, dating turn-offs, and other hot-button topics, they were just helping a friend.

"We were with an old friend and colleague," Brya tells Shine, "and she revealed to us that she was going through a divorce." The woman told them what she could really use was hard data on what men are thinking. She had been married for years, and she complained that she, "didn't know what the rules were any more." Brya and Almaraz quizzed some of their research panels and the project snowballed. "Miguel had the idea of asking a range of women if they had specific questions for men and wanted totally unvarnished feedback," says Brya. "Within 48 hours, we had 1,000 responses."

Related: 5 Secrets to a Happy Marriage: Revealed by Divorce

"Women get mixed messages from their girlfriends, or best guy friends," says Almaraz. "They are trying to make sense of that information." Despite the lightning speed connectivity of the digital age, communicating by text and email often leads to more questions, not fewer. "People are dating by text," says Brya. "You handle the logistics through technology, but have less real interaction."

Read on to learn the surprising answers this study produced.

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Twitter has hosted proposals and divorce announcements, so it was only a matter of time before the site serviced an actual wedding ceremony.

On Monday, a Turkish couple made it official by tweeting 'I Do,' in what's believed to be the world's first Twitter-hosted wedding. Actually they wrote 'Evet'—the Turkish word for 'Yes'—on their iPads, and added a few extra 'T's' as is customary when expressing joy through digital mediums.

The groom, Cengizhan Celik, is a social media editor for the news website Ensonhaber.com, so it almost makes sense that Twitter would serve as his best man. The bride, Candan Canik, doesn't seem to share the same enthusiasm for the service, considering her vow was her first tweet. But love is all about making sacrifices, right?

Keep reading to find out more about this social-media marriage.

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Six months after the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided it would stop funding Planned Parenthood — and then quickly reversed itself after angering people on both sides of the abortion debate —founder Nancy G. Brinker is stepping down as CEO of the breast cancer charity.

She will take on a new role focusing on fundraising, strategy, and company growth once a new CEO is in place, the company said in a statement late Wednesday.

"I was asked by the Board in 2009 to assume the CEO role," Brinker said. "Three years into that role, and 32 years after my promise to my sister to end breast cancer, I want now to focus on Susan G. Komen's global mission and raising resources to bring our promise to women all around the world."

Related: Janna Ryan: Stay-at-Home Mom With a Powerful (Democratic) Political Family

Brinker's departure isn't the only top-level change. President Liz Thompson will be leaving the organization sometime in September to "pursue other opportunities," and board members Brenda Lauderback and Linda Law are also stepping down.

"It is truly unbelievable that Komen, a group that until this year had been considered America's sweetheart charity, has suffered such financial and personnel upheaval in the wake of making what ended up being a temporary decision to loose ties with the nation's largest abortion provider," Jeanne Monahan, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the conservative Christian Family Research Council, told Reuters. "Sadly, the greatest victims of this Planned Parenthood shakedown are women suffering from breast cancer.

There's no doubt that the company has been affected by its decision in February to defund, and then refund, Planned Parenthood. The original decision angered Komen supporters, who took to social media to point out that the breast cancer charity's grants, which totaled about $580,000 in 2010 and $680,000 in 2011, had been earmarked for breast-cancer screenings at the women's health clinics, not abortion or birth control services. Hundreds of thousands of people -- some of them from Komen's other affiliates -- publicly denounced the defunding and swore they'd stop donating to Komen.

Just three days later, Brinker announced that funding for Planned Parenthood would continue after all. She issued a public apology for the way her organization chose to allocate its funds, a move that outraged many of its pro-life supporters. Several high-ranking Komen officials, including Senior Vice President of Policy Karen Handle, who claimed responsibility for the defunding decision, resigned.

Still, the resignations and apologies were too little, too late -- the group's poor response to the public outcry may have done more damage than the flip-flopping on funding. Since then, participation in Komen's famous Race for the Cure 5K runs and walks has dropped by as much as 30 percent, according to USA Today. Donations have dwindled. The brand itself, famous for it's ubiquitous pink ribbon, has been tarnished.

"You hate to see the organization slowly bleed away its staffing and its talent," Daniel Borochoff, the president of CharityWatch, told The New York Times in March. "They may very well need to get a new board and a new chief executive."

Neither Thompson nor Brinker said that the moves were related to the Planned Parenthood controversy, though Thompson did say that Komen "is on an excellent path to recovery." When asked about Planned Parenthood, Komen spokeswoman Andrea Rader told the Associated Press that "I think Liz (Thompson) made clear in her statement that we feel that we've moved past that."

At least, the company seems determined to put the Planned Parenthood issue firmly behind them in order to focus on the future.

"Our mission is clear and consistent, and will never change, regardless of the controversy earlier this year," Brinker said. "We are doing everything in our power to ensure that women have access to quality cancer care and the support that they need, as we seek answers through cutting-edge research."

— Lylah M. Alphonse
Copyright © 2012 Yahoo Inc.

Also on Shine:
Susan G. Komen and Planned Parenthood: Why the Controversy Will Continue
Can the Susan G. Komen Foundation Recover From Its Planned Parenthood Missteps?
Former Susan G. Komen VP Karen Handel: Planned Parenthood "Hijacked This Great Organization"

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First, they issued warnings about a Zombie Apocalypse. Now, in the event Bridezilla is threatening to ruin the nuptials, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has posted blog with a Wedding Day Survival Guide under the headings "General," "Natural Disasters," and "Preparedness."

"Being in the throes of wedding season," reads the blog, "many of us here at CDC realized that planning for a wedding isn't that much different from planning for a disaster." Maybe that's why divorce rates are so high? Keep reading this story to see what the CDC recommends.

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When Pixar first announced plans to feature a female protagonist back in 2006, critics and moviegoers alike had high hopes for The Bear and The Bow, as it was then called. Six years later the movie, now titled Brave, has hit the theaters, and some are saying that it doesn't live up to the hype — not because it's not visually stunning (it is, reviewers agree), but because its heroine, Scottish warrior-wannabe Merida, is yet another princess.

"You can't help wishing they'd thought a little further outside the box. A princess, really? They couldn't have bestowed girlhood on an inanimate object? An alien? A micro-pig?" writes Sarah Stewart at the New York Post. (You can watch the trailers here.) "This Celtic-themed story hews so closely to classic fairy-tale tropes, it's the studio's most Disney-fied production yet." Keep reading to find out if Pixar missed the point.

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"I'm not ready for a relationship." If those six words have ever snapped open your rib cage and scooped out your heart like a gut hook, then you might be a woman. It's the most popular excuse women hear when they're being dumped, according to a survey. 

The results are based on more than 500 male and female users of Wot Went Wrong, a reverse dating site that allows exes to get and give answers about unsuccessful relationships. In a period of four months, 15 percent of female users got the "not ready" response — the kind of reason that makes you want to ask more questions. But you might not want to dig too deep. Keep reading for the list.

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In the annals of demented revenge plans, Ronald Smith's is in a category of its own. The 58-year-old Denver man was just found guilty of vandalizing his ex-wife's home with raw chicken.

How does one do that? Not exactly sure, but the Washington Post is reporting that he stashed uncooked parts of the animal in the heating ducts of his former spouse's home.
Just grinding the thought through my brain wheels produces a foul odor.

But he didn't stop there.