Wedding Costs: What's A Wedding Really Worth? (INFOGRAPHIC)

It’s no secret that weddings are expensive. In 2011, couples across the U.S. spent an average of $27,000 on their nuptials, according to a survey conducted by TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com.

As we kicked off our Take Back Your Wedding campaign last month, encouraging couples to plan the weddings they want and not the ones their families or society at large pressures them into, we wondered what else those thousands of dollars could buy.

To find out, we took the average cost of a wedding in 11 cities across the country and looked for other ways to spend that amount in each location. From the practical (the number of months you can rent an apartment) to the frivolous (the number of poolside cabanas you can rent at a chic hotel), these comparisons may make you question the widely-accepted tradition of putting so much cash toward one big day.

Mouse over the cities below to see what you can get for the average cost of a wedding in each place, then tell us: What would you rather spend your money on?