My friends Micah and Rachelle had the best wedding in human history. They did it in a city park, barefoot, surrounded by a little over 100 friends and family.
There was a pinata because they damn well wanted one. The whole thing was catered by a local Mexican restaurant and cost less than $5,000. They spent the money they had left over on a camping-road-trip honeymoon.
They’re some of the thriftiest people I’ve ever met. Someone gave them a Bed Bath & Beyond gift card at their wedding six years ago, and they still haven’t gone to use it. Not because they haven’t needed anything, but because they hate Bed Bath & Beyond. They buy everything they can used! None of the overpriced, kitschy crap at BB&B interests them.
Without knowing it, my friends had gotten married in the smartest possible way.
In 2014, two social scientists from Emory University conducted a survey of 3151 people, aimed at figuring out if the wedding industry’s fanatic attempt to tie the idea of high spending on a wedding/engagement to a greater probability of marriage quality had any basis in reality.
If you’ve read any of my writing, I’ll bet you can guess what comes next.
The paper that Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon put together is called ‘A Diamond Is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship Between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration. It’s riveting.
The survey was conducted in response to the wedding industry’s explosive growth in the 20th century.
Now, in order for any industry to grow, it has to “cook the frog” (slowly tell people that they should be spending more and more money). I’m quoting now from the paper:
“In 1959, Brides [magazine] recommended that couples set aside two months to prepare for their wedding and published a checklist with 22 tasks for them to complete. By the 1990s, the magazine recommended 12 months of wedding preparation, and published a checklist with 44 tasks to complete.”
12 months and 44 tasks? No wonder people collapse under the stress.
From another section:
“In the late 1930s, De Beers created the slogan ‘a diamond is forever’ which was rated the number one slogan of the century by Advertising Age (1999)… In the 1980s, De Beers introduced another influential campaign, which sought to increase the standard for how much should be spent on an engagement ring with slogans such as ‘isn’t two months salary a small price to pay for something that lasts forever?’”
Now, anyone who’s had a look at current divorce rates should know this is ridiculous. But how ridiculous? That’s what Francis and Mialon wanted to find out, because (I cannot stress this enough) no one had checked to see if the wedding industry’s claims were legit.
They weren’t. Turns out, the more money that’s spent on a wedding and engagement ring (especially if that money is borrowed), the less likely the marriage is to last.
Based on a nationwide survey of 3151 people, it was found that for men who spent between $2,000-$4,000 on an engagement ring, the risk of divorce was 1.3 times higher than for men who spent between $500-$2,000. For women, $20,000 and up spent on the wedding itself caused the divorce rate to spike 3.5 times higher than those who spent $5,000 to $10,000.
Now, you might be thinking: so the correct answer is eloping!
Well, not exactly. Quoting from the paper again:
“The evidence suggests that the types of weddings associated with lower likelihood of divorce are those that are relatively inexpensive but high in attendance.”
So have a party in the park! Buy a pinata and some enchiladas or ramen from a local restaurant. Throw water balloons at each other! Save the wedding money for an unforgettable honeymoon. Here is the most important part:
Do not, under any circumstances, go into debt for a wedding. That stress is often too much for a new couple. It increases the likelihood of divorce. That was Francis and Mialon’s final finding. Debt kills love.
Here’s what we forget. A huge amount of the information we take in every day in the western world is created by people who want us to buy things. They’re so good at it that we forget they’re doing it.
We take on stress to have huge, perfectly planned weddings. Men who spend less than two months’ salary on engagement rings are seen as “cheap.” Women are expected to want huge, expensive weddings. This has very intentionally been driven into us by people who sell engagement rings and wedding crap.
Thankfully, the DIY movement and those darn millennials have caused a decrease in wedding industry revenue. But they are still predatory, and you’ll still see ads like this.
If you’ve just gotten engaged, or are thinking about it, or you just need a reminder, make this your Mantra:
What matters is love. What matters is love. What matters is love.
Because the rest, as it turns out, is nonsense.
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