The New York Times asked this curious question last week in an article detailing something of a trend from couples looking to defray the cost of their increasingly expensive special day.
Hassan Ahmed is charging $450 a ticket for his upcoming Houston wedding. He defends the price tag by explaining he’s already spent over $100,000 to plan the party. Since the request went out, it’s been mostly radio silence from Hassan’s friends, something he finds surprising given how much money they regularly spend on concert tickets.
Nationally, the average cost of a wedding is $35,000 in 2024, up $5,000 from last year. It’s cheapest to get hitched in Alaska ($12,083) and most expensive in Washington, D.C. ($45,400).
Given inflation, it’s no wonder weddings are costing more, but there’s absolutely no reason why any couple wanting to get married needs to spend anywhere near these five figure costs.
In fact, studies have shown that the more money you spend on a wedding, the more likely the marriage will end in divorce.
The correlation even begins with the engagement ring.
Emory University economists Andrew Francis-Tan and Hugo M. Mialon found that men who spent between $2,000 and $4,000 on the ring faced a 1.3 times higher risk of divorce than those who spent between $500 and $2000.
Mialon and Francis-Tan discovered a similar trend with the wedding ceremony itself. Those who spent more than $20,000 on the wedding saw a 1.6-fold increase of divorce compared with those couples who spent less than $1,000.
This isn’t to say everybody who invests in an elaborate wedding is headed for heartbreak hill, but these findings should take some pressure off those who are either unwilling or unable to write a big check for the big day.
The news media is increasingly unhelpful when it comes to fanning stories related to costs attached to time-honored traditions like marriage and raising children. Whether simply hungry for clickbait headlines or deliberately trying to discourage marriage and childrearing, Christians should remain skeptical about the astronomical financial figures often cited in stories.
The subtle narrative plays into the hand of the cynic: Why would I pay $35,000 for a marriage certificate, a mere piece of paper? And then why would I want to pay over $300,000 to raise a child? Life is a lot easier and cheaper when we bypass both, so goes the logic.
Both numbers ($35k and $300k) are wildly misleading, especially given how many people are known to marry and raise large families for a fraction of the media-hyped cost.
No couple should ever let the “average” price of a wedding stop them from tying the knot – and no married couple should ever not have children out of fear they can’t afford God’s greatest gifts.
Happy and thriving marriages often begin in small, country churches. The bride and groom are then celebrated in the church basement, or maybe in a humble backyard. Guests don’t need to dine on china and crystal. Paper plates and plastic cups work just as well.
Budget, backyard weddings can be as beautiful as any at a five-star resort. It’s not the cost that counts – it’s the commitment of the couple to abide by their marital vows, to constantly seek the Lord, “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”
Image from Shutterstock.
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