You may already know that I’m not a big fan of materialistic wedding expenses. More specifically, I think that the average cost of a wedding is stupidly high (at $30,000) and the average engagement ring cost (at $5,500) is equally nauseating. And if you want to pay it forward and put your groomsmen or bridesmaids in debt, you deserve whatever bad marriage karma you’ve got coming your way.
For the record, my wife and I had an inexpensive wedding, totaling just $2,500, and we asked our maid of honor and best man to spend nothing. Adversely, I didn’t realize until years after my marriage proposal that I had fallen for industry-backed spending “tradition” and spent too much on an engagement ring.
Given past interest in these topics and how top of mind they are for those in their twenties and thirties, I felt like we all hit the jackpot with a recently published study from two economics researches from Emory Univeristy called ‘A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration.
The objective of the study was to determine if there was an association between wedding spending and marriage duration. The sample was 3,000 married (or previously married) individuals in the United States.
Among other interesting findings, they concluded “marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony”. In other words, not only is it a bad idea financially to spend a lot on these things, but higher spending on materialism for show = greater likelihood of divorce. I think now might be a good time to say: TAKE THAT, HATERS!
The paper goes on to detail how wedding and diamond industry advertising and propaganda has manufactured this fairy-tale concept and misinformation. Sound familiar? It should – I’ve been preaching it for years.
Here are some of the more interesting findings from the study:
- In the sample of men, spending between $2,000 and $4,000 on an engagement ring is associated with a 1.3 times greater hazard of divorce as compared to spending between $500 and $2,000.
- Spending between $2,000 and $4,000 on the engagement ring is associated with 2 to 3 times the odds of reporting being stressed about wedding-related debt relative to spending between $500 and $2,000.
- Spending $1,000 or less on the wedding is significantly associated with a decrease in the hazard of divorce in the sample of all persons.
- Spending less than $1,000 on the wedding is associated with an 82% to 93% decrease in the odds of reporting being stressed about wedding-related debt relative to spending between $5,000 and $10,000.
- Spending $20,000 or more on the wedding is associated with an increase in the hazard of divorce in the sample of women.
- Compared with spending between $5,000 and $10,000 on the wedding, spending less than $1,000 is associated with half the hazard of divorce in the sample of men, and spending $20,000 or more is associated with 1.6 times the hazard of divorce in the sample of women.
- Relatively high household income, regularly attending religious services, having a child with one’s partner, relatively high wedding attendance, and
going on a honeymoon (regardless of cost) are all significantly associated with a lower hazard of divorce. All of these make a lot of sense to me, except for high wedding attendance. I guess the takeaway is to invite a lot of people to your wedding, but don’t feed or entertain them!
The data tables in the research paper would only be appreciated by a researcher. Thankfully, a data scientist, Randal Olson, made some pretty graphs that are much more user friendly. Unfortunately, no graph was made for the engagement ring data.
Income Level and Marriage Success:
Lets start off with the bad news (if you don’t make much money):
While this is kind of depressing, it makes sense. Financial arguments are the #1 reason for divorce, and if you make less money, you are going to stress more over money and it could cause turmoil in the marriage.
Should You Take that Honeymoon?
Hell, yes. Take that honeymoon! Just don’t spend a lot on it.
How Much Should you Spend on your Wedding?
The less you spend on your wedding, the better (if you want it to succeed, that is).
Interesting stuff.
Wedding Expenses and Marriage Success Conclusion
My conclusion from all of this fantastic data is that while money is important (less stress, more experiences) in marriage and life, it’s not important in a materialistic sense (fancy expensive ring, flashy stereotypical wedding for show, a bunch of stuff that you don’t need). In fact, just the opposite was found. Money has great value, but only if used for the right reasons.
What’s your take?
Related Posts:
Our wedding was way too expensive, but we had no idea what we were doing with money back then. Live and learn, right?
I REALLY need to get out of that low income bracket, but otherwise I’m planning on small ceremony rockstar honeymoon, and hopefully- rockstar marriage!
Guys,
Point it, if you get your girl a $500 ring and she is disappointed or even comes close to thinking twice, then she isn’t the girl (for you) who is worth a $5,000+ ring. There is a guy out there with whom should would snap accept a Cracker Jack box ring if it meant marriage, and if you’re not that guy then save yourself a lot of trouble, and money, down the road. Any justifications to the contrary are simply rationalizations for terrible decision making.
Seriously, think about it.
Posted this in the wrong thread, but the point stands and it applies to weddings too. Not saying all expensive things are bad, especially if you have the money to blow, but it’s an interesting argument.
Hmmm… the stats also say that spending less than $500 on a ring also leads to higher rates of divorce. I’d imagine this is because those people make very little to begin with, which is a stressor in marriage. You’ve advocated spending nothing on a ring. What do you think of this finding?
It seems to me that expensive weddings can lead to high debt, which is very stressful on a marriage. I’d be interested to know whether the weddings in this study entailed debt, and if so how much, and if they tracked the debt to divorce rates as well. It may be that if the couple can afford an expensive ring/wedding without debt, it may not be detrimental to the marriage. I don’t see how an expensive wedding in and of itself can cause a divorce.
I agree with your conclusion that there is a greater statistical likelihood that some who spend under $500 for a ring may have larger financial issues than someone who spends $2,000 – $4,000. And those with financial issues are much more likely to be stressed and that could lead to a higher divorce rate
I didn’t advocate $0 as an absolute recommendation for everyone. The goal in that post was really to get people to think about tradition/standards differently. Whether it’s $25, $50, $1,000, or more, I think the key thing when it comes to spend is that the amount of spend is not a means to woo, impress, or guilt the recipient. And if the recipient is demanding or picking out his/her own very expensive ring (happens often), there are going to be issues.
If the couple doesn’t incur a bunch of debt for their expensive wedding, I can’t see how that would directly cause issues in their marriage. I can see how an expensive wedding (and some of these other predictors of divorce) could generally correlate with character traits that could cause issues in a marriage. i.e. those who have expensive weddings/engagement rings may be more materialistic, or more focused on the euphoria of their wedding day than a lifetime of working things out with their spouse. A wedding with few in attendance may indicate that the couple doesn’t have much of a support group that would help them out through hard times. If the couple doesn’t go on a honeymoon, then maybe they don’t prioritize spending quality alone-time together. And so on and so forth…
who needs a ring to get married though really?
I think its interesting that you say money is important in order to be able to have more EXPERIENCES – not necessarily, more material things such as a ring or wedding. While my partner is not needing a huge fancy ring/wedding (she actually doesn’t want to get married at all yet) – she has the opinion that money is wasted if it isn’t on “things” – TVs, stuff for the house, video games, etc. because those things continue to have value even after you’ve used it. A memory, she says, has no value after you’ve done it.
Any advice on how to convince her otherwise? I like going out and doing things much more than gaining “stuff”, but she always balks at the idea of spending money on “experiences”.
I think there can be a happy medium. What about trying to find out what “stuff” makes her the happiest? I’d be willing to bet it is the stuff that provides experiences. I love “stuff” so long as it is an enabler of experiences – my bike, my laptop, a porch swing, a toy for my dog, music to listen to with others, a tool to build something cool or complete a DIY project, etc.
Once you’ve made that connecting w/ her, maybe she will see that it really is the experiences that she enjoys after all.
Also – start small and cheap versus big and expensive. Doing things doesn’t have to equate to a $300 concert or sporting event or $5,000 trip. It could be camping, backpacking, cycling, kayaking (can you tell I like the outdoors?), a trip to the art museum, etc.
There are few different ways to approach this, but here are a couple: 1. discuss the limits for stuff; the more stuff you have, the more room you need, leading to a larger house and more stuff to fill it. You’re basically ruining the environment and filling a space, and will (hopefully) eventually realize this, purge, and go back to a sane amount of space for whatever size family you have. 2. On the flip side, I do not believe you can ever have too many experiences. This may lead to an expanding collection of pictures, in frames or albums, but not much else will be expanded stuff-wise. I don’t think you should go on a thrill trip every day because eventually you wouldn’t get any enjoyment from it, but a 2 week international trip every year is a luxury that many people think they cannot afford, when many could if they just stopped buying DVD’s or replacing things that aren’t worn out (sheets, towels, dishes come to mind as style buys more than purchases to replace something that’s worn out).
Good Luck!
It would’ve been nice if this article was written before I got married a few years ago.
It seems like we are the reference point for a lot of these – we had no honeymoon, spent $8,000 on our wedding and around $2,000 on a ring.
What I would also like to see if is how much of the annual, or monthly, take home income the weddings and rings cost, and how much of a financial assistance the couples received from relatives.
Interesting study, but I don’t think a study, regardless of how expansive it is can predict the outcome of marriage. My wedding cost in 1984 was close to $20K, The ring was about $1K, attendance 225, honeymoon was just a weekend. My husband and I made a ridiculously small min. wage when we were married–we borrowed $40.00 at the closing of our house because after advances on our checks we were still short. We never lived together before marriage. I’ve been married for 30 years.
My ring was special to me. It was a symbol of my husbands commitment. I looked at it and wore every single day, it was meant to last a very long time–that can’t be accomplished with a $30 Wal-Mart gold band. Unfortunately an accident destroyed my ring, which was more devastating than recovery from the accident.
Statistics and studies forget the human factor. There is no regret on how much (parents) spent on our wedding. The tradition of a marriage has been forgotten–remember it’s supposed to be a celebration with family & friends of your commitment and a send-off into a new life together. It wasn’t meant to be a money-grab or entertainment venue. Today many materialistic weddings miss the point of the wedding–commitment–no stats will measure that.
Well said Nan.
Money is just a representation of value. What you value when you spend that money is probably the bigger deal. Granted those same values will affect how much you spend too, which is why there is a statistical trend, but not a 100% rule.
I never understood why people would spend $30k on a wedding…Wouldn’t you rather put that toward a HOUSE!?! My wife and I spent $1,500 on our wedding but, alas, I too overspent on her engagement ring for $3k. My brother bought his wife a moissanite ring for like $200 that looks the same. Ah well, live and learn! ;)
I got married a couple weeks back in what my wife and I call a planned elopement. It was just us two at the ceremony. Our witness was our photographer. We live in Wisconsin and flew out to California to get married in Big Sur and “honeymoon” in San Francisco. We stayed in Big Sur for a couple days after our wedding and then drove up to San Francisco for 5 days. It was a great ceremony! Just us two among Redwoods right next to Big Sur River. It was a rich experience for the two of us, but we did it all for $6,500 including food and transportation. Keep in mind that the photographer, rings, and Big Sur hotel alone cost us a combined $3,000. We could’ve hired a cheaper photographer, chose cheaper rings, and stayed at a cheaper hotel and done it for under $5,000. We got engaged in May and I was able to cashflow the wedding over 5 months and put my debt payoff on hold. We ate out for four meals while on our wedding trip/honeymoon and just bought groceries at Trader Joes for the rest of our meals. I highly recommend this type of wedding to not only save money, but not deal with family drama and just focus on your spouse.
Interesting stats, but they make sense (in my opinion). Thanks for sharing!
Great article. Enjoyed reading that.
Wedding attendance might decrease divorce because a larger number of involved parties with the union increases social pressure to make it work. In contrast, solitary drive thru weddings in Vegas are prprobably easy to back out of because nobody else is emotionally invested. Just my thoughts.
I recently had an artist’s easel to sell on Facebook and there was a woman who was interested in buying it, but she was no artist. She was planning her wedding and wanted the easel to hold the sign that greeted guests at the reception, similar to what she’d seen in some bridal magazine, along with “rustic” wine crates which she planned to stain to match the easel. Big roll of the eyes here. CRAZY.
The correlation with number of guests makes perfect sense. You are taking vows in front of God and all your closest friends and family, some of whom traveled to be there. There’s some serious crow to eat if you up and ‘change your mind’ because “we grew apart”.
Correlation does not imply causality
We spent around $200.00 on our wedding, had no honeymoon, and the highest income level we have achieved to date is just under $70K. Most of our married life it has been in the $25-$50K range. We’ve been together 26 years.
Basically, this shows that couples who are willing to plan, prioritize, and sacrifice are more likely to stay married than those who don’t! Makes sense to me!
$1500 for the wedding.
$30 for the pretty silver and torquiose ring set.
Been married 35 years.