Let’s say you are planning your wedding. What if instead of a fancy meal your spouse-to-be ordered pizza? Or instead of a layered white wedding cake, they asked your mother-in-law to make a chocolate sheetcake? Your first thought would probably be, “Don’t you love me?” or “Don’t you want this to be the happiest day of our lives?” A lot of people equate spending more with something being more long-lasting, so you may even think that they don’t care about your relationship!
You might think that spending a lot on a wedding means you’re going to stay together forever, but the opposite is actually true! Cheaper weddings lead to fewer divorces. The more a couple spend on their wedding the more likely they are to get divorced.
Science Weighs In
Bigger isn’t always better, and according to a 2014 study published in Social Science Research Network, it may actually be worse. In their paper, authors Andrew M. Francis and Hugo M. Mialon studied over 3,000 married and previously married people in the US. This paper is the first time the relationship between wedding spending and marriage duration was statistically evaluated.
The people surveyed were asked a number of questions including how much they spent on the engagement ring, how much they spent on the wedding, how long they dated before getting married, and whether or not they went on a honeymoon. The authors concluded, “Controlling for a number of demographic and relationship characteristics, we find evidence that marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony.”
Concerning cost, the authors set the reference point at between $5,000 and $10,000 for the engagement ring and wedding ceremony. They found that if a couple spends between $1k and $5k they were 18% less likely to get divorced. And if they spend less than $1k they’re 53% less likely to get divorced. On the other hand if a couple spends between $10k and $20k they’re 29% more likely to get divorced. And if they spend more than $20k they’re 46% more likely to get divorced!
So How Much Does the Average Wedding Cost?
According to wedding planning site The Knot the average cost of a wedding in 2018 was $33,931. (More recent data has been skewed by the pandemic.) If you’re like me you did a double take to make sure you didn’t go crazy. But you read that right. The average wedding has cost over $30k since 2015. And just in case you thought that this was being skewed by crazy people on the west coast, the state with the lowest average wedding cost, Utah, still came in at $22,500!
A Little Math
If this study is true, that’s not very encouraging news! Considering even the state with the lowest average wedding cost was still over $20k it looks like there are a lot of people running that higher risk. Because I’m a numbers guy I graphed this data and it turns out to be linear on a log scale with an R-squared value of 0.986. (For reference a perfectly linear dataset has an R-squared value of 1.0) What this means to non-nerds is that you can reliably extrapolate this data out to cover the cost of any specific wedding.
For example the average wedding in New Jersey costs $53,400! Using those numbers, the couple is 75% more likely to get divorced than a couple who spends between $5k and $10k. Whereas if you only end up spending $3k on your wedding and engagement ring, you’re about 14% less likely to get divorced. Obviously this is statistics and as we’ve discussed before chance doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean that this data isn’t a useful tool to be considered. So, if you want a good chance at staying together long-term, it looks like all (sarcasm heavily implied) you need to do is plan a cheap wedding! There’s only one problem…
Weddings are Expensive
The wedding industry is notoriously overpriced. Things that normally cost a certain amount are usually doubled or tripled if they’re for a wedding. For example, the average cost of a wedding photographer is $2,500–triple what a regular 3-hour photo shoot costs. A reception venue alone (not including food or entertainment) averages over $10,000. A wedding cake costs $500 and is usually doesn’t even taste that good.
The wedding industry obviously has an incentive to convince you that fancier weddings lead to happier longer-lasting marriages. But not only are they not impartial, they’re straight up wrong. “Overall, our findings provide little evidence to support the validity of the wedding industry’s general message that connects expensive weddings with positive marital outcomes,” Frances said.
Considering more than half of marriages end in divorce and that money problems are often cited as the number one reason for marital strife, maybe starting your married life off $30,000 in debt isn’t the best plan.
Have a Big Wedding
Considering wedding cost is inversely correlated with divorce you might think that the solution is to invite fewer people, but you’d be wrong. Another interesting finding in this study was that the larger the wedding, the higher the likelihood of the couple remaining married. Having 1-10 people attending the wedding correlates to a 35% lower probability of divorce than a couple who elopes. And having more than 200 attendees means a couple is 92% less likely to get divorced.
At $70/guest (the average cost of catering) having 200+ guests at your wedding gets expensive. Plus securing a venue that can hold 200 people can cost a lot. Being able to invite a lot of friends and family while still keeping costs low takes some strategizing.
It can be done however! Courtney and I had a wedding with around 200 guests. We also kept our wedding costs to about $1,000 including the dress. (Crazy right? I married a real winner and she definitely didn’t edit this article and add this in). So in our next article we’ll discuss some tips for a frugal wedding that still managed to be the happiest day of our lives.
Remember, going into debt should not be the first thing a married couple does together.
On the other hand, there is something couples can splurge on that positively impacts their chances of staying together. The study found that going on a honeymoon, regardless of the cost, is “significantly associated with a lower hazard of divorce.” They found that those who went on a honeymoon were 41% less likely to get divorced. It seems that going easy on the wedding ceremony and instead spending that money on a fun honeymoon is a beneficial tradeoff.
Conclusion
Despite what the wedding industry tries to tell you, cheaper weddings lead to fewer divorces. And bigger, more extravagant weddings are actually linked with a higher likelihood of getting divorced. While that seems counterintuitive at first, it does make sense that the kind of people who are easy-going enough to make a frugal wedding work are probably the kind of people who will be able to get over their issues and make their marriage work. Check out our next post for 5 tips for a cheaper wedding.
What do you think? If you’re married how much did you spend on your wedding? Was it everything you dreamed? Let us know in the comments below!
