I have noticed for years that as the cost of weddings has gone up the amount of marital commitment in the culture has gone down. Now there is interesting research that this is true even at the individual level: "A Diamond is Forever and Other Myths." As the cost of the ring and the wedding goes down, the divorce rate tracks it down as well. In fact, down to half. I admit I hadn't thought of the ring, only the wedding reception and the number of bridesmaids. There is a cultural pressure that insists on having all the trimmings for the wedding. There is evidence that it does not insist on all the trimmings for marriage itself. (CWCID Rob Henderson)
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Weddings and Divorce
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5 comments:
I’d be careful with this one. I saw this going around on Twitter and a lot of the data around wedding cost was not statistically significant. For some levels it was (like spending < $1000), but at higher levels it got uneven.
What was consistently associated with lower divorce rates was having a lot of people at your wedding, which is why I went looking for the data. Having a cheap wedding did not help you if you didn’t have many people to invite, which makes sense.
One thing IS for sure, regardless of total expenses for the wedding: You don't need to be superstitious to regard Bridezilla or Groomzilla as a very bad omen indeed for the marriage.
@bs king - I think that's right about the number of people at the wedding. I also think it's important that the guests be balanced. A supermajority from either the bride's or groom's family and friends doesn't bode well.
I call nonsense.
Having tracked down the study, it was a survey done with Amazon MTurk workers. ("Mechanical Turk.") I would not take a survey taken for 50 to 75 cents by gig workers as dispositive. It also flies in the face of the correlation of higher income and more stable marriages.
I don't know how much my parents spent on my wedding, years ago. I'm not sure the current generation would know more, unless the parents were not involved. According to The Knot, the average wedding size is 117 guests. It would be difficult to spend less than $1,000 on a wedding with 117 guests.
This is a good take on the study: https://modernmrsdarcy.com/diamond-forever-fairy-tales/
I am believing my commenters over this study, for sure.
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