Surprised to learn that that the more a couple spends on their wedding and engagement rings, the more likely they are to divorce

[crunchymint]

This is taken from this piece of research and it does surprise me.

www.csus.edu/faculty/m/fred.molitor/docs/wedding%20expenses%20and%20marriage%20duration1.pdf

I can't talk for others but my post was tongue in cheek Margaret hence the grin at the end. I'm aware that any link was tenuous. Although I'm not in the second most risky as my ring was more than 500 dollars.

Interestingly if you look culturally there are lots of cultures who spend bey large amounts on weddings (ie Indian) and have lower divorce rates. Celebrating marriage actualy puts more importance on it, and money/ sacrificing things to pay for it is part of that. Let’s face it, running off to Gretna green with an Argos ring doesn’t suggest much importance

@busybarbara - I’m not sure that’s right. My ex fiancé (we never made it down the aisle as he ran off with someone else) bought me a huge ring, not because he thought I wouldn’t tolerate everything else, but because the size of it was a reflection of his financial prowess.

I’m now engaged to someone else and have what’s probably an average sized/cost ring but love it and love him.

Great post MargaretCavendish. Just goes to show you really need to understand a research paper before you can draw any conclusions from it.

Very expensive rings here, very happily married for almost two decades

Brilliant Ms Cavendish!

I made DH buy me a fairly expensive ring (3.5k) because I love good jewellery and wanted a beautiful diamond ring. I've now made him buy me a new ring for even more money! Our wedding was small and inexpensive apart from the ring and my dress.

Incredibly, DH still loves me despite my superficial, diamond-grasping ways.

Not true. A lot of Asian countries - often spend thousands on the engagement ring and other bridal jewellry and divorce rates are very low.

Seems to be a badge of honour nowadays to have the lowest possible budget

Being that's it's American, the results are probably skewed by drunken Vegas weddings where there was no engagement ring or wedding expenses and the divorce comes once they've sobered up

Oh good, ours cost nothing!

But @DuchyDuke in some Asian countries a woman might get killed by her family if she initiates divorce as it dishonours the family. Can't really use them to compare with Britain. (Pakistan and Afghanistan count as south Asian countries soo en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asia)

wow very interesting...
I did notice it said it was "corrected for income" which makes sense.
So if you have 10s of ks in the bank, 10k is small fry, but if you have no savings, it's a lot...

Also I liked this:
"Additionally, we find that having high wedding attendance and having a honeymoon (regardless of how much it costs) are generally positively associated with marriage duration"

Which suggests having lots of supportive friends and family that you are close to helps!

We had Argos wedding rings. We somehow forgot in all the planning of the wedding that we would need wedding rings so rushed into Argos the day before flying home for the wedding. The engagement ring only cost around £50 but at least we put a bit of thought into that. Still married after 27 years, although we don't have any of the rings as they were stolen in a burglary.

@allthgoodusernamesaretaken on here certainly! Why is that? Real life isn't like that!

Great post MargaretCavendish. Just goes to show you really need to understand a research paper before you can draw any conclusions from it.

Thank you but just so I'm not claiming any false expertise - I'm not a statistician and while I am a professional researcher I'm the kind who works with words much more often than with numbers!

Anyway what's wrong with argos rings? My wedding ring is coming from there, as it's half price at the moment!

Fairly decent engagement ring here (probs about £500, antique but I loved it), cheapest wedding we could manage (were very hard up) but loads of attendance and a honeymoon in Scotland (because family owned property up there and let us use it for a week).

Marriage didn't last three years.. He got bored. Don't know where that places me in the rankings...

Margareth the no ring is associated with a higher level of divorce is the truth with me.
Interesting correlation.

what's wrong with argos rings?
nothing against the actual ring, it's just that Argos is the place I go to when I need a kettle or a barbie doll. I prefer the idea of my ring coming from somewhere else, even if it makes no difference about the ring itself.
No one has ever asked me where my engagement rings or wedding rings came from.

When reading articles like this based on a 'study' you need to take it with a pinch of salt... It's not as if this was commissioned by a health board, it would have been done in order to fulfil some sort of marketing angle.

I'm very surprised at this news, as my exH would have given me a curtain ring if he could have got away with it. we did have quite a nice wedding and honeymoon though. I don't regret a penny on the honeymoon, it was fab.

I have noticed when travelling in US that women have huge knuckle duster diamond rings (sweeping statement, I know). Is there more of a culture of big pricey rings than here?

I read something similar years ago but it was a UK study. The summary was that that a significant enough proportion of people spending larger sums on their wedding and rings were more focused on the wedding than the marriage, meaning that statistically overall couples were more likely to split if they had spent more.

I suppose it makes sense that people who are all consumed by the 'big fairytale day' are not going to get married at a local registry office and have a quick drink down the local put to celebrate.

What this report really says:

• On average, wealthy people spend less as a proportion of their income on their wedding than lower income people (not that surprising)

• wealthy people are less likely to get divorced than lower income people (for a whole host of correlative and causative factors largely unrelated to spend on a wedding).

I had a cheap engagement ring, a simple wedding ring and an inexpensive wedding. SIL had 2 outstanding bits of bling, a huge wedding and an exotic honeymoon. Brother earns easily 20x my salary.
I’ve been married 35, they are coming up for 30. Pearl. Could be a lovely piece of jewellery, could be a trip to the South Seas.
I tend to find that my friends in long marriages often had parents in a long marriage who worked through tough times together.

@ikeepaforkinmypurse fair enough...
I actually associate argos and Ikea with big life changes, eg moving in with partner - off to ikea etc. When I got my first proper job, I went to ikea to buy an ironing board so I could look smart! ironing all my clothes lasted about a fortnight

Also I wanted a really plain, simple wedding ring because my engagement rin gis a bit more complicated.

what a silly sweeping article. I know plenty of couples with cheaper rings that have divorced and a fair few couples with very expensive rings that are still together.