To be surprised that relatively high spending on a wedding, means it is less likely to last

[abacucat]

Study quoted below.

"..we find evidence that relatively high spending on the engagement ring is inversely associated with marriage duration among male respondents. Relatively high spending on the wedding is inversely associated with marriage duration among female respondents, and relatively low spending on the wedding is positively associated with duration among male and female respondents. Additionally, we find that having high wedding attendance and having a honeymoon (regardless of how much it cost) are generally positively associated with marriage duration."

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480

The trouble is that a lot of these threads indicate that there are people going to big weddings as guests and sneering at everything they see, which I hope isn’t the case

Where as the worst wedding I’ve been to was an evening do in a community centre with cheap fizz, plastic table clothes, buffet food, bloody cheese everywhere because they got it cheap and some random uncle singing instead of entertainment. And she forced him up the aisle too.

The best I’ve been to was in claridges

Both couples still going although one of them hasn’t been married very long

Not surprising. Wonder how many of those fake marriages on Don't Tell the Bride actually last, for example. All the same format: want to blow money on a wedding, the man blows the lot on a stag do or does a destination wedding and expects the family to cough up for transport and accommodation. Seems like a lot of weddings today are about a big show. You have a lot of women in very vulnerable financial positions, having given up work to look after 1 or more children she has by partner and then claims they cannot afford to get married.

I am not surprised because I've grown up with this:

Sayyida A’isha (Allah be pleased with her) narrates that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and grant him peace) said: “The most blessed marriage (nikah) is the one with the least expenses.” (al-Bayhaqi in his Shu’ab al-Iman & Mishkat al-Masabih).

Sadly even in the Muslim community there is the desire to have a wedding with pomp and show, nowadays it's getting more out of hand but there are still people who want to follow the saying in spending less (but enough to feed others).
My own wedding I didn't bother with hiring cars, having bridesmaids (we don't really have that in Islam anyway but people do get their relatives and friends wearing similar clothes) etc etc no wedding cake but a cake was gifted from a family member. No photographers. Just had a lovely time with family and the person I'm spending life with.

Doesn't mean we are the perfect couple but we are together and even through tough times divorce doesn't come to us (unless one of us did something crazy but right now, we are okay).
Just thought I'd share it. Doesn't mean everyone has to follow it. I know of people who hired helicopters etc for their wedding and divorced 2 weeks later. I know people who spent a lot and their marriage is always on the brink on divorce. And of course there are people who spend a lot and are still together but most people I know have simple weddings and are still together as that's what's encouraged in our religion (spend less ie less pomp and show and there will be more blessings from God. On the other hand we are encouraged to feed the people nearby especially the poor).

Also I should add I have been to Asian weddings which probbaly cost close to £100k (not even kidding) and divorce rates are very low in those cultures comparitively

I am aware of trends in weddings and unfortunately you do hear that the expensive ones end in divorce.
most of the ones we work on that are very extravagant invariably last very long.
Personally, this has happened to friends too.
OTOH i have friends who paid for a registry office, witnesses of the street and home for egg and chips who are celebrating their Golden Anniversary next year.

That is because in Indian and Pakistan marriages, women who divorce are ostracised. Getting divorced is a big no no, and most women will only divorce if there is severe abuse.

I thought that a more sophisticated study found that once you factored wedding debt (of any size) the difference disappeared?

I.e. money issues were the definitive factor, not actual spends.

My fiance and I are having a 20k wedding and honeymoon, paid for by ourselves, but we've been together 11 years and saved for our own deposit. I'm making the cake, we're not having a photographer, and there's a free bar.

Put that in your anecdata pipe and smoke it - we don't fit any of the stereotypes people like to pigeon hole weddings into!

That’s not true OP

Most of us spend the average amount (somewhere between £10-20k) and have average marriages (around 40% ending in divorce I think?)

That's probably why those things are the average...,

Nobody is saying that spending gazillions on gold plated, sugared almonds automatically means that you're definitely a shallow person and your marriage won't outlast.

Just that shallow people are probably more likely to do silly things, like get into massive, crippling debt for a wedding they can't afford.

Crosstalk
3000 people would be an okay sample provided it's a representative sample. You cant sample the whole of the us that would be impossible so you'd have to randomly select participants in the hope that they would be representative of the whole population. Could do with being a few thousand more though.

Things like this get to me because I had a large expensive wedding, and a divorce. But I don't think they were related. We had the expensive wedding because it was important to the family and we weren't bothered either way. I certainly didn't focus more on the wedding than the marriage.

We got divorced for very normal, boring reasons. Not because I wanted a flashy party.

It's along the lines of what @thereareflowersinmygarden has said. I loved my partner and wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. Unfortunately he did not feel the same way.

I’ve been to lovely “posh” weddings and lovely, casual, pub or village hall weddings. I’ve liked them all, more or less the same, except when one of the people getting married is a best friend / close relative. Then I always seem have the best.day.ever at their weddings .

Two couples where I’ve been to the weddings are divorced now. One was a wedding in a 5* hotel. The dh had an affair at work and fucked off with the OW, leaving his wife and young dcs. The other was a registry office wedding with reception in the local community centre. The dh had an affair at work and fucked off with the OW, leaving his wife and young dcs. So anecdotally, I have to assume the cost of the wedding means nothing if you’re married to a twunt. Mind you, at least the wife in the community hall wedding couple wasn’t in debt over their wedding.

I had a 70 quid wedding dress so clearly we will make it to our diamond anniversary.

Oh oh oh mine was £50 froglet. Platinum anniversary for us then (if there is such a thing)

I know a couple who had a very small wedding and he’d left her for someone else within a couple of years. It does happen.

Most of the people I know that had big lavish weddings did so with family money. There was no getting into debt so I don’t really see the correlation, unless those that come from well off families have a greater freedom to divorce.
I do think there is a correlation with the amount of time a couple have been together. To short amount of one and it is too whirlwind and they haven’t got to know each other warts and all. Too long amount of time and someone has been dragging their heels / wedding is being used as a sticking plaster for a bad relationship and the wedding is often the catalyst for splitting up.

Just looked it up (saddo) and here’s a fun fact; there is a platinum anniversary but it’s less than diamond. After diamond (75 years), there’s one for 80 years and it’s... wait for it... you know it’s going to be good if it’s better than platinum and diamonds...

Oak !

Basically, small weddings are motivated by a desire to BE married as opposed to the motivation to have a wedding.

I see where ypu are coming from but the smallest weddings I know were my sister's, who had to marry for visa reasons after being together for a relatively short time, and a friend who did not believe in marriage but he and his partner were moving abroad so it was necessary.

Not every small wedding is motivated by a desire to be married that outweighs that of someone who has a larger wedding. Maybe the couple that want a small wedding do it because they are tight arses, not because they believe more in the sanctity of marriage!

Ahh but that’s romantic. Oak trees live for 100s of years don’t they? And who needs sparkly gems by that stage anyway!

Not true, I had a huge £60k wedding being Indian I didnt get a choice, personally I'd have preferred the money to buy a house. We had a fab honeymoon too Maurtius and Dubai, we are happily married almost 14yrs later

30 odd years ago I went to a posh London wedding; well known London church, expensive venue. The couple are still together and happy.

I don't know that I agree. I got married in the last 3 years and we spent just under £20k which is a lot. But it was expensive because we had 100 people and put on loads of naive food and drink not because of the fact we were worried about image

Maybe it's what the money is spent on and not how much?

Or maybe my marriage will go up in flames in the next couple of years?!

I worked for a while as a registrar and this experience supported this view. I took at as a part time stop gap job thinking how lovely it’ll be to be part of joining two people in love and their intimate moment. Honestly, I was so shocked that only 2 out of around 30 weddings I conducted felt like this. The rest tended to conform to this awful stereotype of stressed bridezilla who was totally obsessed with how she looked and everything being ‘perfect’. The brides were so invariably invested in a specific image of what they wanted that it was inevitable when things didn’t go to plan they struggled big time to remain happy and focused on why they were there. The men also tended to portray this horrible feckless stereotype where they’d say ‘I dunno, it’s her gig’, about everything, and we’re passively but frustratedly going along with her built up fantasy day. I don’t know if this helps explain the men thing in the research. I never doubted that most of them loved each other deep down and imagine that many of them went on to have happy marriages but I found it really eye opening, and sad, that later they would likely say this was the happiest day of their lives, and they were kidding themselves on, they weren’t happy in those moments.

Now felt stressed on my wedding day so I’m not judging, but having had this experience it was important to me to keep my expectations managed and to focus more on the marriage than the occasion. Which was a good job as the transport was late, the music didn’t work down the aisle, etc...

Makes sense - people who spend £££££ on a wedding care more about the wedding than the marriage. 🤷🏼‍♀️