On Weddings

All right, kids, buckle up, because I have another unpopular opinion.

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, I’m at the age where my Facebook newsfeed is overflowing with the engagement announcements, wedding photos, and offspring ultrasounds of my peers. Friends and family members are finding their forevercreatures, getting hitched, and reproducing. It’s the way of the world. I’m ridiculously happy for all of my peers who are going through this, and I plan to follow suit should the opportunity present itself in my life.

I’ve participated in many weddings; as a guest, as a bridesmaid, and soon as a maid of honour. I actually love going to weddings. Non-religious ceremonies are very moving (sorry, but if God is mentioned more often than the couple getting married, that’s not a wedding, that’s church) and the receptions I’ve been to have ranged from pleasantly chill to one hell of a party. I love the idea of celebrating the love of a couple joining their lives together. The hopeful, idealistic atmosphere of a wedding is a singular experience.

However…

I don’t understand weddings as they are carried out today. Right up to the actual wedding day, it all seems to be an overly expensive chronic source of stress, frustration, and rage for the couples involved. I’m going to dive right into the thing I can’t really wrap my head around, which is how much people spend on a wedding. According to more than a few sources, the average wedding in the US costs somewhere around $25,000.00

Twenty five.

THOUSAND. DOLLARS.

…

Are you fucking serious?!

Am I alone here in thinking it is completely and utterly bumfuck crazy to spend twenty five thousand dollars on what is, when you strip away the grandiosity, a freaking party? That’s all it is, guys. It’s a party. It blows my mind. You have no business spending twenty five grand on a party unless you’re an idiotic celebrity who makes an obscene amount of money. But this is the average cost of a wedding. That means that people of average marrying age (mid 20s) are spending about half their freaking salary* on a freaking party.

I’m sorry, but that might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Just to put it into perspective, here are a few things you can get in this world for twenty five grand, if you didn’t want to, I don’t know, save it:

A college education.
A year in a nice apartment in Los Angeles, California.
A nice down payment on a frickin’ house.
A reliable car less than two years old.
A luxurious summer vacation…in Europe.

One word, kids: Priorities. Any of these sounds like an infinitely smarter choice than a wedding to me.

I’m already hearing the wailing and gnashing of teeth. But Dee, it’s a wedding. It’s the most important day of your life! The day you’ve dreamed about since you were a kid! One of the most life changing events of your existence!

Um…no. Just no. A wedding is definitely one of the happiest days of people’s lives (until half of them divorce,) sure. I mean, it’s a party that’s all about you and the person you love the most. But the most important? One of the most life changing? No, sweetie, that’s a marriage, not a wedding. Marriage is what happens after the champagne wears off and you start merging your life with another human being. That can be the most important time of your life. But the party celebrating the beginning of it, before you even know what the hell marriage really is? Please.

I’m not saying you shouldn't celebrate the beginning of your marriage and be as disgustingly happy as you possibly can be. I’m just saying there’s absolutely no justification for spending a small fortune on a single day, dress, cake, and DJ. Here’s the dirty little secret: The size of the celebration doesn’t ensure the strength of the relationship. It doesn’t matter if you had a million dollar wedding if you aren’t right for each other. In fact, some research suggests that couples who spend more on their weddings end up divorcing more often than those who are smarter with their money. A big wedding doesn’t ensure against infidelity, discontentment, or simply growing apart from your partner. So why drop so much on a party? If I ever get married, I’m going to invest in my marriage, not my wedding. My fiancé and I are going to save up for a house or a car or a baby, not a party.

I know I’m arguing a losing battle here, and I probably won’t change anyone’s minds about overspending on a wedding. Our society has lavish weddings programmed into our everyday culture, with TV shows like Say Yes to the Dress, Four Weddings, and My Fair Wedding. Women especially are told that our wedding day is the best day of our lives, that it’s our day (not the groom’s day, even though he’s half of the couple getting married), and that a wedding is the time to throw caution and reason to the wind and spend just as much as you want on your dream dress, your dream venue, your dream cake. Come one, dream cake? Seriously. Do you realize how childish that sounds? You should only have a dream cake when you’re under 6 years old, and that dream cake should be 20 bucks, tops, even with Elsa’s face on it. I seriously doubt you were sitting in your room as a child dreaming of a four-tiered hazelnut butter cake with a vanilla brandy glaze.

I’m ranting too much…moving on…

Hundreds of dollars...on the floor.

I think I’ve made my point about spending, but that isn’t my only issue with weddings as they are today. As a serial bridesmaid and unofficial friend therapist, I have seen the level of stress that planning this “most important party of anyone’s life” puts people through, and it is just freaking ridiculous. Family squabbles intensify, the couple get in screaming matches, and meltdowns are so commonplace that they made a TV show out of them (Bridezillas.) Planning a wedding is so stressful that couples actually break up due to stresses of a wedding. I’ve seen it happen firsthand. That makes no freaking sense to me. Why risk your entire relationship on something that’s supposed to celebrate your relationship? What the hell sense does that make?

Ladies and gentlemen, the aesthetic paragraph break.

Some might say that a couple who couldn’t survive the stress of planning a wedding doesn’t belong together, but I don’t really buy that. Marriage is a fragile thing in the beginning. It takes years to forge the unbreakable bonds that you see in old married couples who stick by each other through thick and thin. To pile an immense amount of stress on any couple too soon could end what could have been a meaningful lifelong love. Planning a wedding is one of the three most stressful endeavors a couple can go through (the other two being having a baby and renovating a home,) and it simply doesn’t have to be. In thirty years, are you really going to give a fuck that the roses were dusky pink and that you had custom ceramic napkin rings on every plate? Then why do you think it’s justifiable to fight over these things?

Weddings are wonderful parties, but they’re just that; parties. And in my opinion, the cost of them and the stress that they put on the couple and their families are in no way worth it. If I ever get married, I’m going to have one hell of a party, but there’s no freaking way my fiancé and I are going to spend more than a grand on it, if that. For me, at least, a wedding is a great time, but marriage is the real priority. My fiancé and I will save the major investments for something that will make our newlywed years a little less stressful.

Well that, and a kick ass honeymoon.