A candle-lit dinner is arranged at the dimly lit restaurant, you have the ring in your pocket, and now . . . . you pop the question. It all went perfectly and now you can get married. Wait just a minute though. It is not quite that simple. Getting an affirmative answer to your well-worded question only permits you to PLAN the wedding. Before you can get married, there is so very very much to do.
“Ok,” you think. “Then we will plan the wedding. We need a minister, a few flowers, and a photographer. How much can that cost anyway?” Hold on to your horses – $32,641 is the average cost of a wedding today, which is an all-time high for wedding costs. If you have a daughter who is not yet married, I will give you a moment to sit down, catch your breath, and perhaps take a hit on an oxygen tank.
There is no question about it – weddings are expensive for lots of reasons. Typically the bride’s parent’s pick-up 44 percent of the overall expense, the bride and groom pay 43 percent, and the groom’s parents cover the remaining 13 percent. And yet, what the happy couple get for that $32,000 is . . . one day. As Randal Olson, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, reports, there is nothing in this expense that helps ensure a “happy-ever-after ending.” He discovered that once the price tag passes the $20,000 mark, marriages are 3.5 times more likely to end in divorce. Emory University economics professors added support to this data when they found “that the more couples spend on their wedding, the shorter their marriage will be.”
There is a simple principle behind this that is good advice for us all – whether planning a wedding, picking your child’s schooling, or deciding what new toys (cars, boats, etc.) to buy – first and foremost – invest your time, focus, and affections on those who matter most. Spend on those things that are most likely to contribute to the longevity of relationships. You will be glad you did!