There is nothing simple about the typical modern day wedding.
The bride, charged with the task of planning the wedding, spends innumerable hours
shopping for the perfect wedding dress, picking out the right color combinations
like champagne and blush for the decorations and flowers, choosing menu
options, discussing venues, arranging schedules, and attending wedding expos in
order to find a photo booth and DJ. It is a thrilling process filled with surprises,
joys, setbacks and indecision. There are also mini events like bridal showers
and bachelor/bachelorette parties. Planning these events alone are time
consuming because it’s challenging to organize the schedules of the wedding
party. Family feuds must be mended and seating charts carefully arranged. Who’s
invited and who’s not? The couple must register for wedding gifts and select
the furnishings of their new home. The amount of energy and money that go into
planning a wedding is mentally taxing and costly. In short, the modern day
wedding is elaborate. Months are spent planning the event, and the typical
wedding costs $25,200 (http://www.costofwedding.com/).
From all of this effort, a surprising statistic arises; according
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce. Why
does the average American spend $25,200 on an elaborate wedding ceremony and
reception in order to take a vow that constitutes only a 50% success rate? Is
there an excess in the amount of planning of the wedding day and not enough
planning of a successful future with one’s potential lifelong spouse? The focus
seems to be misdirected from the marriage to the wedding.
Facing an uncertain future, the bride and groom promise “for
better or for worse” and “in sickness and in health.” I believe there is an
underlying courage to take a vow to commit to love each other for the rest of their
earthly lives and mean it. Perhaps their hope is stronger than their reason as
a young couple prepares to take on the world together, unaware of the
challenges that come with marriage. They cannot anticipate the hardships that
they will endure together nor can they anticipate if they will be strong enough
together to make it past them. This represents the nature of the human being to
hope against all odds (50% not in their favor) that their marriage will last in
love. This notion is romantic if not practical.
I am sure that there is no correlation between the
percentage of divorce and the amount spent on wedding ceremonies and
receptions; however, this trend in the increasing price of weddings in spite of
these divorce statistics caused me to pause.
Bibliography
"Marriage and Divorce: Patterns by Gender,
Race, and Educational Attainment : Monthly Labor Review: U.S.
Bureau of
Labor Statistics."U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oct. 2013. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
"Average Wedding Cost in the United States
Is $25,200." Average Wedding Cost in the United States Is
$25,200. The Wedding Report, 2015. Web. 08 Feb. 2015.
This is a great topic within the topic raised by Trevor. The availability of divorce has been one of the great successes of progressive movements over the years, which have argued that an early marriage should not doom one to unhappiness. Radicals like Milton had long ago argued for the availability of divorce, but it has only become truly available in the 20th century, and common in the later half of the 20th century. You do raise an interesting question: is it now simply, because of cultural and legal reasons, easier to spend 25000 dollars than to think about how to make a marriage work? Is the wedding now the main attraction, the marriage the sideshow?
ReplyDeleteI never realize how expensive modern weddings have become - a simple ceremony to declare a life-long commitment to each other (unless it doesn't work out) has turned into a grand spectacle. Perhaps when I finally get married at like 50 I'll just elope.
ReplyDeleteYou're definitely right about the salient point of the vows being actually meaning them. In a world where divorce is so common and, frankly, so casual, it's definitely easy for people to "jump the gun" and get married before they realize the full commitment that it entails. I try not to be cynical though, because a high divorce rate is still favorable to a lower one if it comes at the cost of not being able to escape a truly bad marriage.
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