The Absurdity Of The Modern American Wedding
I’m not one to care much about how other people spend their money, but news like this never ceases to amaze me:
“Can’t buy me love,” Paul McCartney once sang.
That doesn’t mean you can’t spend a pretty penny celebrating the emotion, as thousands of North Dakotans and Minnesotans heading down the aisle this year will prove.
The cost of saying “I do” in the Red River Valley for 2007 is estimated at $23,800, according to http://www.thewedding
report.com, a Tucson, Ariz.-based research organization that tracks wedding spending across the U.S.
That price tag is lower than the projected 2007 U.S. average of $27,690, said the site’s founder, Shane McMurray.
Local wedding vendors say they believe the average cost of a Fargo-Moorhead wedding likely hovers in the range of $10,000 to $15,000. And, they note, every couple is different in the amount they choose to spend.
The $23,000 figure sounds high from what I know of local weddings, so the $10,000 - $15,000 figure sounds more reasonable. But even so, what an incredible amount of money to waste on one day.
That’s right. I said “waste.”
Am I the only one who’s tired of weddings? Am I the only one who sees these over-blown ceremonies for what they really are? I’m not talking about the ideal of marriage, but rather the industry that has cropped up around that concept.
Think about it for a minute. A young man and a young woman fall in love. They’ve been dating for a long time and its becoming clear to both of them that they should take the next step. So what is that expected next step? An engagement ring, of course. And, of course, the fiancé-to-be won’t be expecting a run-of-the-mill ring. She’ll be expecting a ring of the “how else can six months salary last forever” variety. Why is she expecting that kind of a ring? Marketing, of course.
All their lives today’s women have been told to expect a fairytale wedding. They want huge rings and huge ceremonies. Forget that most young couples already have enough financial burdens what with most of them facing enormous student loans and credit pit-falls at every turn.
What I don’t understand is why some of these young couples don’t take some of the money they’re spending on wedding extravaganzas and invest it in their futures. Why not have a more simple wedding? The money saved would more than likely mean a brighter future for the marriage itself.
If I were a woman, I certainly wouldn’t mind a plain ring if it meant that I could live in a larger house a few years down the road. Or if I knew it meant that my children could go to a better college. To be honest, I’m not sure I’d want to marry a woman who was so wrapped up in image that she couldn’t put aside the idea of a huge wedding in favor of financial security in the future.
They say that the majority of divorces can be blamed on differences over finances. Given that even just $10,000, invested property in a home or otherwise, can be the difference between financial security and living paycheck to paycheck I wonder how many marriages could be saved if the bridge and groom went with a simple ceremony instead of an extravagant one.
Rodney Graves
Rezistik
robert108
mudcat
Eugene Graner
Last Best Hope
ProudinNC
goon
Neiman
