A friend and I were finishing up our run recently, sweating out our last mile on an early weekday morning when she looked down at her Apple watch, ablaze with text messages and alerts.
“It’s insane,” she said, “I have two bridal showers this month, an engagement party and a wedding. It’s like this every single month until the end of the year. I’m exhausted.”
We joke that she’s like Katherine Heigl from “27 Dresses.” But it also really isn’t a joke – the wedding industry is exhausting. And expensive. And they’ve built it that way on purpose.
“Why is this all so crazy costly?” she looked at me, a bead of sweat rolling down her face. “For both the person getting married, and the people attending, it’s just too much.”
She makes a great point. The wedding industry has run wild, and we’ve allowed it to do so. Maybe it is time for us all to rethink our cultural obsession with weddings – and the staggering financial behemoth it has created.
Wedding costs – and expectations – are out of control
According to The Knot, the average cost of a wedding last year was $30,000, including the ceremony and reception.
Just for reference, warehouse workers, nursing assistants and shuttle drivers make less than $36,000 a year on average. You could also buy a new car for $30,000 or pay for the cost of tuition, housing and meal plan at a major university for the same price.
Just saying.
Wedding couples on average will spend roughly $11,000 on the reception venue, $2,000 on a dress, $2,500 on the florist and $4,000 on a live band. ValuePenguin reported that the cost of an engagement ring averaged $5,204 per wedding and that a photographer could add more than $2,000.
You know what else costs $2,000? My rent in Washington D.C., five pairs of Sony noise-canceling headphones and more than 650 cups of Starbucks coffee.
Again, just for reference.
There is also a massive cost burden for attendees. According to The Balance, it costs individual members of a bridal party more than $700 to attend a wedding, including travel, accommodations and clothing. And don’t forget those wild bachelor and bachelorette parties, which could cost up to $1,500. To top things off, throw in $100 for a gift.
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But hey, you can always read up on the dozens of articles highlighting how to save money when attending a wedding (like somehow that will solve the problem). Tips such as “open a new savings account earmarked just for the wedding” or “join forces with your fellow wedding guests” to split costs like travel and accommodations.
Is this what we have allowed the industry to push us toward? Opening a new savings account just to attend a friend or family member’s wedding?
The wedding business is just that
Alas, here we are. Couples spending tens of thousands of dollars on a single day, eating a chocolate cake that cost them $500, and guests reaching deep into their pockets to attend their friend’s big day.
I want to be clear: I’m not saying that weddings shouldn’t be prized, or that they aren’t a special day. They can be the glorious and beautiful unification of the love between two people. I’ve been to many, and they are generally fun and full of laughter, love and flowing alcohol.
I’m saying, however, that we need to – as a society – reckon with our relationship with the wedding business.
Because ultimately, that is what it is: The business of a wedding is a business. If we get too caught in the romanticism of the endeavor and the process, we forget that.
We forget that these days are about the celebration of two people, of a life they are working to create. Of bringing together family and friends and holding hope for an exciting new chapter in everyone’s lives.
I believe there is a certain level of conventional wisdom that weddings are overpriced, but we as a society have not worked to combat that. When will we decide that the wedding industry should not be so exhausting, should not be so expensive and should not put people into debt?
Until then, we are still feeding the behemoth and losing sight of what really matters.
Annika Olson, who received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Economics from University of Massachusetts Amherst and two master’s in Psychology and Public Policy from Georgetown University, has served as an AmeriCorps member in rural New Mexico and is a fellow of the OpEd Project.
