This is a most gratifying study: people who have small, expensive weddings divorce at a higher rate than those with bigger, cheaper ones.
Specifically:
the study found that women whose wedding cost more than $20,000 divorced at a rate roughly 1.6 times higher than women whose wedding cost between $5,000 and $10,000. And couples who spent $1,000 or less on their big day had a lower than average rate of divorce.The researchers, economists Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon at Emory, did not know why.
My theory: people have expensive, fantasy-driven weddings because they are unsure of the marriage, and are trying to drive up the sunk cost.
2 comments:
Could a high cost of wedding also indicate a higher priority put on the wedding than a marriage?
Or perhaps a high wedding cost might indicate how important having the perfect wedding is to the couple (or someone's parents) and thus point to an unrealistic view not only of wedding (necessities) but also to an unrealistic view of the cost and sacrifices involved in marriage?
Yes, or a variant - people put so much into the wedding because they can control it, whereas they can't imagine what is involved in making a long-term marriage work.
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