At least it looks beautiful

As a long-time wedding planner I know from my experience (and the numbers) that those who spend lots of money on a wedding will likely be divorced within seven years.

Let us remember the original purpose of a wedding. In prehistoric life, the idea that people would split into families was preposterous. Tribes needed to look after their own. Indeed, people lacked reproductive consciousness, not even associating intercourse with pregnancy in any kind of utilitarian manner until about three thousand years ago when we began to breed dogs. However, when the richest and most influential in a tribe wished to improve their status, they would seek to connect with those outside their immediate vicinity. Hence, marriage was born, a formalised ceremony to cement power and status.

The need to spend much on a wedding was a reflection of status: an expensive wedding demonstrated how physically and socially beneficial that marriage would be to both families (and their tribes). The cost of a wedding would be made up in the social capital it would give them.

Fortunately for my finances, many people spend an inordinate amount of money on their weddings now. Catering, an open bar, a generic venue with aesthetic traditions. I heard this year that old plantations are more in demand for weddings because of the spacious beauty of their grounds. Their echoes of torment from long-dead slaves might be apt, if somewhat distasteful, precursors for what is to come for some.

Of course there are always some couples for whom marriage is a thing of beauty. Those weddings are more about the family than the bride, a thanking of parents and a celebration of pride in someone’s heritage. In those celebrations any mistake or hitch becomes a source of mirth and a welcoming of collective resilience. Those ceremonies are the most meaningful ones to me, the only ones in which I felt privileged to have been a part.

But those do not pay the bills.

It’s sad to say, but I prefer bridezillas. Their whims are quickly met by an unrecalicant spouse, and enabled by an equally earnest mother. Upselling a wedding to these folks is easy, and often done on credit. I’m typing this on a Macbook Pro purchased by a zealous marriage completed only last Tuesday. The arguments were horrible and the wedding was ugly, but the computer it purchased for me is quite beautiful.