Weddings keep the poor people poor

There's an essay in yesterday's New York Times about weddings. I learned that the cost of weddings, much like housing, education and healthcare, has been rising faster than the rate of inflation:

A survey this year found that the average wedding costs $27,852, compared with $15,208 in 1990. That is just the average, to say nothing of the mind-bogglingly lavish affairs of the well-to-do.

$27,852 is a huge chunk of money for an average couple, probably equivalent to one year's worth of their take home pay.

Weddings seem like a scam designed to keep the poor people poor. The huge cost of weddings prevents them from amassing any capital. After you add in the cost of an engagement ring, the newlywed couple starts out life significantly in debt. Or if all the money came from their parents, surely they would have been better off with a significant downpayment on a house instead of a wedding and a fancy ring.

Comments

[Dennis Mangan]

No one's forcing anyone to have a big, expensive wedding. Are you saying that people are automatons who blindly do what the media and the wedding industry tell them? Anyway, big weddings are driven by women, and if the man is manly enough he'll veto it, which is the problem: men go along with these idiotic things.

[Peter]

There's undoubtedly some degree of class envy at work. Weddings are among the few situations in which people of modest means can act, and be treated, just like the wealthy. "Be rich for a day," that sort of thing.

[The Superfluous Man]

Guess who the richest people are in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, home to Lubavitch (C)Hassidim - florists, photographers, caterers...

[SFG]

That's the average weddng. I imagine poor people spend less.

Also remember that averages are prone to distortion by outliers at the ends. There's probably a lot of rich people blowing 50 grand but that doesn't mean Joe Average blows 20 grand.

[michael vassar]

I'm with you Half, but really this is because people with our rationalist temprament just don't "get" weddings and other special occasions and rituals. For much of the population they matter very very much. I have no idea whether most people should be spending what they are, less, or even more on them.

[Jody]

We spent about $8,000 two years ago and we now own a house (or more accurately, own about 50% of it with the bank owning the rest) and I'm happy the results.

I am with HS that there is value in reminding people that maybe they would rather spend their money on other things. But if a big expensive wedding is what they want to the exclusion of lots of other things, then so be it and far be it from me to force others to conform to my preferences.

[David Alexander]

I think this is one of the reasons behind the ideas of a woman shortage and stories in the New York Times about men who don't want to get married. Many women will brush off men who can't afford expensive lavish weddings, and men who don't want to have expensive lavish weddings are dumped by the wayside for their male counterparts who would easily blow this money.

So unless you like ugly brainy girls, then you're going to end up spending quite a bit of money on a stupid and barely religious ceremony.

Plus watching one episode of Bridezilla has made me hate weddings.

[SFG]

"So unless you like ugly brainy girls, then you're going to end up spending quite a bit of money on a stupid and barely religious ceremony."

Why would ugly brainy girls be immune to the temptation of a fancy wedding? Last time I checked they were quite popular on the Internet...

[IC]

High IQ type women are rarely interested in expensive wedding ring. Funny, they even do not put up too much makeup either.

[Peter]

Speaking from experience, I sort of doubt that many couples begin making their wedding plans with the intention of spending an arm and a leg - it just works out that way. Nothing wedding-related is ever sold at a discount, at least it sure seems like that, and if there's a couple that's not been surprised by spiralling costs no one's ever heard of them. "Extras" keep popping up and it's very difficult to say No without being made to feel like a cheapskate. It should go without saying that caterers and other vendors of wedding products and services tend to be very crafty salespeople. Tied in with all this is the fact that keeping the guest list under control is most definitely in the easier-said-than-done category. Putting it all together, most of the couples who end up spending the $27.8K the Times cites as an average probably started out planning to spend a lot less.

[Spungen]

Don't blame this all on the women. Weddings are about showing off and hosting a big party, and men are just as prone. You see the women fussing more because they get stuck doing the work in putting it together. It's the family's/man's resources, and the woman's hostessing skills, which are traditionally on display and being scrutinized. And, make no mistake, they *are* being scrutinized.

Weddings can be a lot of fun if they're not yours. I'd think some of you "traditional" fellows would appreciate this particular tradition, with its nice dinners, formal dress and such. No Juicy Couture to offend HS.

I think the drive-up in spending is probably about social insecurity, which makes sense nowadays. For poorer people (working class), they're often younger, so their families consider their own reputation on the line. I agree, they couple would be a lot better off with a down payment on a house -- but you can't put that on credit. Ironically, it's probably easier to have a small-scale affair when you've got more money, because 1) you don't feel the need to show off, and 2) you know all sorts of other, wiser uses for that money.

For non-traditional families, like where the couple already has a kid or has them from previous relationships, it can be worse -- because now is the time everyone can pretend they're a TV 50s couple.

When you're middle-class and a bit older, you have to invite people from your professional circle, so then you've got that angle to cover. The standards go up when critical boss or important clients are watching.

Unattractive women can be the worst -- you see the worst side of *anyone* with an inferiority complex when they're cast in the center of attention.

We got married about the same time as Jody and spent roughly the same (not counting the honeymoon). A wedding can quickly get "lavish" simply from inviting a lot of people, because of the cost per head and the bigger venue needed. Luckily, husband and I were both from small families and weren't very popular. ;) The friends I had were not ones to snicker at a $600 wedding dress.

[Spungen]

And, P.S., who are these people who get invited to so many weddings that it clogs their schedules and tires them out? I read where Americans had *fewer* friends than a few decades ago.

[Kirk]

spungen wrote: "And, P.S., who are these people who get invited to so many weddings that it clogs their schedules and tires them out? I read where Americans had *fewer* friends than a few decades ago."

I haven't been to a wedding since my brother's. That was in 1984.

I'd be happy to go to a reception at McDonald's, or someplace similar. (Those all-you-can-eat Chinese places rock!)

I don't know why people spend so much money on these things. Me, I like the idea of couples registering at Target. You get them a $20 toaster, you go eat all the Chinese food you want, you go home happy. I don't think it could get any better than that.

[David Alexander]

High IQ type women are rarely interested in expensive wedding ring. Funny, they even do not put up too much makeup either.

High IQ women tend to not want relationships in the first place, and when they do, they tend to be rather ugly and drab women. Now, why would a man want a ugly high-IQ woman when he can get a woman with a lower-IQ, but considerably better looking, especially if you have access to these women?

Coincidentally, one of my friends has described my taste in women has high maintenance meets porn star slut, but I'll write that off to being young. :)

[Dennis Mangan]

"It's the family's/man's resources, and the woman's hostessing skills, which are traditionally on display and being scrutinized." Whatever happened to the tradition of the bride's father footing the bill?

[Spungen]

Same thing that happened to the tradition of waiting for sex before marriage, woman staying home and having kids right away, and people getting married before 30. And fathers necessarily being around and caring.

It still happens sometimes. Which is one *more* reason for the woman and her family to stress out, because it's a reflection on them. Why would men veto it, if it's not their money anyway?

[IC]

High IQ women tend to not want relationships in the first place, and when they do, they tend to be rather ugly and drab women.

Not to Bill Gate, it is matter of taste. No body can imagine Bill Gate marrying a porntar type of beauty.

[Loki on the run]

This is just another example of how those of us on the (extreme) right hand side of the Bell Curve are making life tough (evolutionarily) for those on the left hand side.

Not to Bill Gate, it is matter of taste. No body can imagine Bill Gate marrying a porntar type of beauty.

Oh man, do those porntar types ever get down and dirty.

[superdestroyer]

Doesn't this get started even before a Wedding. Want to bet that the students at Anacostia High School in DC spend more on their senior prom that the students at Sidwell Friends. Why? Because the Sidwell Friends students have been exposed to other social events before but the Anacostia Students want to "Pimp Their Prom." Or if you watch sweet 16 parties on MTV, it is not old money having blow out parties but it is new money families.

[SFG]

"This is just another example of how those of us on the (extreme) right hand side of the Bell Curve are making life tough (evolutionarily) for those on the left hand side."

Actually, the extreme right hand side doesn't do that well financially, as HS has documented.

"High IQ women tend to not want relationships in the first place, and when they do, they tend to be rather ugly and drab women."
Huh? There's the common admonition that beauty and brains don't go together but I haven't seen any studies proving that.
"Now, why would a man want a ugly high-IQ woman when he can get a woman with a lower-IQ, but considerably better looking, especially if you have access to these women?"
I see you've never browsed the internet and come upon the phenomenon of geek girl lust. Come on, look at Jacqueline Passey. Nuts, but she has lots of admirers. ;)

[Peter]

I see you've never browsed the internet and come upon the phenomenon of geek girl lust. Come on, look at Jacqueline Passey. Nuts, but she has lots of admirers. ;)

Yeah, but at least 90% of Jackie's admirers are:

1) married men looking for a little trim on the side;
2) pimply, 14-year-old compulsive masturbators;
3) fat 65-year-olds with scrotums hanging halfway to their knees; or
4) pathetic introverts who play Warcraft 16 hours a day.

Wait, did I say 90%? I meant 99%!

[rose]

Interesting how men judge a woman primarily by her looks insted of the WHOLE human being.

But then, I've noticed that the most unattractive men are the quickest to make such judgments and are also the most lonely people around. :-)

What looks have to do with the cost of weddings is beyond me. I figure if people spend a lot of money on a wedding, it's because they either feel the need to put on a grand show because they lack self-confidence or they have that sort of money. My son and his bride spent $40,000 on their wedding, and it was fabulous, a wonderful day and a wonderful memory. And her family had that sort of money to where no one went into debt.

When even teens go overboard on proms and their parents allow it, it follows that weddings will be even more austentatious. The New Yorker Magazine many years ago did a series of articles on weddings, and in their research they discovered it was ordinary people trying to imitate royalty for a day.

Well, some of us can do without being royalty or even wanting to be, but I guess some people can't or won't. And the memory of one grand day like that is worth it to some people. I'll never know why, but then, the differences are what make the world go round.

[Spungen]

Hey, what's this? Somehow I stumbled upon this post from 2005:

"Big Mike's Wedding Blog was a complete failure, so I decided to recycle the url and use it for Big Mike's Contrarian Investing Blog."

Was there really a "Big Mike's Wedding Blog" by Half Sigma? I can't find it in Google, except for some comments in other blogs related to Libertarian Girl.

Oh, and one of these referred me to a blog by a cute blond liberal girl, called "Abigail's Magic Garden." Seems like in March of 2005, Abigail shared many of Half Sigma's views in a post entitled, "How weddings keep the poor people poor." Hmmm ... did Half Sigma plagiarize this? I'm confused.

It seems like these two would have been good for each other. But perhaps she disagreed, and therein lies the key to many of Half Sigma's views about women.

[SFG]

Um, I believe Libertarian Girl and Abigail's Magic Garden were Half Sigma's sock puppets, created as an experiment: the one to see if libertarian views would get more hits if spouted by a girl (they did), the other to see if he could write a liberal blog (apparently he did, by focusing on social issues).

[Spungen]

OK, but that still doesn't explain the wedding blog. Is Half Sigma an embittered former wedding groupie?

And, really, how do I know *you're* not Half Sigma, too?

Have he and Jacqueline Passey ever been seen in the same place?

[bbartlog]

I continue to be surprised at the value judgments you like to impose on other peoples' entirely voluntary expenditures. I would have expected them to beat that out of you when you studied econ. Though I suppose (given your history and intelligence) that you are maybe just taking some carefully crafted positions designed to elicit controversy, and don't actually hold any of these opinions...

As for looks and intelligence, they are positively correlated, at least when you look at the whole population. It wouldn't surprise me if the correlation doesn't hold at the extremes, though. And as for the question of why someone would choose brains over beauty: there's both the dread of having stupid kids (intelligence is pretty heritable), and also the fact that it's very hard to get along with someone long-term if they're a lot stupider than you. +/- 15 IQ points or so you can generally explain yourselves to each other, but a wider gap than that and a lot of communication you might like to have becomes futile.

[Half Sigma]

Yes, Abigail's Magic Garden was my blog. I hope the pretty Russian girl doesn't mind that I used her photo.

You can still read the old posts from Big Mike's Wedding Blog.

[Douglas Knight]

It would be nice to have better numbers. As SFG points out, an average of $27k doesn't mean the average couple spends that much. Growing income inequality might explain part of the difference from 1990 (though not much, I imagine). Spungen points out that people get married later. That could also drive up the price of weddings without raising the ratio to salary. (I have no idea what effect the change from the father of bride paying should have, but I imagine that change was more pre-1990 than post.)

michael vassar:
I don't know whether people are spending the right amount on weddings, but I doubt the change from 1990 reflects better decisions or increasing wealth being utilized at the correct margin.

[Douglas Knight]

SFG:
I think "sock puppet" (as I understand it) is too harsh to describe Half Sigma's actions. But I haven't read much of their interactions.
Incidentally, yesterday I discovered the term "straw puppet."

Half Sigma:
Why did you ever think "Big Mike" would make a good host for a wedding blog?

[Spungen]

Bbart,

I read a study a few years ago that found male children inherit their intelligence solely from their mothers. Female children inherit from both mother and father.

So if a brilliant guy marries a bimbo hoping for smart offspring to take over his empire, he'd better hope for daughters.

[SFG]

"I read a study a few years ago that found male children inherit their intelligence solely from their mothers. Female children inherit from both mother and father."
If some of the genes for IQ are on the X chromosome (and given the size of that bugger I wouldn't be surprised), that would explain both what you have said and the observation that men have a wider range of IQs than women. I doubt men inherit their brains SOLELY from their mother though, it's probably just a stronger correlation.
This would be a reason to marry a smart woman, and I wouldn't be surprised if a preference for airhead bimbos were the cause of the downfall of many family enterprises.

I don't think HS and Jacqueline are the same person. Their styles are totally different!

And as for me being HS...well, remember how mad he got when I called him a liberal? (Yes, I'm the old SciFiGeek, I got sick of typing out the camel notation.)
I meant no harm with the sock puppet comment, there was a bulletin board where I had four different identities at one point. Long story.

[Spungen]

"Why did you ever think "Big Mike" would make a good host for a wedding blog?"

Yeah, this is the most, um, counterintuitive Half Sigma identity yet. People generally don't look to large straight men for celebrity wedding gossip and fashion advice. But props to him, I guess, for bucking every social stereotype regarding white male right-leaning atheist computer programmers ...

[Chris O']

Holy Jesus that has to be the funniest series of posts I have ever read.

[Douglas Knight]

SFG:
And as for me being HS...well, remember how mad he got when I called him a liberal?

So you're not a sock puppet...but you could be a straw puppet!

[beowulf]

Spungen,

What would be great if people figured out that we're all HS sock puppets. That in fact, he doesn't actually allow comments. :o)

[Noumenon]

Interestingly, on that Abigail blog Sigma has another post called College keeps poor people poor. Title synchronicity. There's also a quite good and original one here:

"The article notes how savings have been continually declining even though tax incentives increase. I think we should acknowledge that these tax incentives have been a failure, and we should abolish all the tax incentives and the 401k programs and the IRAs and just let people save or not save as they wish."

Sounds good to me! Savings couldn't get much worse, could it?

[TGGP]

I thought marriage was less common among the poor. That's why the government is always trying to promote marriage. Marriage is an extremely old institution that poor people didn't have too much trouble taking part in before. Maybe marriage ceremonies should be orchestrated only by the Catholic Church.

Here's a good post from Jane Galt involving the poor and marriage.

[Spungen]

"Marriage is an extremely old institution that poor people didn't have too much trouble taking part in before."

A lot of societies besides ours have ceremonial expectations that squeeze their people dry. I remember hearing that in the Phillipines (Roman Catholic country), a lot of poorer couples weren't able to marry due to the expense of the proper Church ceremony and expected festivities. Instead, they'd just live together -- and put together fake wedding albums, with their heads cropped in, so as not to traumatize the children.

I see that on the Abigail college post, Half Sigma's fantasy liberal girl recommends apprenticeships instead of college. She doesn't recommend any policy changes though. BTW, Half Sigma: A real liberal girl would create an arty photo or use none at all -- certainly not this cheesy "senior portrait" glamorshot. And, she probably wouldn't coordinate the blog background colors to her photo wardrobe. You did a nice job of that, though.

[rose]

Spungen says: "a lot of poorer couples weren't able to marry due to the expense of the proper Church ceremony and expected festivities"

Yeh, but that has nothing at all to do with the Church, and everything to do with the cultural competetitiveness. The Church expects very little to perform a ceremony and would even do it for free if the young people just got properly married. The culture, however, has high expectations for a wedding with people trying to outdo each other.

So let's put the blame where it belongs please and not insinuate something that is untrue.

[Spungen]

Rose, are you talking about the Phillipines, or America? I was not implying that the Catholic Church, or any other religion, is especially responsible for social pressure to spend big on ceremonies. (Although oftentimes, social and religious pressure are hard to distinguish.) I was responding to the commenter who suggested (jokingly) that the Church could solve the problem.

It does cost a little more to be married in any house of worship than at City Hall. One has to pay the officiant and rent the venue. I have heard that in some other countries these costs are substantial. In America, the big costs come from non-religious extras like the reception, dress, and decorations.

[rose]

Just wanted to clarify that it is social pressures that cost, NOT the church. Paying the official is customary, but strictly voluntary, and in most countries renting the venue is cheap and easy since weddings are celebrated in a community hall or at home. Most of the costs are social pressures which the church cannot solve.

However, thank you for clarifying what you meant. Just didn't want some readers to jump to another false assumption because they might believe anything they want to believe in their eagerness to denigrate religion.