Have you spent too much on your wedding? Bad news, a study reveals link between wedding expenses and divorce
A study investigating the connection between spending on engagement rings, weddings and long-term happiness has thrown up interesting results.
You can’t put a price on love. Or can you? Two economic researchers have tried and have come up with interesting results, which may (or may not) surprise you.
A joint study conducted by Andrew Francis-Tan of the National University of Singapore and Hugo M. Mialon of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia focused on the association between wedding spending and marriage duration from a survey of 3,000 people in the United States.
You might imagine spending more money on anything related to your big day would lead to a happier, longer relationship, but guess what - that isn’t the case. At least not among those surveyed.
How to have a long and happy marriage
There are three main takeaways from the findings.
Don’t buy an expensive engagement ring
Firstly, it appears that splashing out on an overly fancy engagement ring doesn’t guarantee a successful marriage (who would’ve thought it?). In fact, quite the opposite.
Results show that men who spent between $2,000 and $4,000 on an engagement ring are 1.3 times more likely to get divorced than those who “only” paid between $500 and $2,000.
The perfect excuse to save some cash.
Have a “cheap” wedding
Similarly, going over the top on a lavish wedding is also vastly overrated, as far as long-term happiness goes. Marriages that have a wedding budget of over $20,000 are 1.6 times more likely to end in divorce than those who spend less than $1,000 (yes, apparently that is possible in the modern world).
Go on honeymoon (anywhere)
Instead, it would be wise to spend the money you’ve saved on the ring and the wedding on a honeymoon instead. It doesn’t matter how far you go, what you do, or for how long, but the study shows that simply having an honeymoon of any kind is associated with a lower risk of divorce, with the amount spent also not important.
Therefore, cheap engagement ring + cheap wedding + honeymoon = happy marriage. Simple.
Other helping factors, according to the findings, are a relatively high household income, regularly attending religious services, having a child with your partner and a relatively high wedding attendance.
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