alt Hacker NewsIn America we spend that money on weddings. Lots of young people wipe their savings on getting married, at one of the most critical times in life (just before starting a family). It often prevents them having kids or buying a home for years.
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Ha, have you been to an indian wedding in India? Now that’s big big money. And the societal pressures to make it so are huge .. American weddings are so tame and sensible by comparison.
Far better to spend those $$ on weddings rather than funerals though !
You can always find disaster stories about couples who wipe out their savings and put themselves in a precarious financial situation for a wedding they can’t afford, but it’s actually super common.
Traditional weddings costs are paid in part or full by the parents. Many well off young people pay their own way. If neither is an option it’s also common to have a smaller or home-grown wedding.
If you know enough people we can all likely think of someone who overspent and regretted it, but I disagree that it’s the common cultural thing to do. It’s a topic where righteous people like to heap scorn on others for doing it, though.
Yes, we spend a lot on weddings, but not as much (adjusted for income) as they do on funerals. In Ghana they spend 2.3x-9x the yearly median income[1] on a funeral. The median income in the US is $45,140[2], so if we were to spend the same amount relative to income on weddings as they do on funerals, that would mean our weddings would be $103k-$406k.
[1] https://remotepeople.com/countries/ghana/average-salary/
I am so glad we had a big wedding. It was so much fun, and all my friends and family had a blast.
a couple can have a really big wedding for a really decent price if they plan everything themselves / with family
if they go through a planner, the 'coordination' eats most of the budget, almost entirely so if 'their people' get involved with setup / teardown
This seems very different that what the article describes.
Sure, some young people may spend more than they can really afford on their wedding, but this still seems like a personal choice - tons of people have cheap weddings (or gasp, elope). I don't think may people are cutting back on eating (when they already suffer from malnutrition) to have a big wedding like how the article describes funerals in Zimbabwe.
Plus, I think the relatively few cases in the US where young people do feel intense family pressure to overspend on a "big wedding" show similar dynamics and downsides to the "kinship societies" that the article is really about.
My wife and I eloped at the city hall. Our wedding was $0.
Same thing with engagement rings, it's just a stupid fake tradition created by DeBoers in the 1950s that costs an inordinate amount of money for nothing.
I really hope that lab grown diamonds puts that entire industry out of business.
I think people often spend too much on weddings, but even expensive weddings (IMO) are still in the same cost bracket as a relatively boring and reliable car. If buying a reliable car sets you back years... I view it more so as a sign that income levels are too low and people are trying to counter signal "poor stigma." (That said, weddings are also the kind of thing where extracting time from your kinship group can drastically lower costs. Rent a pavilion in a camp ground, have a bunch of people bring grills and some speakers and you can basically keep things pretty cost contained.) And of course upper class weddings are a whole different thing.