People are taking out loans and wasting that hit on their credit to have a wedding.
While driving the other day I heard a report that there is a direct correlation between the cost of the wedding and divorce rate. The more expensive the wedding the less chance the relationship will survive. Sorry I don't remember the source. When we were discussing it that evening it seemed to ring true in our own circle of friends. I'm guessing the loan thing won't help those odds.
The only couple my age that is still together met online in the early 90's. She was in Australia, he was in SoCal. They finally met after he flew her to the US. They locked eyes, then drove to Vegas, got married, and ate at the buffet for two days. He comes back tells everyone he's married to a foreigner and we all flip out. He eventually moved to Australia to be a teacher and they have 3 kids with the first grandkid on the way. A few other friends got married and did the whole big ass wedding thing, all of them divorced. The plural of anecdote is not data, but yea, I get this. Seeing as how the main cause of separations are financial issues, if you get a loan to splurge on a party, you probably don't have good budgeting and long term financial planning abilities. In other news, holy shit my friends are grandparents; this just hit me.
Thats a great story, glad it worked out for them. My wife and I had mutual friends that introduced us at a nightclub in DC. She came home with me and we've been together ever since. Almost 30 years later we're still on our first date. I guess it's too late to drop her off back at her place. Sometimes shit just works out. Oh yeah, welcome to getting old.
There are some sources online, like this one from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/03/expensive-weddings-study_n_5929056.html
Ever been to a bar/bat mitzvah? I don't think I have been to one that cost less than $50K and some far more. For a kids party. That is insane. I went to one that was golf themed and they had a couple of rooms set off to the side of the ballroom to look like golf courses. They hired a pro golfer to be in one to give lessons and the other one was a VR golf course. It was tons of fun but really just an ego trip for the parents.
One of the worst pieces of advice I got when I was engaged was to take a $10,000 loan and just have a big party because we were "going to be in debt eventually anyways". I thought it was just because he loved going to large party weddings, didn't realize it was a larger trend.