Overspending on a Wedding

Posted by: Henry B. | Dec 20,2007


Somehow, I don’t feel sorry for these people.  A $4000 gown?  Doves released into the air?  Weddings have gotten out of hand.  Things that we’ve seen in the movies as complete over-the-top satire have become commonplace.  Remember the swans in the bathtub in Father of The Bride?  That was supposed to seem ridiculous.  I’m reminded of this crazy concoction they have at our local fast food joint, Carl’s Jr. It’s called the breakfast burger: a hamburger, egg, bacon, hash browns, and cheese.  It sounds like a joke.  Lo and behold, I caught an ancient Simpson’s rerun the other day and Homer is fantasizing about the most ridiculous hamburger he can think of and it’s….the breakfast burger.  Sometimes it seems like our consumer culture has gotten way out of hand.  

But this is about weddings – specifically, deep wedding debt. It’s good to see the New York Times covering this issue.  I have friends who have gotten divorced.  Their wedding was the most overdone thing you have ever seen: think of the above example and multiply it.  They spent every minute of the year leading up to the wedding planning it.  Three years later they were divorced.  I’m not suggesting that every large wedding is unhealthy, but you have to really ask yourself why you’re going through these preparations.  For my friends, they were obsessing over wedding preparations as a way to channel their anxiety about the fact that they really weren’t meant for each other.

Consider why you’re spending all this time and money, especially if you’re putting it on your own credit cards.  If you’re spending someone else’s money, it is naturally easier to go crazy with wedding preparations, but you should still be clear why you are funneling so much time and money towards one day’s event.  There is so much time spent planning a wedding that there is little left over for planning the marriage itself.  Keep in mind that you are both bringing personal debt to the marriage.  Adding expensive wedding expenses is going to make your debt problems that much more difficult.  

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