Marriage counselor Aaron Anderson critiques our ever-dangerous tendency to mix fairy-tales and marriage.
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Recently, Gint Aras, Marriage Editor for Good Men Project, posted an article presenting some staggering statistics of the average cost of weddings. Apparently, people in the U.S. spend an average of approximately $28,000 for their wedding. Compare this to an average of $22,000 for a year of college and $4,000 for an average family vacation for four and basically, for the same price of a wedding you can get a year of college tuition and a summer vacation with your family.
Because so much money and planning is apparently going into the wedding, as a marriage counselor I can’t help but wonder if people are putting as much money and preparation into the rest of their marriage as well.
One of the most common reasons couples fight is money. It would be much more advantageous for a couple to start their marriage off with money in savings instead of a heap of debt.
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Don’t get me wrong. I agree wholeheartedly with couples celebrating the beginning of their life together. Marriage is a blessed arrangement and should be celebrated. But with a divorce rate that has been stubbornly high at around 50% for the last three decades, I can’t help but believe that couples would do much better not just planning for their wedding day, but planning for the days after their wedding day. After all, marriage is more than just the wedding day. It’s a lifelong commitment.
It would seem that couples are falling into the belief of what I like to call the ‘Fairy-tale marriage’. This fairy-tale marriage is the belief that marriage will be like they see it in the Disney movies and that once they get married they’ll live happily ever after. Thinking of it that way, it makes sense why people would want to celebrate their wedding day so elaborately. I would want to celebrate it so elaborately if it ushered in the end of all my problems.
But therein lies the problem. Many couples have unrealistic ‘fairy-tale’ views of marriage. When they realize marriage really isn’t how it’s portrayed in the movies, they immediately believe their spouse must be doing something wrong. Then they aim for divorce.
Couples Should Think of Marriage as After the Wedding Day
Couples would do much better to focus on preparing for the daily, lifelong commitment of marriage instead of just the hype of the wedding day. After all, it’s the daily things couples do together after the wedding day that make a relationship happy or not. Instead of spending so much on a wedding, imagine what good that money would do on a down payment towards a house. Since one of the most common reasons couples fight is money, it would be much more advantageous for a couple to start their marriage off with money in savings instead of in a heap of debt.
Additionally, by not focusing so much on the wedding day and focusing instead of the rest of days after their wedding day, couples have a more realistic view of what marriage will be like and can better prepare for it. This will help abolish the false fairytale view of marriage and help couples during the ups and downs that will follow. It may even help the decrease the stubbornly high divorce rate.
Lastly, when couples realize that they don’t need to spend so elaborately on their wedding day, it creates a different emphasis. Instead of emphasizing the wedding day and celebration as the focal point, it emphasizes the lifelong commitment. And the lifelong commitment —not the celebration—is really what marriage is about.
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Let’s Stop Blaming Disney, by Gint Aras
I Had No Idea I Was Going to Propose, by Luke Brockmeier
The Orgasmic Marriage, Candice Holdorf
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
100% Agree. I feel that many people aren’t living intentional lives. But beyond that, the expectations these myths place on us definitely exacerbate the problem.
I totally agree with the article. And I would add that, the more a couple focuses on the wedding day instead than on the wedding itself (i.e. the relationship), the more it makes me wonder about the relationship’s depth and quality… Besides, I can’t help to notice that, as far as I know, all this fervent struggling for the “perfect marriage” is exclusively a woman thing. Never heard a guy fantasize much about that day; for him, it seems mostly a “Yes dear” thing. And the article missed noticing that (although I’m sure the author knows better). But, isn’t this… Read more »
Well said. I recently replied to a post making just that point. That the problem with many marriages these days (in western culture especially) is that husbands are afraid of their wives. This should not be. A man should not be afraid to have rules. He should not be afraid to say no – even if it makes his wife cry (women cry often and for a lot of reasons).
Anyway, what I’m trying to say if, stand your ground!
My wife and I didn’t have a big elaborate wedding precisely because we (mostly I) did not want to allocate money we didn’t have for what’s basically a big lavish party. Instead, we bought a house a month after our wedding. My wife still wants to have that fairytale wedding, but we’ll probably not do that until our ten year, if we do. I’m always baffled by these grandiose five-figure weddings, especially when couples are going into debt to have them. It makes no sense to me. If you have the discretionary income to have a big wedding, more power… Read more »
Off the top, since you mentioned the divorce rate and the cost of a weddings I would like to note a study that was done in 2012 which found …. “Study: Nearly Half Of America’s College Students Drop Out Before Receiving A Degree” I would also like to mention in relationship to the divorce rate that many of the divorces are second and third which then brings down the divorce rate of first time marriages. You also need to take into account that many of these couples marriages are subsidized by family members. I’m old school, I paid for my… Read more »
Tom, Pre Cana is one of the most practical modern Catholic traditions I can think of. It’s gutsy but intelligent, and it does reveal points of conflict couples are often unaware of. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have this kind of tradition throughout our culture. Most people would look at it as an intrusion in their lives.
Thanks, as always, for your excellent commentary.
Thanks Gint ….. Pre Cana made a big difference with my daughter and her husband
I agree that the fairy tale weddings are out of control and unhelpful, but I do wonder if the advice to consider the marriage starting after the wedding is wise. The best thing I’ve learned from people I know who have happy successful marriages (and from mine that wasn’t) is that the choice to marry is often best a celebration of the fact that a “marriage” between those people is the relationship that already exists. Choosing to make it official and honor it with family and friends is just icing on the cake.
Exactly! Thanks for making this point.
In my social circle it’s customary to refer to someone’s husband or wife if the couple is perceived to be “that kind of relationship”. This happened to us, too, 25+ years ago. It’s a cultural recognition is far more important than the paperwork.