How Could Wedding Size Make a Difference?

By Scott M. Stanley & Galena K. Rhoades

In our recent report for the National Marriage Project (Before “I Do”: What do Premarital Experiences have to do with Marital Quality Among Today’s Young Adults?), we focused on how relationship history before marriage relates to marital quality. We examined the history of relationships that came before the relationship with the eventual spouse and premarital experiences with the eventual spouse. For example, having more sexual partners, having cohabited with partners other than the spouse, or having children from prior relationships were all associated, on average, with lower marital quality later on. Further, those who had child with their eventual spouse before marriage, reported that their relationship began by hooking up, or who said they slid into living with their eventual spouse (if they cohabited premaritally at all), also reported lower marital quality.

While there is no end to controversy about the implications of such findings, these findings were really not controversial themselves. There is a history of similar findings as well as strong reasons why such variables will be related to marital outcomes—including selection but also the consequential impacts of the actual behaviors.[i]

Wedding Guests: Does the Number Matter?

In the Before I Do report, we presented an analysis that was, to our knowledge, totally new in this field. In our national, longitudinal sample, we had asked those who got married how many people attended their wedding. We didn’t ask this on a lark. We asked because of a strong theory for why those having more attendees at their weddings might have an edge in marriage.

Those who reported having more guests at their wedding reported, on average, higher levels of marital quality—even when we controlled for factors such as education, religiosity, race, and income. While we controlled for individual income, we didn’t have measures of other possibly important variables to control for such as the cost of the weddings, parental wealth and contributions to the wedding, or a straightforward indicator of the size of the couples’ social network. So, caveat emptor. (If you want to read more on the technical issue of included and unmeasured variables, see one of the follow-up pieces we wrote that was posted here at the Institute for Family Studies.)

Here’s some of what we said about this finding in our report. This section describes the strong theory that may explain, at least in part, the association between wedding attendance and marital quality.

There is some reason to believe that having more witnesses at a wedding may actually strengthen marital quality. According to the work of psychologist Charles Kiesler (1971), commitment is strengthened when it is publicly declared because individuals strive to maintain consistency between what they say and what they do.

We try to keep our present attitudes and behaviors in line with our past conduct. The desire for consistency is likely enhanced by public expressions of intention. Social scientist Paul Rosenblatt applied this idea specifically to marriage (Rosenblatt, 1977). He theorized that, early in a marriage, marital stability and commitment would be positively associated with the ceremonial effort and public nature of a couple’s wedding. Rosenblatt specifically suggested that holding a big wedding with many witnesses would lead to a stronger desire—or even need—to follow through on the commitment.

Our findings suggest that he may have been right. Nevertheless, it is also important to keep in mind that because these questions about weddings have received so little attention in prior studies and because only a small percentage of respondents reported not having a wedding, these findings should be tested in other samples.

This is why we asked the question in the first place. Despite the strength of this idea (and its overlap with clear findings in the study of cognitive dissonance), one of the best alternative explanations was that the cost of a wedding might better explain marital outcomes than the number of guests. After all, couples with more economic resources tend to have many advantages in life and marriage. But we did not have the cost of the wedding in our national data set, so we could not analyze it.

Wedding Guests and Wedding Costs

Thanks to a social psychologist Samantha Joel, who is, like us, is interested in relationship decision making, we came across a study that looks at the number of guests people had at their wedding but also other variables such as the cost of weddings. Economists Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon of Emory University examined how expenses related to getting married (the cost of weddings and engagement rings) and a host of other variables—including the number of guests—were associated with the likelihood of divorce.  They examined a different outcome than we did, divorce not marital quality, but you can see the overlap.

Some of what Francis and Mialon found is complex. Overall, while controlling for a host of variables, they found that spending more money on rings and weddings was not associated with more stable marriages. In fact, those who spent the most on their weddings ($20,000 or more) were, on average, at greater risk for divorce. The economists speculate about why this could be, and they further examine factors such as the stress a large debt from an expensive wedding might place on a marriage.

Here’s the part we zeroed in on. In a variety of analyses (some without controls and some with a large number of control variables—including wedding costs), Francis and Mialon found that higher wedding attendance was associated with lower odds of divorce. Although the findings related to costs of weddings and rings had shown complicated patterns, the pattern related to number of guests was always in the same direction and always clear.

We think this one line from Francis and Mialon’s paper best exemplifies their overall findings: “Thus, the evidence suggests that the types of weddings associated with lower likelihood of divorce are those that are relatively inexpensive but are high in attendance.”

Within a few months’ time, the field has gone from no findings (that we know of) related to the wedding attendance to two reports showing consistent results. There are surely many possible explanations, including some we will to try to investigate further in the future, but this second study seems to rule out one explanation we were most concerned about when interpreting our own finding—the cost of the wedding.

Can I get a Witness?  

Some couples planning a life together do not want a wedding or may want one that is very modest with just close friends and family attending. Personal preferences matter a lot in all of this. Surely, what we are talking about here is just one small part of the overall puzzle of how a couple might build a life together. Many other things matter and matter more, but let’s say you are open to some tips on the size and scope of your wedding. Here are some thoughts.

First, don’t break the bank when getting married. Many young adults have debts already, and may do more harm by taking on further debt with an expensive wedding. It is unfortunate that the image so many now have is of lavish, costly weddings. This wild expectation puts weddings out of reach for those with fewer means and adds greater burdens to parents, brides, and grooms for those with more.

Second, it may be worth finding ways to prioritize the network of friends of family you have, and inviting them to be guests at your wedding. The benefits of having more witnesses at your wedding may come from both the psychological consequences of making a very public declaration of commitment (which should increase follow through) and from having more friends and family who see your relationship as something to rally around, root for, and support.

Third, for couples who do not have a strong network of friends or family, think about how you might build one. We don’t mean trying to do this just in time for your wedding. We mean doing this over time for your marriage. When it’s possible (and we know it is not always realistic), building a friendship with another couple or getting involved in some community group together might be just the thing to start building a network of support and connection around your marriage.

If you like the idea of a big, expensive wedding, can well afford it, and it won’t cause a lot of additional stress, sure. Knock yourself out. But the power of the thing is far more likely to lie in the connections and the commitment than in the lavishness of the spectacle. Building social capital trumps burning economic capital. Prioritize your social network, not the duck canapés.



[This piece was first posted on the blog of the Institute for Family Studies in December, 2014.]

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[i] We wrote a couple follow-up pieces on those subjects for those interested more in what social scientists argue about, here and here. The latter piece discussed particularly challenging issues about how social scientists approach and interpret their analyses.  

Lavish Weddings: One Explanation for A Trend I am Concerned About

I wrote a piece for the blog of The Institute for Family Studies today, called The Silver Lining of Lavish Weddings.  In that piece, I explain my concerns about how the current trend places one more barrier between the desire for marriage and the reality of marrying for couples at lower incomes. However, I also explain why there is a theoretical reason to expect that some couples benefit from the trend in terms of motivation to succeed in marriage, and that the growing trend could be one of the results of insecurity people now have about marriage. 

Bride Not-to-Be Keeps 53K Diamond Ring

A man broke up with his fiancé--by text message.  A judge ruled that his fiancé could keep the engagement ring because he also texted "Plus you get a $50,000 parting ring. Enough for a down payment on a house."

Seems to me that she should have gotten to keep the ring regardless of him having texted that little bit extra.  That's how it used to work, anyway. The ring was a promise. If you don't follow through, you give up the ring.

You can read the basic story here.  Of course, also in the news, Johnny Depp has been wearing an engagement ring.

I wrote in the past about the interesting history of engagement rings and then took it further to consider why such customs exist (or existed more in the past) and the issues involved for men and women.  There are a couple of pretty interesting posts on this if you are interested.  Here.

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Buying a Wedding or Buying Into Marriage: The Hokey-Pokey Grail

A colleague of mine noticed this upcoming convention for those in the wedding industry, called WeddingMBA, held in, you might have guessed, Las Vegas.  (Thank you Jennifer A.)  The line up of seminars is pretty interesting to look over.  Many topics are not surprising given that this is the business these folks are in, after all. The seminar line up includes some of these titles that stood out to me as pretty good [the comments in brackets are my editorials]:

- White Hot! - Bridal Trends You Need To Know [Pretty good title, really.]
- The Wedding Revolution - Join One...Start One [Perhaps these folks are onto the decline in marriage.  We could use some type of revolution and it sure would be good for planners’ businesses!]
- Mystique of the High-End Bride - Illusion vs Reality [I wonder if the mystique is that she’ like other brides, only richer.]
- Train Wreck Weddings - What To Do When Everything Goes Wrong [If you think about all the pressure on big weddings these days, I would certainly think that this business could get pretty stressful.]
- Make Her Love You - Creating an Exceptional Experience for Your Bride [Not really a bad concept for those in this business.  It’s what you need to get word of mouth, right?]

My colleague (Jennifer A.) would like to see something different, perhaps entitled more like this: “Help them love each other—through Thick and Thin.” Of course, these are wedding planners and others in the wedding industry, so they can be excused for their focus. But this focus does match our culture: more attention to weddings and divorces but not so much about marriages succeeding. It is rather difficult to make the latter into news, but the former? In just the past year, think of news related to Brad and Angelina planning to get married, or to Kim K. and TomKat. Stability doesn’t really get headlines.

Does buying a huge wedding (with the planner and the whole 9 yards) really make for a stronger marriage? The difficulty comes in with the other 70 or 80 yards.  Ironically, lavish weddings may well help some couples at the margins. This is kind of sad because buying into a huge wedding is not the same as buying into your relationship. I mean deciding that you are all in and that you will invest yourself in this thing of building a life together.

Why might huge, expensive weddings help some couples? Back to my last post from my dissertation. (I know those of you who have not read my dissertation for 25 years or more are enjoying this walk down Nostalgia Lane. What? You have not read it? Oh my.) How does that section relate? Simple. In this day and age, marriage is increasingly something the well-off do and those in poverty or at lower incomes dream about achieving one day. To be sure, most people in most income groups do get married but the trends are rapidly changing to where this is becoming an ever growing part of the economic divide.  (See two posts ago for that!) There is a steady erosion of marriage happening among those without college educations and who have poorer economic opportunities. However, in case you do not realize this, less marriage does not mean less interest in marriage among those who live in poverty.  It’s been well known for a long time that those in poverty have the highest ideals about marriage even if they are less able to realize them.  I gave a keynote address on this very point in 2006, and scholars such as Kathryn Edin, Maria Kefalas, and David Fein wrote powerfully on this in the early 2000s. The data are striking. Difficulty accessing or succeeding at something does not equate to disinterest. Those who I know well, who have been working with lower income groups to help them with their own relationship aspirations, have understood this for a long time.  There are a lot of barriers to marriage and marriages working for those with a lack of resources. But that's for another time.  Back to the main trail for today on expensive, lavish weddings and the whole industry that exists to this end.

In other words, back to the wedding industry and those with the means to party. A decade or two ago, I noticed what seemed a trend toward very expensive, lavish weddings. I cannot prove that this trend actually exists, but it feels right. I do not mean that it’s something right that feels good.  I mean it’s something that makes sense; it can be predicted from good theory and research. It fits the story in our culture of people still wanting marriage but feeling increasingly unsure about it and their own likelihood of succeeding at it. This produces all sort of other behaviors, in addition—behaviors that many people presume gives them a better chance that do not seem to actually help accomplish that goal (like cohabiting before marriage or engagement).

Based on consistency theory and cognitive dissonance, people feel an internal press or force to be consistent with their public pronouncements and prior behavior. While some politicians seem exempt from this internal pressure, research clearly shows this dynamic works within most people. Way too many, but certainly not all, politicians seem to be outliars. (For those of you who love grammar, let’s just say my spelling of that last word was sic.)

Consistency theory is one explanation for what we now see—the apparent trend toward lavish wedding spectacles.  Money, prestige, imagery.  Everything done perfectly and in front of many witnesses. What does a lavish wedding and large party buy a couple? The prediction from decades ago is right in front of us. If you spend that much and make this statement in front of many people, you must really mean it.  Right? You should feel a lot of internal pressure to follow-through.  In a culture where marriage is increasingly something the affluent do relative to other groups, yet something people feel anxious about, this trend toward bigger, larger, and more audacious weddings will continue.  It’s as if people are attempting to buy one more type of insurance for their marriage.  This standard has an unfortunate downside additional to the obvious one of placing more emphasis on the wedding than the relationship. It places bar ever higher for those who feel especially vulnerable about marriage working out—those who have very little resources.

Buying a wedding and buying into one’s marriage are two different things. The former might help some couples a tad but the latter is essential for all couples who are going to make it. For most people (and children), that’s the Hokey-Pokey holy grail.  One needs to put both the right and the left foot in.  Maybe we have to turn ourselves around, because that’s what it’s all about.

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Through a Portal in Time

In my last post, I noted the suggestion made by some to have marriage licenses with certain terms, wherein couples would need to renew their marriage licenses periodically. While this is not yet the law anywhere as far as I know, it is functionally the type of committed romantic relationship many people have these days. Most people want to marry and most people will. But ever greater, large numbers of couples will not marry but will live together and raise a family together, before or without marriage. Perhaps unknown between the partners, each may be periodically be re-making their commitment to the other, internally. There are some people who believe this is the way it should be, even at an almost day-to-day level. To some, it’s a romantic ideal that means each partner is there again, each new day, because he or she chose to be. “I’m here with you and you with me, and we can both see from this that we love and live on together.”

That process, or something like it, is part of marriage as well other relationships. Periodically, people committed to any person, project, or thing will internally reset their sense of commitment—especially if the path taken has included challenging times. I mean, by that, gut check times where you may need to remind yourself that “I committed to this and I believe in this, and I’m going to give it my best.” Unless you have a perfectly blissful union (married or not), and you’ve had no significant challenges, you understand this dynamic. It’s part of what actually builds meaningful, lasting love in a world where relationships are made up of imperfect people.

What does the word “portal” means to you. Perhaps you think of a walking through a tunnel. Maybe you imagine walking through a field-level tunnel of a stadium, like you see in big football games sometimes, emerging into the light of the stadium, and to the cheers of the crowd. Perhaps you are a sci-fi fan, and you think about change-in-place portals (Beam me up, Scottie) or change-in-time portals (H. G. Wells’ time machine). I’m focusing here on change-in-me portals.

Whatever comes to your mind, portals have this characteristic: They are a way of transitioning from one place to another. In some instances, they are the actual pathway and in some instances they are, metaphorically, the pathway. A wedding is a metaphorical portal into a new life.

While we (our research team) do not have quantitative data on this, we have heard numerous cohabiters who are marrying comment that they are not quite sure what they are going to do to make the transition more of a, well, transition. Those that espouse this want the change from not-married to married to be really clear but it ends up feeling sort of blurry. I wish I could tell you how many people struggle with this and what most who do end up doing about it. Maybe I’ll have that data in the future. Of course, there are, I am sure, a great many others who do not worry about this.

I think many people, though, deeply desire for major life transitions to be actually transformative. They want what goes into the portal to come out the other end something different; something fuller and richer and more founded.

How does this concept apply to the renewable marriage license idea? The renewable marriage license idea fairly screams out that there is not anything like a permanent transition going on. I like to be very realistic, and I know that the transition into marriage is very much not a permanent transition for many. Many will be transitioning out of that marriage one day. Some, like Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, transition out in a matter of days. But, I’ll also say this. Because of the nature of commitment, the sense that it is intended to be permanent is really where a lot of the power lies in going through the portal into marriage.

Slowly but steadily, particularly among those who do not graduate from college, marriage is disappearing. Sometimes that is partly because of a diminished sense that marriage matters. Sometimes it’s because of a difficulty in achieving the conditions one feels are necessary to make a marriage work; for example, having a job.

Back to the main point. I believe that the reason why wedding rituals are common around the world (even if weakening today) is that they function as portals through which two people enter and two people exit, but different from when they entered. Two separate identities enter the portal and three identities come out the other side—you, me, and us. Psychologically, this transformation may have happened far earlier, or for some, it happens most powerfully because of the ritual of a wedding. For others, there is no big ritual to see but something happens inside, maybe along the way to the justice of the peace. Let me amplify that a moment. I’ve heard some people say their transition into marriage was more special and meaningful because of wedding with all the rituals. I’ve heard others, however, say that the very reason going to a justice of the peace was most meaningful was because they avoided all the stress and pomp of the wedding industry. And, just to be clear, I am sure there are couples where the inner transition happens and they never marry or do not marry for a long time to come. But I also think that the whole idea of marriage—and all the ways it happens—is really founded on making the inward change an outward act.

For some, there is no transformation with whatever transition is happening. (That’s close to one of the core applications of the principle of sliding versus deciding.) In some instances—maybe in a lot of instances these days—one or both partner avoid anything like a portal taking them from one place to another because one or both know that they are not interested in a life altering transition—at least not with this partner. Maybe the transitional object of their desire will come along in the future.

The nature of major commitments in life is to be transformative. I don’t mean magical, but I do mean symbolic of the inner process of becoming something more than two. So, in the case of love of this sort in life, the deepest desire many have is for transformation that adds something. In contrast, think about a meat grinder. It’s a transition alright, and things do change from going in one end to coming out the other. But what comes out is also nothing more and nothing less than what went in, albeit in a different looking form.

Next time, some more thoughts focused on the nature of rituals and transformation.

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Daughter of Son of a Son of Dissonance (Cognitive Dissonance IV)

Maybe it’s just a bad movie that keeps coming back, but I’m not having any dissonance over writing so much about cognitive dissonance. (If you are tired of the topic, I really do think this is the last post on this for the time being.)

Some of you have been thinking about where I left off (and some have not). If you want the full background, you really need to read some or all of the prior three posts. In the prior post, I left off with a question about what cognitive dissonance might have to do with the trend for ever more expensive weddings. Caveat: I would guess, but do not know, that there is some reigning in on wedding expenses by those who historically could or would spend a lot, given our current economic downturn. Nevertheless, here’s a theory of why some people are spending amazing amounts of money on weddings.

My Theory

We live in a time when people largely are still interested in marriage. The image of marriage has been tarnished and confidence in marriage has suffered, but people want it. Why, you might ask? Because marriage remains the preeminent symbol of commitment for two people interested in life-long love. Sure, not everyone is into it or can be into it (a matter way too complex for me to touch here), but it remains what most people want and what most people will seek.

My theoretical assumptions look like this:

Assume people are more anxious than ever before maintaining life-long love.
Assume people are as likely as ever to fall in love.
Assume that most people will seek to address commitment in love by marrying.
Assume that the security of marriage, as a vehicle for commitment, has suffered.
Assume that cognitive dissonance is a fact of the human experience.

Some people who can afford it (and many who cannot) will spend an amazing amount of money on their wedding because doing so creates a particularly strong cognitive dissonance dynamic that serves to reinforce the commitment. I’m NOT saying that these folks are more committed than those spending a lot less (you can’t believe how little my wife and I spent on our wedding). What I am saying is that some folks will feel acutely a need to create a binding commitment that lasts, and dissonance theory predicts that making a bigger deal, spending more, and having more guests, etc., will all add to the power of the dissonance force that is created.

Suppose you have the Smiths and the Jones. They are identical—virtual clones, of each other in all ways that matter, including desire to marry for life and anxiety about marriage for life working. And let’s assume that the anxiety is pretty strong for all four people involved because they all came from homes where they saw commitment not work out very well, up close and personal. (Refer back to research by Paul Amato and colleagues, and Sarah Whitton and I and colleagues, some posts back. )

The only difference: The Smiths pay $ 30,000.00 for their wedding and the Jones pay $ 3000.00 for theirs. What researchers like Rosenblatt predicted long ago (1977 is pretty long ago, right?) is that when times get a little tough, like they usually do, the Smiths will feel a stronger force of dissonance to keep to their committed path than will the Jones. The reason is simply that the Smiths more strongly built a dissonance that will add extra discomfort when tempted not to follow through. In their heads it sounds like this (if you could put it into words so easily): “I really made a big deal and a big investment out of committing to my partner, and in front of scads of people; I simply have to follow through. I must have really meant it!”

I’m suggesting that the escalation in what people are willing to spend on weddings may be a form of buying insurance for their marriages. (For some, obviously, it’s simply about a big, showy, expression of wealth, which is another matter altogether.)

Am I recommending this? Nope. I’d rather see people have reasonable wedding costs and better savings—or less debt—at the start of their marriages. I’d also much rather see people invest in things like learning about how to communicate, manage conflict, clarify expectations, and build and preserve friendship and commitment in marriage by doing things like attending a marriage/relationship education class. There’s more than money when it comes to ways to invest in your relationship.

As a poignant side point: Researchers who study couples in poverty note an especially strong desire to have a formal wedding rather than merely go to the justice of the peace. The stated reasons are often about respecting marriage by respecting the wedding process. In this, I think there is a recognition of the positive role of ceremony in forming strong commitments. This makes particular sense for couples who tend to have very high respect for marriage but a lot of odds stacked against their marriages when it comes to making it in life. Here, the goal isn’t a lavish wedding but a solid, good enough, serious ceremony. That’s a nice goal.

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