Bling: The more you pay the more likely your marriage will fail

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During the excitement of getting engaged I subscribed to a few wedding websites to get some ideas. This may have been a mistake, not only because I get about ten emails a day from TheKnot.com with titles like “Should I Make My Bridesmaids Dye Their Hair?” but also because I suspect they sold my email address to all of their vendors. Some of the articles have been interesting if only for the sheer ridiculousness, i.e. “Can I tell My Guests What To Wear?” and “Monograms Are Having a Moment!” One that was more interesting than most was an article discussing a study that found a correlation between the expense of your engagement ring and the likelihood of divorce.

As you know by now I love studies and surveys of any kind because they can create an amazing amount of controversy based on a seemingly innocent topic. In this particular study, the main point was that the more money you spend on your engagement ring, the more likely your marriage would end in divorce. I’m not sure I see the correlation between buying an expensive ring and getting divorced a year later (except in the case of celebrities, and I have a feeling that has more to do with their work schedules and fidelity than fancy jewels).

It seems to me that money is at fault in this situation, especially when I read further and saw that the study also found people who spent $500 or less on a ring had a high divorce rate as well. Having a lot of money or having none at all leads to bigger problems down the line.

Even more interesting, the study also showed that big, lavish, expensive weddings (ex., the “fairytale wedding”) led to more divorced couples, and in almost the same breath said that the more guests you have at your wedding, the more likely you are to stay married. So … I’m guessing the idea here is that you invite a ton of people but don’t spend a lot of money? Your guests might leave hungry but damn if they don’t make some new friends.

Well it looks like my fiancé and I are headed in the semi-right direction. While I’m not going to reveal the price of my engagement ring, I will say it is tasteful, beautiful, and my fiancé didn’t go broke when he bought it. So that’s a point towards avoiding divorce. We are leaning towards having a smaller wedding to spare the expense of food and drink, so we get a point for not being too “lavish”… but wait, that point is negated when we factor in that we are only having about 85 people.

In addition to all this psychological bullshit I also have to plan a wedding and honeymoon. Maybe someone should do a study to find out the correlation between people who are planning their weddings and number of people committed to insane asylums or prescribed anxiety medications. I bet I can predict those results.

Emily Campbell

Emily Campbell is a perpetually single, 20-something girl-around-town who loves Shakespeare, old movies, Natty Boh, and of course, long walks on the beach. A sales manager by day and freelance writer by night, she was recently forced into a life of involuntary celibacy when her last relationship fizzled out over a text message. She’s tired of settling for second – or tenth – best, and she’s ready to find Mr. Right. Or, Mr. Nearly Right. No one’s perfect…which she has learned the hard (but hilarious) way.