A tradition that is quickly disappearing is the church wedding.
It has become ever so much more popular to have the wedding at the same venue as the reception. Certain faiths have done this for decades while others are just catching on.
It’s no longer unusual, in fact, to be invited to a wedding hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the bride’s home.
Destination weddings are becoming so popular that we girls have decided that it’s doing one or both of two things: making weddings smaller by sheer inconvenience and cost for the invitees, and making them more expensive for whomever is paying for the celebration.
My head used to turn at the idea of spending $25,000 for a wedding; these days it’s upwards of $40,000. Do people take out loans for such things?
Of the Tuesday Girls, three of us have children tying the knot before the end of 2013.
Mootsie, has been invited to seventeen weddings between April and October of this year, and even her own daughter’s wedding is in October.
The statistic for divorce is around fifty percent, with one divorce about every 13 seconds. Does that mean then, that there is at least one wedding every 6.5 seconds? Talk about moving the economy!
The ring. How about those two-carat engagement rings? Those not sporting a $10,000 diamond often opt for impressive stones like emeralds, blue sapphires and even genuine “colored” diamonds.
We girls hypothesized the tradition of the white diamond engagement ring began slipping in popularity in favor of other precious stones at about the time Lady Diana became engaged to the Prince.
The bachelor/ette parties.
Couples are now traveling for them. Being a member of a wedding party is expensive! Aside from buying dresses and renting tuxes, members of the wedding party are now footing trips to wild and crazy places like Key West and Las Vegas, drinking and gambling the nights away in expensive hotel casinos.
The honeymoon. Does anyone remember when Niagara Falls and Florida were popular honeymoon destinations?
A couple of our Tuesday Girls even camped on their honeymoons. These days, we’re talking Paris, African Safaris and pub crawls in Ireland…sometimes with the wedding party in tow.
And after all this, a possibly disturbing trend that seems to be growing is that so many newlyweds do not actually wear their wedding rings after the ceremony. The ring, after all, answers the question, “Are you married?” It’s the one thing that gives one pause when considering to remove it for scandalous purposes.
In light of all of this, we girls decided that if we were to do it over we’d forgo the wedding celebrations altogether, skip the preceding and following hoop-la(s), and buy matching Jaguars instead…it’s cheaper.
See you next Tuesday.
Read more posts by Claire Butler here. Claire blogs for JenningsWire.
