Is Love Measured by the Cost of the Wedding?
The global wedding industry is worth more than 100 billion dollars a year, yet many of the costs we
The global wedding industry is worth more than 100 billion dollars a year, yet many of the costs we now associate with the “perfect” wedding were deliberately created. Companies and marketers shaped many of our expectations, turning traditions into expensive purchases. Today, however, more young couples are questioning those expectations and choosing a different path.
Before many couples even start looking for a venue, they already have a price in mind. They believe a wedding, or at least the engagement ring, should cost a significant share of their income. Some hear one month’s salary. Others hear two or even three, depending on who they ask.
It sounds like an old family tradition, but it is not. An advertising campaign invented the idea, and it proved so successful that generations of couples still believe it today.
The wedding industry has grown into a giant business. In the United States alone, couples spend more than 100 billion dollars each year on around two million weddings. Much of that spending has little to do with love or tradition. Instead, companies carefully shaped consumer expectations, encouraging couples to spend more on rings, venues, dresses, flowers, and countless other details.
How an advert decided what your ring should cost
The salary rule came from a company called De Beers, which controlled almost all of the world’s diamonds for about a hundred years. Back in the 1930s, hardly anyone proposed with a diamond. In 1940, only about one in ten American brides got a diamond ring.
Then De Beers ran a famous advert with the line “A diamond is forever.” Bit by bit, it changed what people expected. By 1990, around 80 out of every 100 American brides were getting a diamond ring.
The clever bit was the price tag. De Beers told men exactly how much to spend. One month’s wages at first, then two months in America, and three months in Japan. There was no real reason behind those numbers. They simply worked out how much people in each country were willing to hand over.
The trick was easy to fall for. Spend a lot, and you look like you really love her. Spend a little, and people think you are cheap. De Beers also kept diamonds rare so prices stayed high, and told everyone a diamond is “forever” so nobody ever sold theirs second-hand. That way, no one found out how cheap the stones really were under the big price.
Once the ring had a price, the rest of the wedding followed. If the ring proves your love, then so does the venue, the dinner and everything else.
What a wedding costs around the world
The wedding industry is everywhere, and every country does it a bit differently. But they all have one thing in common. The final bill is always far bigger than one day should ever cost.
India: a wedding can swallow a fifth of everything you earn in life
Indian weddings have earned their reputation for being huge. They often last several days, with a series of celebrations along the way. Families begin with the mehendi, when the bride’s hands are decorated with henna, followed by the sangeet, a lively evening of singing and dancing. Then come the main wedding ceremony and a grand reception. Inviting a few hundred guests is common, and many weddings welcome a thousand or more.
All of that costs a fortune. A normal middle class wedding in 2025 costs somewhere between 10 and 50 lakh rupees. (A lakh is 100,000 rupees, so that works out at roughly 12,000 to 60,000 US dollars.) The very rich go far higher. When India’s wealthiest family, the Ambanis, married off their son, it reportedly cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
It also depends a lot on where in India you are. The north, places like Delhi and Punjab, is usually the most expensive, with longer parties and a lot of gold, and a wedding in Delhi can run anywhere from 25 to 80 lakh. The south, like Tamil Nadu and Kerala, tends to keep the ceremonies simpler and the bills lower, with Kerala among the cheapest at around 8 to 30 lakh, though the food there can be a feast in itself. Wherever you are, a wedding in a big city costs far more than the same one in a small town.
The numbers are almost hard to believe. A study by KPMG found that the average Indian spends about one fifth of their lifetime earnings on a wedding. Families spend roughly twice as much on weddings as they do on their children’s education. Many spend beyond their means, prompting banks to offer dedicated wedding loans. The trend has become so significant that the Prime Minister has urged couples to hold their weddings in India instead of taking their celebrations, and their spending, overseas.
Another major expense often falls outside the typical wedding budget: dowry. The bride’s family is expected to give money, gold, property, or other gifts to the groom’s family. Unlike the bride price in some cultures, where the groom’s family pays, dowry works in the opposite direction. For many families, it becomes the single largest cost of marrying off a daughter, often exceeding the cost of the wedding itself. India banned dowry in 1961, and anyone who gives or demands it can face a prison sentence. Even so, the practice remains widespread among both wealthy and poor families. When families fail to meet dowry demands, the consequences can become deadly. Official figures recorded more than 6,000 dowry-related deaths in 2023, showing that dowry remains not only a financial burden but also a serious social problem.
China: the groom pays for the bride
In a lot of East Asia, the biggest cost is not the party at all. It is the “bride price.” In China this is called caili, and it means the groom’s family pays money or gifts to the bride’s family before the wedding.
It used to be a small, polite gesture. Now it can be crushing. By 2023 the average was around 69,000 yuan, about 9,500 US dollars. In some poorer rural areas it goes much higher, 300,000 yuan or more, which can be ten years of a normal family’s income. On top of the cash, the groom is often expected to provide a flat, a car and gold jewellery for the bride.
This has caused a real problem. There are more young men than young women in China, partly because of the old one-child policy and a preference for sons. That means the bride’s family can ask for more. Many young men simply cannot afford to get married, and some families go into debt trying. The government has started stepping in, putting limits on bride prices and even running big group weddings to push people to spend less.
Japan went through something similar. Diamond rings were almost unknown there until De Beers turned up in the 1960s and sold them the “three months’ salary” idea. It caught on fast, although plenty of young Japanese couples now think it is old-fashioned.
Europe: smaller crowds, still a big bill
European weddings are usually one long day. A ceremony, then a meal, speeches and a party. Most of the money goes on the venue, the food and the drinks, which together eat up about half the budget.
In the UK, the average wedding in 2025 cost just under 21,000 pounds, around 27,000 US dollars. That number has not moved much in a few years. What has changed is that couples now invite fewer people but spend more on each one, about 272 pounds a guest. More than half go over budget, and roughly six in ten get money from family to help pay.
Here is a funny thing. A lot of the “traditions” are not actually old. Wedding rings go back thousands of years, but the white dress only became normal after Queen Victoria wore one in 1840. Even the running order of the day, the speeches, the first dance and cutting the cake, is really just habit. That is why younger couples now feel fine dropping the parts they do not care about.
America: you are basically paying per head
The American wedding is the one everyone knows from films, and it is pricey. The Knot, which surveys more couples than anyone, says the average 2025 wedding cost about 34,000 dollars.
The biggest reason is simple. The guest list. Each guest costs roughly 292 dollars, and the average wedding has about 117 people. So every extra ten people you invite adds thousands. Where you live matters too. A wedding in New York City can top 60,000 dollars, while the same wedding in Utah or Oklahoma costs less than half that.
Many American couples borrow money to pay for their wedding. About two thirds take on some form of debt, and nearly half use their savings. As a result, couples pay for a large share of the 100 billion dollar wedding industry with money they have not actually earned or accumulated yet.
People are getting tired of it
After all this, people are starting to change their thinking. They are fed up. They are tired of spending a year’s savings on a single afternoon just to impress relatives they barely see.
In America, fewer couples are throwing big weddings, and many skip the giant reception completely. Online searches for “courthouse wedding outfits” have shot up. Small weddings of under fifty guests, which started out of necessity during the pandemic, are now a real choice, and plenty of couples would rather put the money toward a house deposit or a holiday.
It is happening everywhere. In Britain, younger couples reuse decorations, sell items afterwards, and choose cheaper days of the week. Across India, more couples are opting for smaller ceremonies and splitting the costs evenly. Meanwhile, in China, the government, the media, and many young women are pushing back against the bride price. In some cases, brides quietly return the money to the couple instead. The whole wedding industry can feel the shift.
The thing tying all of this together is a simple question people are finally asking out loud. Why? Why spend that much, on that many people, for a single day? Most of the time, nobody has a good answer.
But a wedding is not a waste of money
None of this means a wedding is a con, or that spending on one is foolish. The people behind it, the venues, the caterers, the photographers, are selling something real. A good wedding brings your favourite people into one room and gives you a day you remember for the rest of your life. If that is what you want and you can afford it, spending big is a perfectly good choice, and plenty of couples look back and count every penny as worth it.
The point is not that weddings are bad. It is that so much of the pressure is manufactured. Spending a lot because you truly want the day is one thing. Spending a lot because a jeweller, a magazine or your relatives made you feel you had no choice is another, and that is where it starts to go wrong, especially when it tips people into debt they will feel for years.
So, is love measured by the cost?
The honest answer is no. An advertising campaign convinced the world that an engagement ring should cost two months’ salary, and millions of people accepted the idea. Oversized guest lists, lavish receptions, and dowries did not come from love alone. They grew out of social expectations, long-standing customs, and highly effective marketing.
The good news is that once you know where these rules came from, they are a lot easier to ignore. A wedding can be as big or as small as the two people actually want it to be. Spending more does not make a marriage any stronger. The wedding industry spent a long time teaching us to spend more, and now plenty of people are simply deciding not to.
