Quote:
Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates
I don't understand the angle of the people complaining about the cost. Most people will go on 1-2 holiday vacations a year anyway so why not just make the wedding of someone you care about one of them instead of looking at it as a $2000 expense?
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No, they don't. The annual airplane vacation is only a very recent thing for anyone but the wealthy, and it's mostly an Alberta and Saskatchewan thing. My friends are all comfortably middle-class and they do maybe one airplane vacation every 2-3 years. The only ones who go away every year work at Westjet or have family who work there.
I find it interesting how quickly and how dramatically social norms change. Destination weddings have only been a thing for about 10 years. Presumably, they're driven by:
A) People getting married later in life, when they have more money.
B) The skyrocketing increase in the frequency of beach vacations among the middle class (especially in Alberta).
C) Weakened bonds of extended family and communities.
I see the cost of conventional weddings cited as a reason to go away, but it's worth keeping in mind that the average wedding today costs four times what it did 20 years ago. They haven't always cost $40,000. I don't really have any explanation for that change.
I got married 16 years ago and it cost about $7,000. Ceremony in a back yard. Dinner for 50 at a local golf course (the biggest expense). Community hall rental for 150 with booze. A friend DJ'd. Another friend took the photos. No rehearsal dinner. No limos. Most of the costs were covered by our parents, which was traditionally how these things were done. All in all, a thoroughly conventional wedding for a middle-class 29 and 25 year old couple in the 90s. Not sure what changed. A flood of oil money? More people living here from cultures that traditionally have huge and costly weddings? An increase in conspicuous consumption and status-seeking?