BREAKING NEWS: Expensive engagement rings lead to divorce. What?! According to a new study by Andrew M. Francis and Hugo M. Mialon of Emory University, the bigger your wedding bling, the more likely you are to divide up your marital assets later on. (ouch).
When Jennifer Lopez sang, “Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got,” perhaps she was referring to the famous 6.1-carat, $1.2 million diamond ring given to her by Ben Affleck for their doomed engagement. Ben downgraded to a more modest, 4.5-carat diamond when he proposed to Jennifer Garner, and now the science community is proving a correlation between this smaller jewel and their famously stable marriage. (Well not so much anymore, you get it)
The recently released study, which is poetically titled “‘A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairytales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration,” surveyed 3,000 U.S. adults who had once been married to a member of the opposite sex and discovered that men who spent $2,000–$4,000 on an engagement ring were 1.3 times more likely to get divorced than men who spent between $500 and $2,000. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that spending less than $500 on a ring led to higher divorce rates as well. So don’t sink that low, you guys. You’ve got options, and second-hand engagement rings are hot right now, who doesn’t love more for your money!?
The study also found that women who spent more than $20,000 on a wedding divorced 3.5 times more frequently than those who spent between $5,000 and $10,000. This may be bad news for most brides who have eight Pinterest wedding boards they’ve been arranging since 2007, considering the average American wedding costs roughly $30,000, according to The Knot. Don’t let the wedding get bigger than the meaning of it, nobody wants to see you pull a Carrie Bradshaw in the first Sex and the City movie.
The overall conclusion drawn by the researches is that their findings “provide little evidence to support the validity of the wedding industry’s general message that connects expensive weddings with positive marital outcomes.”
That’s quite the takedown. Are we victims to a purportedly $60 billion dollar industry, one that keeps whispering in our ears that the bigger the rock, the greater the love? Are so-called “fairytale weddings” just a capitalist scam? The authors of the study certainly seem to be implying that when they emphasize how much the event has been blown up over the past few decades.
“In 1959, Brides [the magazine] recommended that couples set aside 2 months to prepare for their wedding and published a checklist with 22 tasks for them to complete. By the 1990s, the magazine recommended 12 months of wedding preparation and published a checklist with 44 tasks to complete.”
Looks aren’t everything! Partners who rate looks as an important factor in the decision to marry are associated with a higher rate of divorce. Also, couples with greater age and education differences experience an increased rate of divorce, according to the study’s results.
But look at the bright side: a smaller ring means saving more money (and a sign that you and your hubby have nothing to prove), and a more affordable wedding means less stress for you and your future life partner. You don’t want to start your marriage out in debt, so why let your wedding get over budget and over played.
The study also found that having a big guest list and taking a honeymoon led to more lasting marriages. So having that classy backyard wedding with the elegant string lights, surrounded by all your friends and family; then hopping on a plane to a lavish honeymoon in Hawaii is sounding pretty fabulous right now.
