Diamond ≠ Forever

Can the heft of your bling predict nuptial bliss? In our age of material wealth, opulent weddings and high-karat engagement rings have become increasingly the norm. But what does that mean for our relationships?

Economists Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon endeavored to find out by researching the correlations between wedding spending and marriage longevity in a study of over 3,000 ever-married couples across the US. Although DeBeers would still like you to believe that “A Diamond is forever,” Francis’s and Mialon’s results could argue otherwise.

Men who spent between $2,000 and $4,000 on an engagement ring were 1.3 times more likely to get divorced than those who spent between $500 and $2,000. Similarly, spending upwards of $20,000 on the wedding celebration correlated with divorce rates 3.5 times higher than those in the $5,000 to $10,000 range.

So what factors were associated with marital longevity? High wedding attendance, religious practice, and going on a honeymoon were among the most prominent. It’s not hard to imagine why. A large family and close friends might provide a support network to assist the couple through tough times. Religious communities could, too, while perhaps also discouraging divorce from a spiritual perspective. When couples travel together, the quality time and memorable experiences facilitate intimacy and connection.

Remember, though, that these results are not necessarily predictive of any one relationship. As with any correlation, the results are not necessarily causal. You might personally have a wedding worthy of a cover photo on Bridezilla Magazine and be happy forever. Having an expensive wedding doesn’t necessarily cause divorce. Rather, it could be that the type of people who have expensive weddings tend to be on average slightly more materialistic, immature, shallow, etc., compared to those who do not; some shared underlying trait might predict both spending and divorce.

Still, if you’re looking for love, you might be better off forgetting Say Yes to the Dress in favor of Say Fine to the Shirt.