The average American wedding costs over $30,000. Couples spend months planning a single day—choosing venues, caterers, photographers, florists. Guests travel from distant cities, buy gifts from registries, and sit through ceremonies they've seen countless times before. All for a legal status that requires only a few signatures.

If marriage is just a contract, why do we celebrate its signing with such elaborate ceremony? A business partnership doesn't require a reception with 150 guests. A mortgage doesn't come with bridesmaids. The wedding seems wildly disproportionate to its legal function—a massive production for what is, technically, paperwork.

Why have weddings become such a big deal?

The Problem This Was Meant to Solve

Marriage isn't just a contract between two people—it's a reorganization of social networks. When two people marry, their families become connected. Resources, obligations, and loyalties shift. In societies without strong state institutions, marriage alliances could determine economic prospects, political power, and physical safety. Getting marriage right mattered enormously.

Public ceremony served several functions in this high-stakes environment. It announced the marriage to the community, preventing disputes about who was married to whom. It witnessed the terms of the agreement—what each family was contributing, what obligations the couple assumed. And it created social pressure to uphold the arrangement. Breaking publicly witnessed vows carried reputational costs.

The ceremony also marked a transition in status. The individuals who entered as single emerged as a married couple, with different rights and responsibilities. Rituals help humans process such transitions. Without some ceremony, the change might feel incomplete or illegitimate. The wedding makes the marriage feel real.

Beyond practical functions, weddings celebrate the couple and their communities. They're occasions for joy, for bringing people together, for affirming the importance of the relationship being formed. Even as the practical functions have diminished, the celebratory aspects have remained—and grown.

How It Actually Came to Exist

Wedding ceremonies appear in the earliest recorded histories. Ancient Mesopotamian texts describe marriage rituals. Greek and Roman weddings involved specific customs, many of which persist today—the veil, the rings, the kiss. Every known culture has developed wedding ceremonies, though the specifics vary enormously.

For most of Western history, weddings were relatively modest affairs. The church became involved in weddings gradually; until the late medieval period, many marriages were essentially private contracts that didn't require religious blessing. Even after church ceremonies became standard, they were often simple—the elaborate productions we associate with weddings are surprisingly recent.

The white wedding dress is a 19th-century innovation, popularized by Queen Victoria in 1840. Before that, brides simply wore their best dress, often in colors. The lavish multi-day celebration became common only in the 20th century, as rising prosperity and the wedding industry's marketing encouraged greater spending.

The wedding industry actively constructed the idea that weddings should be expensive and elaborate. Bridal magazines, wedding planners, and vendors created and promoted expectations about what a "proper" wedding required. Average wedding costs have risen far faster than inflation, driven partly by this cultural construction of necessity.

Why It Still Exists Today

Despite changing attitudes toward marriage, weddings remain popular and expensive. Even couples who live together for years before marrying often want the full ceremony. Something about the wedding—beyond its legal function—continues to feel important.

The wedding serves as a rite of passage in a society that has few of them. Major life transitions—becoming an adult, forming a family, aging—often pass without formal recognition. The wedding provides a clear before and after, a moment of public transformation that marks a new phase of life. In a world of gradual transitions, the wedding is a rare sharp break.

Social media has intensified wedding culture. Instagram-worthy weddings set expectations that spread virally. Comparison to other weddings creates pressure to match or exceed. The wedding becomes a performance not just for guests but for a broader audience that will view the photos and videos online.

The wedding industry continues to expand what's considered normal. Destination bachelorette parties, elaborate engagement photos, wedding websites—each new "tradition" adds cost and complexity. Couples face pressure to include elements that barely existed a generation ago. The escalation shows no signs of slowing.

What People Misunderstand About It

The biggest misconception is that wedding traditions are ancient and meaningful. Many supposedly traditional elements—the bouquet toss, the garter removal, the father "giving away" the bride—are either recent inventions or relics of practices (like treating women as property) that most couples would reject if they understood them. Traditions are often much younger and more arbitrary than they appear.

Many people underestimate how much weddings reflect family dynamics rather than couple preferences. The wedding often becomes a site for working out relationships with parents, siblings, and extended family. Battles over guest lists, ceremony elements, and spending often have little to do with the wedding itself and everything to do with underlying family tensions.

Another misconception is that expensive weddings indicate strong marriages. Research suggests the opposite—more expensive weddings correlate with higher divorce rates. The stress of wedding planning and the financial burden of wedding debt may actually strain relationships. The wedding industry's messaging equates spending with love, but the evidence doesn't support this equation.

Perhaps most importantly, people misunderstand why they want the weddings they want. Social pressure, family expectations, and industry marketing shape desires that feel personal and authentic. The dream wedding that seems to come from within may largely come from without—absorbed unconsciously from images and expectations that have been carefully cultivated. Weddings exist because marriage needs marking, but how weddings have come to exist—the specific forms they take—reflects commercial and cultural forces as much as genuine human needs.