Gemma Acton: How wedding price hikes reveal the true price of happiness

The dawn of a new year has no real competition in its claim to be the most popular time to set resolutions and reassess life goals.

Yet given the average length of time we stick with our resolutions was recently estimated by the business magazine Forbes to be just 3.74 months, anyone opting out this week shouldn’t feel too bad.

While resolutions tend to be about sacrifices - commonly drinking less, exercising more, cutting out irresistible weaknesses like hot chips - life goals focus more on ambitions we’d like to conquer.

For 2024, I have identified a couple of resolutions I’m prepared to commit to but having bought a house, had two babies and been married in the past three years I am most definitely stepping back from pursuing any major life goals.

My sanity is set to benefit - as is my beleaguered bank account.

Sure there are tremendous emotional and legal considerations to review when agreeing to get married.

However, it’s also a staggeringly big commitment from a financial point of view.

I’m not even talking about any tax implications or any dependents that may arrive on the scene as a result of you hitching your wagon to someone else - but simply the actual wedding itself.

If you’re lucky enough to want something very intimate and discreet, you can probably get away with a low-key trip to the registry office where the only real expenses are your outfits and a few hundred dollars of ceremony fees.

If you’re like most people, you are instead likely to succumb to intense pressure to have a bigger affair with a long list of obligatory invitees from the ranks of rarely-seen cousins, superiors at work or friends of your parents you’ve never met.

It goes without saying you’ll also be expected to invite their partners - many of whom you will never have heard of, much less met.

We managed to keep our wedding guest count to 100 people. Remarkably - and thanks to some awkward conversations - every single attendee was someone we really liked and with whom we wanted to share our special day.

That was helpful as it’s hard to avoid noticing the cost per person of each guest as it steadily mounts. You do find yourself asking if they’re worth $100 to you or $1,000 - or something in between. (In case any of our guests are reading this - yes you absolutely are!)

Attach the word “wedding” to anything and there’s a weighty premium slapped on.

A white tablecloth might look like any other white tablecloth - until it’s a “wedding tablecloth” and then suddenly it’s triple the price.

Given the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, it may come as a surprise to hear that in 2022 Australia recorded the highest number of marriages on record, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The caveat is that there was a lot of catch-up going on given so many unlucky fiancés were forced to postpone their nuptials due to recurring lockdowns.

Looked at another way - on a per capita basis - in 2022 there were 6.1 unions per 1,000 people.

That’s the highest rate since 2016 but if you track the statistics back to the era prior to 2015, it shows a clear downward trend in couples electing to tie the knot.

That’s despite the boost to the statistics in recent years from same gender couples getting married - unions which were only legalised as of late 2017.

I anticipate that once the proverbial python has swallowed the bulk of COVID-postponed weddings, the downward trend will likely resume or, at best, stabilise.

The statistics show that the median age at which we’re getting married continues to creep higher - for women it’s now 30.9 years while for men it’s 32.5 years old.

That’s just two years shy of the median age at which Australians buy their first home which was 34.5 years in 2022, according to researchers at Digital Finance Analytics - an alarming rise from 24.5 years at the turn of the century.

Meantime, the average age of first-time mothers in Australia is 29.7 years.

In sum, squishing some very major milestones into a short few years is a common experience.

Some religious and cultural traditions prevent couples from reversing the usual order of these events but for those with the freedom to choose which to pursue first, more couples are today opting to have children before getting married.

Both are very pricey pursuits but the science demonstrably proves that the longer you wait to have children, the larger the likely emotional, physical and financial hurdles you will face in successfully growing your family.

A wedding meanwhile, can take place at any time and certainly wait until you’re on a more comfortable financial footing.

So yes, more people will make the entirely rational decision to wait. For all of my curmudgeonly moaning about the cost of the wedding, it was the happiest day of our lives and worth every cent.

Marriage is also going wonderfully 17 days into the lifelong commitment.

Which is just as well as should I have to one day write an article about the cost of divorce, I have no doubt the numbers would be far more terrifying.