Alix Strauss wrote about surprise weddings:

• Instead of going through the pain of planning a wedding some couples surprise guests at their engagement party by telling them it will also be their wedding.
• On the bright side a lot of money is saved on planning and a lot of stress avoided.
• Some of the monetary savings are cancelled out by the lack of wedding gifts.
• The couple may also miss out on experiences like bachelor or bachelorette parties, and bridal showers.
• But those that have tried it note that it’s a way to get the audience to feel the overwhelming emotion and happiness that the couple to be feel as well.

Read more on The New York Times.

Via: Marginal Revolution

Sara Randazzo wrote about the latest trend in wedding bouquets:

• Couples are planning weddings with an eye to the photos that will result – hoping to have a standout image that’ll define the wedding.
• The latest unit enlisted in the drive for a showstopper is the wedding bouquet, which can now weigh 6kg and include branches, vines, fruits, and vegetables with the flowers.
• Some brides make it trendier by ensuring everything is locally sourced and organic.
• The arrangements are expensive and can cost over $350.
• Because they’re impractical to throw, brides will sometimes have a smaller, throwing bouquet to maintain tradition.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal.

Via: Marginal Revolution

Single women in Korea are increasingly deciding not to get married. Some are instead opting for weddings without husbands:

• Single wedding packages include wedding dresses and photo shoots.
• The idea behind them is that photos from a day as important as a wedding should be taken when the bride is in her prime.
• Some hope to add a husband in the future – perhaps at a time when a wedding photographer would’ve captured a few more wrinkles around the eyes.
• Friends are sometimes invited to the photo shoot since weddings are family experiences.
• It is even possible to hire a male model to stand in as the groom.

Read more here.

Source: The Economist

Beth Montemurro took a look at how Christian weddings have changed over time:

• Queen Victoria of England got the modern wedding dress started when she wore a white satin gown for her wedding in 1840.
• The elite soon copied this fashion although it didn’t become widely popular among the masses until after WW2.
• Up until the mid-1950s Christian weddings were done at home, in the family’s “Sunday best” perhaps with a small dinner party.
• Then modern marketing got started. Stores, jewelers, and caterers began selling the image of a decadent wedding.
• Dolls in bridal gowns imprinted the standards of a modern weddings on children at young ages.

Read about how weddings have evolved, how they are a pledge of allegiance both to the conventional and to the new, and more over here.

You can read more of Centives’ previous coverage on the economics of weddings here.

Source: Aeon

We all know that having a wedding is expensive. Turns out attending one isn’t that cheap on the wallet either according to Ben Popken:

• The average person pays $592 to attend a wedding. This is a 75% increase from two years ago.
• And that doesn’t even include the wedding gift. If you do then the cost of going to a wedding increases by $109 to $701.
• Members of the wedding party, of course, have to pay more, with the average wedding gift for a close family member costing $218.
• Unsurprisingly weddings are a more expensive affair for the wealthy. For those making over $100,000 going to a wedding costs $960.

Read more about why you should maybe encourage your friends and family members to consider celibacy over here.

Source: NBC News

Caitlin Dewey wrote about the market for a bride’s gown:

• Wedding dresses cost a lot of money in part due to the price of the material and the quality of the workmanship.
• Yet a big part of the price of a dress is the markup – which can be around 200%.
• Sellers can get away with this because of asymmetric information. Since most people (plan to) only get married once, they’re not experienced in purchasing wedding dresses and so don’t know how much a ‘reasonable’ price is.
• The cost of the dress is also used to indicate social status and signal the bride’s commitment to her husband.
• However this means that a company could come in and create a big market for itself by offering a cheap wedding dress.
• H&M has done precisely that by offering a wedding dress for the relative bargain of $99.

Read more over here.

Source: The Washington Post

Over at Slate Matthew Yglesias has had it with wedding presents:

• Wedding gifts come from a different era – a time of dowries and arranged marriages.
• These days couples generally live together before they get married, and so they already have a lot of the things that couples typically receive as wedding gifts.
• Couples are also older now, and have higher incomes, enabling them to purchase the items that are typically given in a wedding.
• Gifts in general are economically inefficient. Rather than trying to guess what somebody else wants the best gift is cash so that people can choose what they want to purchase.
• At least with birthday gifts though everybody gets one and so it evens out. Not everybody is getting married these days and since married couples already live longer and are happier, why should they have the added benefit presents?
• A good modern alternative is college graduation presents – people graduate with a lot of debt and could use some help getting their life started up.

Read more of Yglesias’s tirade against wedding gifts, his own wedding experience, and more over here.

Source: Slate

Seunghee Suh reports on the increasing number of couples who live-stream their weddings online:

• The media coverage of Kate Middleton and Prince William’s wedding inspired couples to broadcast their big day to a bigger audience.
• Websites such as I Do Stream and My Streaming Wedding allow virtual guests to type in login information and then watch the big event.
• Prices range from $200 for the “do-it-yourself” package to $3,000 if the couple wants to use highly trained videographers with experience in live broadcasting.
• Etiquette experts suggest that weddings gifts should be sent to couples, even if guests only receive an online invitation to the event.
• Some online guests report dressing up in fancy attire before watching the live stream to really get into the spirit of things.

Read more about the experiences that couples have had with the services, how live-streaming has evolved from the days of being used to accommodate sick relatives, and more over here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal