happily ever after? the high cost of australian weddings

Depending on where you look, the average Australian wedding these days is costing between $35,000 and $55,000.

Bride To Be, a national bridal magazine, conducts a bi-annual study that they call the ‘Cost of Love.’ This year, the magazine found that the average total spend on a wedding is a record $54,294. This comes as a surprise as, in 2011, the average total cost was much less, standing at $36,000, as discovered by business information analyst IBISWorld. That’s a large increase for just two years.

At this point, you’d be excused if you felt a bit queasy. Australians – yes, us – spend the equivalent of a deposit for a house for one day of happiness. Writing for The Age, Katherine Feeney, asked, ‘is the price of a wedding really worth your own home?’ Apparently, for some, it most definitely is.

RP Data suggests that the median price for houses in Australian capital cities is $490,000, and 5 to 20 per cent of the house price is good enough for a deposit from most banks. Keeping in mind that $54,294 is the average price of our weddings – some people spend far more on their nuptials.

Bride to Be editor, Sarah Stevens, recently said, ‘Australian couples really want to have the perfect wedding day, and a third of brides actually said they’d get a second job to help pay for the wedding if needed.’

However, Stevens also added that couples ‘are being more careful about how they spend their money and what they spend it on.’ In the past decade, the total cost of a wedding in Australia has almost doubled, a rate more than three times that of inflation.

As a twenty-two year old who has never had any interest in getting married, I have to put it down to personal choice. Indeed, weddings are huge, fancy events for some, and small, intimate gatherings for others – neither way is the “wrong” way to get married. The real question is not whether or not Australians are spending too much, but whether the other costs of the wedding day are taking their toll on the whole idea of the marriage.

Feeney recalled a couple she was friends with, who sunk a lot of money ‘they didn’t really have into a wedding they didn’t really want.’ The monetary cost of their wedding not only affected their bank and debt balances, but also put a huge strain on their relationship. The very act of becoming a married couple was driving them apart, and Feeney adds that while they love each other deeply, ‘they didn’t need a big wedding to prove it.’

I have to agree with Feeney, who wrote, ‘we do need to put a stop to this culture that demands overspending. Far better to cultivate a community that values the bigger, deeper meaning of now and forever than the flashy, splashy blingy things that have become hitched to the sentiment.’

Again, though, however much money a couple wants to spend on their wedding is something they decide for themselves. Far be it for me, or anyone for that matter, to tell them otherwise.