A Wedding is More Than an Expensive Party

Zachary Bouck
Feb 13
9 min read

Updated: 6 days ago

My writing falls into three main categories:

How to Create Wealth — One of my biggest passions. I love talking about it, learning about it, and educating others on the topic.

Investing — How to potentially increase the return on your investments while respecting the risk of loss of capital.

Wealth Is Good — The idea that when you become wealthy (which you may be able to if you make as much money as possible and invest it intelligently), the next challenge is figuring out what to do with it.

Today's post is categorized as Wealth Is Good, and it's about your wedding.

The Reddit Argument

I'm writing this post to have in my back pocket all those Twitter and Reddit discussions that typically start like this:

"Why would I spend $50,000 on a stupid party? Unless I get $50,000 in cash from my guests, it's a BAD financial investment. We're going to do mushrooms and write our own vows, and have Darth Vader marry us in Las Vegas."

Or:

"I already love my partner. I don't need a party or wedding to prove it!"

Or:

"American weddings are an expensive vanity party and a terrible tradition."

I get it. If you grew up in a poor family without a good community structure, these sentiments make a lot of sense. The prevalent worldview looks something like this:

We are fundamentally alone in society

Our "community" is just the people who happen to live near us

Extended family is a burden, not an asset

Money is finite — if I spend it, it's gone forever

The primary value worth pursuing is personal emotional satisfaction

When you view the world through this lens, spending tens of thousands of dollars on a single day does seem ridiculous. Why throw an expensive party for people who are essentially strangers or obligations? Especially when you could invest that money and let compound interest do its magic for decades?

Perception Is Reality (A Lesson from the Valet Stand)

When I worked as a valet at a Hyatt hotel, our manager had a phrase he repeated constantly: "Perception is reality."

A person can be factually wrong, but if they perceive something a certain way, the objective truth doesn't matter. You have to work with their reality, not against it. His point was: stop arguing with facts and reality and start understanding emotions and their perception of reality.

(This conversation came up after I drove exactly 15 miles per hour in a 15-mile-per-hour zone, with the client perceiving me to be going recklessly fast in their fancy car. I was technically correct. I was also losing the argument.)

So instead of attempting to change your reality — which may indeed include beliefs like:

We are mostly alone

Money is finite

My community is just strangers near me

...I'd like to try and change your perception of weddings, especially as they relate to paying for and organizing a community celebration.

We Are (Not) Mostly Alone

In modern society, many people feel alone or lonely. If you want numbers and details, check out this Harvard study on loneliness in America.

Here's what I've observed: when you have friends, family, and community in healthy relationships, you want to celebrate with them. Take money completely out of the equation for a moment — why wouldn't you want to spend a day with friends and family celebrating a major life transition?

Perhaps because you feel alienated from them. Perhaps, as the Harvard study suggests, you feel lonely even around these people. You don't feel understood. They're just bodies in proximity to yours, not people who know you, care about you, or share in your life.

If this is your feeling, I can't fault you. It's incredibly easy to feel alone in American culture. A lot of people are hustling and grinding, chasing the next promotion, constantly optimizing their lives, or even treating relationships as upgradeable commodities. It feels lonely, man.

But I don't think the solution is to become John Wayne and ride off into the sunset alone with just one person. I think the solution is to lean into your friends, family, and community. To invest in these relationships. To have the courage to cut off the people who make those groups toxic (read The Courage to Be Disliked if you want a framework for this), and to double down on the people who actually add value to your life.

Your wedding can be a chance to build, rebuild, and reframe your relationship with these groups. It's not a middle finger to everyone you don't like. It's a celebration of the people who matter, and an invitation for your community to invest in you.

If you don't have that community yet, your wedding can be the catalyst to start building it.

Money Is (Not) Finite

Here's where things get interesting.

As I think about it, weddings actually make more sense when you view them as a community investment rather than a personal expense. Historically, it would make more sense for the community to throw the celebration for the couple, not the other way around.

Think about it this way: if a wedding is the launch of a new household, then it's something the community benefits from and should naturally want to support and recognize. A stable household contributes to social stability. It creates a unit that can care for children, aging parents, and neighbors in crisis. It's a net positive for everyone.

The problem is that modern weddings have morphed into highly personalized productions built around the idea that it's someone's "special, once-in-a-lifetime spotlight moment." The focus shifted from launching a household to performing a perfect Instagram-worthy event. And that shift completely changed the economics.

But let's go back to the traditional framework:

The Original Economics of Weddings

Weddings historically signal a new household entering the community. This isn't just about romance. It's about structure.

Wedding gifts are the community helping launch that household. This is why traditional registries exist. They're not random wish lists. Ideally, you’re receiving the tools you need to run a household.

The tradition spreads the burden of beginning adulthood across a support network. Your uncle buys the pots. Your aunt buys the sheets. Your friends buy the blender. Together, they help you start fresh.

Weddings aren't just a celebration — they're a community investment in stability. Everyone has skin in the game. Everyone is saying, "We're here for you. We support this."

When you view it this way, the money isn't "wasted." It's being invested into the social fabric. And that investment can pay dividends for decades.

Now, do I think modern couples are ready to hand over their wedding planning to their communities? Honestly, probably not. Most couples want specific themes, specific venues, specific color palettes. They want control. And that's fine — it's their wedding.

But recognizing the original purpose of a wedding helps us see it in a different light. It's not just a party. It's a public declaration that you're building something with others.

What Weddings Actually Do

Let me break down what weddings actually accomplish, beyond the obvious "we had fun dancing and eating cake" stuff:

Weddings Turn Private Love into Public Structure and Accountability

When you get married in front of 100 people, you're not just making a promise to each other. You're making a promise in front of witnesses. And those witnesses become part of your accountability structure.

If you're struggling in your marriage a few years down the line, those 100 people are the ones who will support you, push you to work through it, or intervene if things go truly wrong. That's not nothing. That's real social capital.

They Build Social Capital That Supports Couples Long-Term

Social capital is one of those things that's hard to measure but incredibly valuable. When your community has gathered to celebrate your marriage, they're more invested in your success. They're more likely to help when you need it — whether that's babysitting your kids, lending you tools, giving you career advice, or just being there during hard times.

This is compound interest, but for relationships.

Rituals Help People Internalize Permanent Life Transitions

There's a reason every culture has wedding rituals. They're not just for show. Rituals create psychological markers that help us process major life changes.

Getting married is a transition from one identity (single individual) to another (committed partnership). And humans are really bad at processing abstract changes without concrete rituals to mark them.

A wedding gives you a "before" and "after." It makes the transition real. Not just for you, but for everyone who knows you.

The Real Issue Isn't Cost — It's Whether the Wedding Is Intentional

I'm not saying everyone needs a $50,000 wedding. Not at all.

I'm saying weddings should be intentional. They should reflect your values and serve a purpose beyond just "checking a box" or "making Instagram content."

A $5,000 wedding in a backyard with 50 people who genuinely care about you is infinitely better than a $50,000 wedding with 200 acquaintances you invited because you felt obligated.

The question isn't "how much should I spend?" The question is "what am I trying to accomplish with this wedding?"

The Meaning Doesn't Come from the Price Tag

Let me be crystal clear: the meaning of a wedding comes from public commitment, not the price tag.

A wedding can happen in a park, a church, a backyard, or a ballroom. The venue doesn't define the covenant. The people do.

The core function is introducing a new household to its community and making a public commitment that others can witness and support.

Overspending can actually contradict the original purpose of launching a stable life together. If you go into debt to fund a wedding, you're undermining the very stability you're trying to signal. That's not smart.

But here's what I don't support: the idea that weddings are inherently wasteful or that private courthouse ceremonies are "more authentic."

Privacy is fine for some things. But marriage isn't meant to be private. It's meant to be witnessed. It's meant to create accountability. It's meant to say, "We're building something permanent, and we want you all to know about it."

The Real Choice You're Making

When people say "I don't want a wedding," what they're often really saying is one of these things:

"I don't have a community worth celebrating with."

"I don't want to invest in community because I don't believe it will pay off."

"I'm afraid of being vulnerable in front of people."

"I don't want to deal with family drama."

"I'm making a purely financial calculation and ignoring the social capital dimension."

I understand how you could come to these conclusions.

But I'd encourage you to dig deeper and ask:

If you don't have a community worth celebrating with, is that something you should work on? Because you're going to need people at some point. Life gets hard. Raising kids gets hard. Aging gets hard. You can't hire your way out of needing people.

If you don't believe community investment pays off, have you actually tried? Or are you operating on assumptions based on past experiences with dysfunctional communities?

If you're afraid of being vulnerable, is that fear serving you? Or is it protecting you from something that might actually be good for you?

If family drama is the issue, can you have a wedding without the toxic family members? You're allowed to be selective.

If it's purely financial, are you accounting for the social capital ROI? Or are you only looking at the immediate cash outflow?

If you're getting married, here's my advice:

Have some kind of wedding. It doesn't have to be expensive. But it should be public. Invite the people you love. Make it meaningful.

Don't go into debt for it. If you can't afford the wedding you want, scale it down. The point isn't the venue or the flowers. The point is the commitment and the community.

Be intentional about who you invite. This isn't a Facebook friend list. These are the people who will support your marriage for the next 50 years. Choose wisely.

Use the wedding as an opportunity to invest in relationships. Thank people for coming. Spend real time with them. Make them feel valued. This is social capital compounding in real-time.

Don't compare your wedding to Instagram. Other people's curated highlight reels are not the standard you need to meet.

Remember the original purpose. You're launching a household. You're building something stable. You're creating a unit that contributes to your community. Everything else is just decoration.

Final Thoughts

Look, I get the impulse to skip the wedding. I really do. If you grew up without strong community ties, if you've been burned by family drama, if you're financially anxious, it makes total sense to want to avoid the expense and the vulnerability.

But I think that impulse is short-sighted.

Weddings aren't just about one day. They're about signaling to your community that you're building something worth supporting. They're about creating accountability structures. They're about marking a major life transition in a way that your brain can actually process.

And most importantly, they're about investing in relationships at a moment when people are primed to invest back.

You don't need to spend $50,000. You don't need a destination wedding or a celebrity photographer. But you do need to take the commitment seriously. And part of taking it seriously is making it public.

So yeah, have the wedding. Just make it count.

The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, and it should not be relied on as such. The views expressed in this commentary are subject to change based on market and other conditions.

Zachary Bouck, CFP®

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