People love weddings. And why shouldn’t they? Weddings bring people together, there’s love in the air, alcohol is flowing freely and a dance floor usually isn’t a bad addition, either. But I feel like nowadays, especially with the addition of social media shoving everything down everyone’s throats, that the expectations are so unrealistically high for weddings. Especially with celebrities getting married and spending millions of dollars on one night. And we as a culture are so obsessed with what our “role models” are doing that we don’t bat an eye at it. We accept it. We strive towards it.

We as a culture are losing the focus of weddings. Isn’t getting married supposed to be about marrying your best friend and celebrating the fact that you get to start building a life and a family with your true love? Yet we’re obsessed with the gorgeous engagement photos, and the perfect dress, and the colors that bring out the bride’s personality, but literally none of this is required to get married. The bare minimum? You need two people, someone to marry you, and a witness. So why are we so obsessed with weddings? Some may say, it’s “the biggest day of the bride’s life” but with the current divorce rate in America at 40 – 50%, is it really? Not to mention how outrageously expensive they are. The national average for a wedding in the United States is over http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/05/pf/average-wedding-costs/ You can pay for a year of college with that much money! Or if you already have a degree, you could pay off your student loans. (The national average student debt is https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics-2016 But people don’t think about it like that. They just want the perfect day. And to show that day to all of their “friends” on Facebook.

I feel like women have been brainwashed by the media. All of the chick flicks are about making everything perfect for the perfect day so that you can marry the perfect man and have the perfect life and live perfectly ever after. Just a few wedding articles I’ve seen have titles such as, “Wedding Ring Pictures You Have to Take on Your Big Day” and “20 Impossibly Romantic Floating Wedding Centerpieces.” There are Pinterest boards on Pinterest boards about the cutest guest books at weddings, the decorations that will make your wedding be remembered forever, and the best things to give out as wedding favors. Why is there so much pressure put on having the perfect wedding and engagement photos or even about the dress? It’s because it’s about money. This “perfect” atmosphere is based around an industry that’s designed to make money. The venue, the caterers, the wedding planners, and the photographers, just to name a few parties present in a modern day American wedding, all exist just to make a buck. If they can talk you into something that matches your color scheme (and that is, of course, more expensive) they’re going to because they’re all running a business. None of them actually care about your marriage and if it will last or not. They just want to make sure you have the correct number of zeroes on the check you write them.

Unfortunately, in a world that’s all about making money, a ceremony that’s supposed to based around true love and fidelity is not exempt from the trend. It would be nice if we could go back to weddings as a small affair that was truly about the couple starting their life together, but between charging an arm and a leg for a nice venue, and a good photographer, not to mention people taking advantage of the DIY craze and creating their own wedding-themed Etsy shops, I have a feeling that things aren’t going to simplify anytime soon.