There is a lot of stuff to marriage that are very real today. The main issue is the cost that is spent on an average  wedding, which is $30,000. This is, from my perspective, a huge amount of money. Which is, in my perspective, a waste. I know weddings are important, but I also know that you don’t need to spend so much money to have a decent wedding. This high cost of marriage can cause some major disruptions later. There are three solutions that often occurs to afford the cost of marriage when it is so high. The first is that the in-laws or parents take care of it, usually on one side of the family. This can cause so early tension between couples, because the ones planning the marriage, who also want to be involved the most since its their money, are the parents, usually on the bride to be side of the family, particularly her mother. What often happens is that the bride, instead of bonding with her husband over planning, instead reinforces her relationship with her mother in their mother-daughter relationship. Instead of bonding to a husband-wife relationship. There also comes the notion or concept of debt to those parents, like the new couple needs to “pay back” that debt by going to that parent’s house for the holidays over the other parents. This can cause some major contempt between the newly married couple and reinforce the relationships that should not be reinforced during this time. The focus of a marriage is to reinforce the relationship between the husband and wife to be. It is integral because they want to hopefully spend the rest of their life together, and if this early relationship development at this new stage doesn’t happen, there will be a lot of conflict. To clarify I am not saying that parents should not be involved in the marriage itself. Both sides should be, but they should not be providing the backbone for the marriage to be happening. When they do, problems between the marriage will arise, and there will be conflict that drives the husband and wife farther apart rather then closer together.

            The next two major problems with a high cost marriage lie in the other two solutions. The solutions are either delaying marriage until it is affordable or go into debt. The problem I see with delaying the marriage is that it has potential to just never happen. Funds may never be available and eventually the relationship will stagnate just from a lack of progression towards marriage. Something that I have learned is that if you’re not progressing towards a goal your regressing instead. It is normal to not be progressing all the time, especially when it comes to dating, courting, engagement, and marriage, however, it is important to make sure there is more progression then there is regression. The last solution to pay for an expensive marriage is to go into debt. I know many people adults know this, and I am beginning to learn is that debt just sucks. It drains your resources and can ruin your life. Which is why for my personal wedding I will not be doing this option either. Going into debt has two major effects, the first is that often education is delayed, which hampers the ability to get a better job sooner to sustain the marriage. But also, it delays having children. Americans are having marriages later and later in their lives, and children are important because without them society collapses. The generations become less populous and can’t support the older generations or keep the economy as robust since there are less people to fill the demands of society. It is important to have children, since Americans are having children later in life, mid 30’s, debt would only delay that further and by that time people become too old to have healthy children anymore.