In both the Christian and secular world the cost of weddings has gone up, as marriage has become more risky.

New Zealanders are trailing behind Australians in how much they splash out on weddings, spending about half as much on their nuptials.

A survey from Australia’s Bride To Be magazine shows the average wedding in Australia costs $54,294 (NZ $65,574).

However, wedding planners in New Zealand say Kiwi couples are not willing to fork out as much, opting for less expensive weddings.

Wedding planner Lana King, the owner of Wonderful Events in Auckland, said her clients spend on average between $30,000 and $35,000 on weddings.

“I think a lot of people, especially in New Zealand, spend a lot more time doing their own sort of DIY weddings,” she said.

Nicky Luis, owner of Lavish Events in Auckland, said while there were no official statistics on the average cost in New Zealand, perceptions within the industry put the figure at $30,000. “I’ve heard [that figure] across the board for the past year,” she said.

We should not do this within the Church. Have a small wedding: use your church, get the church to pray for you and use that 30K to get a house deposit or pay obsetricians. For you have a choice: Christian marriage or marriage as something that only the rich can afford.

A Christian marriage was well described by Cane Caldo.

You either believe that wives are from God, or you don’t. You also either believe that good wives are from God, or you don’t. The delineation of good, bad, and no wives in the Bible suggests that wives are much more than partners for sex; even if sex is the beginning–and it is. Here are some possibilities for why God does or does not give a man a wife: punishment, training, responsibility, pleasure, reflection, consequence…

The answer is: All of the Above, and that it mirrors and furthers the discipline given to mankind in Genesis 3. The gift of a wife is the gift of work, but it is a work of subsidiarity; of stewardship. The husband acts in the place of the God–the creator and owner of each of us. This wife is the franchise of which you act as owner, operator, chief bottle-washer and head-and-only janitor of Mrs. Yourself, Inc.

Here’s how St. Paul talks about it:

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. 28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: 30 for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. 31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. 32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

Now, what we hear in church is that this is a great honor to be a husband. This is true. What’s not true is that the mere presence of the wife and her worth herself which grants the honor. No; that’s wrong and blasphemous.

So what is the source of the honor? It’s the fact that the Almighty God, Lord of the Hosts of Heaven, looked down on our mortal existence, and He Who Needs No Help said:

“I want you to help me. See that parcel of land over there? Go, and prepare it as a place for Me: build it, clean it, farm it, While you’re there: Enjoy yourself, and make use of my property. Live there, eat there, and be satisfied there; as if it were your own. Bear in mind: I will hold you accountable for what I find when I return.”

In the Old Testament, it looks like this:

Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.

I’ll be returning to this passage later, but for now: Who of the defenders of Game as a worthy topic, can point me to a Game blog that arrived at such a conclusion on the reality and circumstances of marriage?

And this is what a secular marriage looks like. It’s what happens in the elite, what Moldbug calls the Cathedral. Now, there are divorces here: I was not born into the Cathedral but I have the status within my guild that gets me there, and I assortively mated, and then divorced 20 odd years later. But… among the more educated marriages last longer. Running a marriage, particularly with a wife at home, requires, in NZ, about 100K of income (or in Auckland 150 — 200K). Most women have to work, for the husband is paying for the house, and they are paying for the bacon.

I would add that a lot of people spend like the UMC for the wedding and in doing that miss the point: for the very rich 30K is the cost of trading up their car every couple of years, and often they don’t spend that much.

That’s fairly close to my perspective as well — namely that marriage is now mostly a luxury good. The only people who bring enough “there” to the table to justify marriage, in the broader population at least, are people who can “bring it”. Once you get to the middle/middle and lower/middle it starts to get a lot shakier because the benefits are iffy while the risks are still there. And in the lower/working/poor segment, the benefits are nonexistent.

There is always risk. The question is “what are the benefits”, and do they offset the risk. The higher value one’s mate is (I’m not talking SMVs here, or even traditional Christian MMVs, but rather something like “total mate value” which is how the UMCs look at this – there’s a strong economic component to it, in other words, but also the right educational pedigree, the right professional standing, the right social pedigree/network and so on ), the more benefits are brought to the table by the mate to counterbalance the risk. These benefits both entice people to get married (more benefit) and discourage people from divorcing (don’t want to lose the benefits). This is true even in the age of “cash and prizes” divorce, because leaving aside the economics that are transferred, many other benefits of being in an assortative UMC marriage (social status, standing in social networks, etc.) is lost in the case of a divorce. Now, of course, there’s a big economic buffer either way for these people (which is why the kids of divorce in this group also do better than in other groups – money helps blunt some of the issues), but also the overall risk is much lower that there will be a divorce to begin with because people don’t want to lose the benefits of being married to an assortative high value mate.

When you get below that set, the benefits are much less – because the mates are objectively not high value mates. They may be mid-value or low-value. In either case, that means the “benefits” side of the equation is not high enough to outweigh the risk side of it (not just the “frivorce” risk for men, but also other “bad marriage” type risks like the ones he describes in the article), so people are acting rationally and not marrying (on a sliding scale downwards as the benefits side of the equation gets lower and lower). As a result, marriage is becoming increasingly a luxury good, because that’s where the benefits/risk equation pencils.

So you have to choose who to honour. This secular world, or that of God. Because regardless, marriage is work. Marriage is hard. If you want an easy life, stay single and do not breed, for if marriage is hard and work, try raising kids.

And in Christ, holy celibacy is an option (and we will all have times of singleness, for death will part us): for those of us who burn, both men and women, we have to choose daily to honour the vows we have made, to repent, and choose to lead and follow: for our job description as husband and wife is not in what this world says, but in scripture.