Weddings reflect society. From the first sip of wine at cocktail hour to the final chorus of “Country Roads,” weddings showcase our values, fashion sensibilities, food tastes, interest in religion, economic climate, and much more.

As American culture shifts, so do weddings. To understand how weddings have evolved in recent years, we turned to The Knot, a wedding site that surveyed couples who planned nuptials in 2022 or were newly engaged.

Here’s a look at what’s trending up and down at weddings (promise it’s not as dramatic as this introduction).

Trending up

1. Beyond Diamonds: Lab-grown meat may be slow to take off, but lab-grown diamonds are now firmly in the mainstream. The Knot found that 36% of center stones for wedding rings were grown in a lab, double the share in 2020.

What’s behind the trend? Without complex viewing equipment, lab-grown diamonds look identical to mined diamonds, plus they don’t carry any of the ethical baggage of diamonds mined from the earth. They’re much cheaper, too: A 1-carat, lab-grown diamond went for $1,430 earlier this year, while a similarly sized mined diamond retailed for $5,635, the WSJ reported.

2. A venue that’s a nearby barn: Almost 60% of couples chose a wedding site within 30 miles of where they live, while only about 20% of couples chose a destination wedding, The Knot said. Meanwhile, for the first time, barns/farms are tied with banquet halls as the most popular wedding venues.

3. Signature cocktails: Forty percent of couples had a “signature cocktail” at their wedding, no doubt with names like Mai Gai or Bloody Marry Me that will make your face pucker as much as the liquor does. The share of weddings with signature cocktails has increased 17 percentage points over the last five years, The Knot said.

Trending down

1. Custom merch: Couples are beginning to realize that no one wants a koozie with their wedding date on it. With wedding favors headed straight to the trash can after guests return home, the ritual of handing them out has fallen by 21 percentage points in five years.

2. Wedding hashtags: #ThankGod. Born out of the need to organize wedding photos on Instagram in the early 2010s, the cringey wedding hashtag is dying a slow, punny death. Only 32% of couples created a wedding hashtag last year, down from 55% in 2017.

3. Affordability: While 38% of couples said their wedding budget/planning was impacted by the economy in 2021, that share jumped to 54% in Q4 last year as inflation spiked, making an already expensive event even pricier. The couples surveyed by The Knot spent an average of $30,000 on their weddings last year, $2,000 more than in 2021.

Other fun facts:

• Ed Sheeran’s song “Perfect” was the most popular song for first dances for the sixth year in a row in 2022.
• The average guest count for a wedding last year was 117.
• Location matters: The average cost of a wedding in the NYC metro area was $60,000, but the average cost of a wedding in Cleveland was less than half that, at $27,000.—NF

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It costs to be friends with someone in love: People are spending more money on bachelor and bachelorette parties than ever before.

In 2023, the average cost of a party was $10,800, according to the party-planning app Bach, up from $7,700 in 2021. That puts the cost per person at ~$1,200 for a typical nine-person party.

Why? It’s a combination of longer-lasting parties and jam-packed itineraries on top of higher prices. According to Bach:

• More people are opting to start their party on Thursdays instead of Fridays, adding an extra day of costs for accommodation and activities.
• Boat parties and party bus tours are being booked 5x more than last year.

In a blow to the patriarchy...a 2022 survey by Savings.com found that bachelor party attendees shelled out more on average for every spending category, including travel, lodging, and activities, than people on a bachelorette trip. The discrepancy is likely due to bachelor parties being smaller (with fewer people to the split costs) and typically featuring activities with a higher price tag, like golf and sports events.

In the same survey, 52% said they took on credit card debt to attend a bach party. Between drinks (~$100), hotels (~$200), and flights (~$500), it adds up. Then again, watching your soon-to-be-married friend get drunk on a Pontoon Saloon? Priceless.—CC

If you’re dying to watch someone’s drunk in-laws do the Cupid Shuffle this year, listen up: Instead of taking a platonic bestie, a mutual, or even someone they just met at a bar, people are increasingly turning to TikTok to find a date for their friend or family member’s special day.

How it works: “In need of a +1” posts typically fall somewhere between a Survivor audition tape and a supercut of someone’s chillest moments (e.g., driving a boat, dancing at a formal function, having a dog). Viewers whose interest is piqued by the post compete for the role of hot stranger’s date via DM or a link-in-bio survey form. The poster then sifts through a college admissions committee’s worth of applications and picks someone to accompany them.

• Tens of thousands of people (mostly 18- to 34-year-olds) watch videos tagged with #plusone or #weddingdateapplication each day, according to TikTok data.
• The hashtags have garnered about 5 million views since February and 35 million since the summer of 2020.

With marriage season upon us, people who held a who-wants-to-date-me contest this year are finally awkwardly dancing with the fruits of their online labors. But tons of fall wedding invitees are still searching for someone to have on their arm, so if you’re the self-proclaimed life of the party, scroll on.—ML

We asked readers to share their thoughts on some controversial wedding practices, and it turns out…they were pretty controversial! Here are the full findings:

1. Wedding favors are…

• 52%: Fun if they are actually good
• 48%: A total waste of money
• Hot take: “No one wants a dried-out shortbread cookie in the shape of your initials!”

2. Having weed available at your reception is…

• 84%: A bad idea
• 16%: Hip and trendy
• Hot take: “Let the experienced people bring their own and you’ll have 63% fewer ambulance calls for ‘I feel weird.’”

3. Using Venmo to send cash as a wedding gift is…

• 56%: Impersonal
• 44%: Convenient and perfectly fine
• Hot take: “I once stuffed a crisp $20 in the pocket of the groom while he was taking a pee break. Venmo isn’t the same.”

4. Reading your vows off your phone is

• 81%: Impersonal
• 19%: Totally normal

5. Wedding weekends…

• 54%: Are fun for everyone!
• 46%: Must be stopped
• Hot take: “It’s the couple’s special weekend, but after going to over 35 weddings in the past six years, I’d like some of those weekends back.”

6. Food trucks at weddings…

• 58%: Are a good time
• 42%: Suck and take way too long to get your food
• Hot take: “Can’t be the only food source, but you’re a fool if you think I’m not going to decimate a taco truck after the open-bar experience.”

7. Line dances are…

• 55%: A great way to get people on the dance floor
• 45%: Horrible for everyone
• Hot take: “Cheesy but people love the cheese.”

8. Offering a drink during the ceremony is…

• 56%: A bad idea
• 44%: Thoughtful
• Hot take: “Unnecessary. Can’t we be without alcohol at a group event for 20min–1hr??”

9. Talking about the cost of the wedding during the festivities is…

• 90%: Braggadocious
• 10%: Totally chill

10. Moving tables at the reception to sit with your friends is…

• 53%: Not a big deal if there’s an open seat
• 47%: Rude
• Hot take: “Do you know how much time and politics go into mapping the tables?”

In September, hundreds of couples will participate in a production that’s incredibly Vegas: The fake-tanned Dennis Bono will host a mass vow renewal event at Caesars Palace to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the London Daily Herald calling the city the “Wedding Capital of the World.”

Las Vegas, which boasts over 50 wedding chapels, has been known for its campy, quick ceremonies since the city loosened marriage restrictions in the early 20th century.

• In 2021, Nevada (powered by Las Vegas) had the highest rate of matrimony, with 26.2 new marriages per 1,000 people.
• About 4% of US weddings happened in Vegas in 2021, according to Axios’s analysis of CDC data.

A Vegas wedding timeline for the rich and famous

The famous and infamous have supplied a steady stream of marriages for Sin City. Celebrities made Vegas weddings a thing in the ’60s when the likes of Judy Garland, Betty White, and Frank Sinatra chose it for their second, third, or whatever number marriage they were on. But Las Vegas’s matrimonial reputation was sealed once Elvis and Priscilla Presley wed at the Aladdin Hotel in 1967.

In the mid-2000s, Vegas weddings became more associated with short-lived partnerships, micro-marriages, if you will. Think Pamela Anderson and Rick Salomon or Britney Spears’s infamous 55-hour marriage to childhood friend Jason Alexander. Still, couples like JLo and Ben Affleck, Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker, and Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner all opted for the “traditional” Vegas wedding within the last few years.

But it’s not all roses and fake Elvises. Despite bouncing back from pandemic lows, Vegas weddings aren’t occurring at the volume they used to. In 2004, Clark County issued some 128,000 marriage licenses, but last year it handed out just 80,000.—MM

And they lived happily ever after…but not without the help of spreadsheets, productivity tools, and G-Cal invites. For an increasing number of couples, software designed to be used at work is key to a successful marriage at home.

Many spouses are using workplace productivity tools to organize their relationship in what Bustle calls the “HR-ification Of Marriage,” reflecting the fact that making a marriage work can be a full-time job. In one recent popular video on TikTok, a wife shares how she and her husband schedule a weekly admin meeting.

So, if you’re attending a wedding this summer, here’s a gift idea: a Google Docs relationship management template.

For the entrepreneurial couple selling these templates (at a fraction of the hourly rate of even a subpar divorce lawyer), the tools are a way to feel like they’re on the same page. The anonymous duo behind the MD Meets Techie brand describes how productivity software Notion helps them stay on top of plans, discuss relationship values, and keep each other accountable in working toward personal goals. On a less administratively minded note, they find their shared relationship management work to be “a reminder of what we’ve experienced together as a couple.”

But many spouses are opting for spreadsheets. Whether it’s planning a cross-country move with the database tool Airtable or using Google Sheets to track household chores, sometimes marital bliss is about adequate accounting.

For others, it’s all about proper scheduling. “If a social commitment for us or any kind event for our son doesn’t make it onto G-Cal, it doesn’t happen,” says our editor Abigail Rubenstein of her nine-years-strong marriage.—SK

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Pew, pew: A theory of why toy laser gun sounds haven’t changed since the 1980s. 

Learn the best starting word: How an algorithm trained to solve Wordle plays the game.

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Brew crossword: Put the knowledge you’ve gained by attending all those weddings to good use with today’s “first dance”-themed puzzle. Play it here.

Open House

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section that hears a melody of wedding bells and ca-ching sound effects. We’ll give you a few facts about a listing and you try to guess the price.

Today’s property is Bel Vino Winery in Temecula, CA. It has over 40 acres of vineyard and a 3,266-square-foot residence that is perfectly set up to host “I dos” and bouquet tosses. Amenities include:

• Main building with commercial kitchen
• Plenty of parking
• Stage for someone’s sister to drunkenly try and make a toast

How much for unlimited wedding cake for the rest of your life?

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