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The following article is not based on empirical research. It is based merely on the observation of one person. It may be right. It may be wrong, but it certainly will give people food for thought.

There are many reasons that I have observed for making an expensive wedding and they include some of the following:

• To make an impression on the parents' friends and associates
• To use the opportunity to invite people who you are too busy to invite at any other time
• To handle some long-standing obligations in a socially acceptable way. This means that those people will again not be invited unless you have another option for an obligation.
• To compensate for a bad relationship with your children

This article will discuss only the last of these possibilities and there are unquestionably other possibilities as well.

Parents who feel that they do not have a good relationship with their children may want to make up for at what they feel will be one of their last possible opportunities. They may therefore try to buy their children's love, attention, and respect, hoping that the children will feel the need to return the favor. They choose to do this by having a lavish wedding and the purpose is to impress the children, their own children, more than anything else. In some cases they do impress the children. In many cases the children are embarrassed by the exhibit of wealth. There has probably never been a case that a bad relationship with a parent is mended as a result of having this lavish wedding.

Nonetheless, parents walk away from the wedding saying to themselves, "Well, I did what I could."

They didn't do what they could. They could have done a great many things. The lavish wedding is the least of the things that they could have done to solve their problem.

There are lots of things that parents can do for children. There are lots of ways that the parents can show their children love, concern, attention, and acceptance. A lavish wedding is likely to be very low on the list of things that will impress the child.

The parents may spend a lot of money because it's the easiest and most impressive thing that they can do. It's a way of showing without any effort more than writing a check, how much they love the child.

But it doesn't show that love. It's irrelevant to love. Money can't buy love and it can't compensate for a previous relationship which is problematic.

For that reason the next time that you go to a lavish wedding, you might want to do a bit of a study. It's probably none of your business, so you might want to ignore this advice anyhow.

But if you want to do a little bit of psychological study, check around, sniff around, and see if you can figure out the relationship between the parent and the child.

More often than not, you will discover that there is a negative correlation between the relationship of the parent and the child and the amount of money that is spent. That is, the worse the relationship the more money the parents will spend on the child.

Does that mean that a parent who has a good relationship with a child will punish the child by having a simple wedding that costs much less?

No, not at all. The child will definitely not feel punished. To the contrary, the child will be less embarrassed by having a wedding that meets with their needs. The child will feel happy because in that case the parent and the child will probably discuss the wedding in advance and do just what the child wants. Very often what the child wants is not going to cost as much money as the case in which the parents would make the wedding themselves.

And in these cases the parent will be showing the child love, attention, and acceptance, and also show the future spouse these same things in many other ways that go beyond money.

Now are you sure that you want to make an elaborate wedding after all? What relationships or problems may hide behind those wads of cash?