The Price of Saying I Do… and the Cost of Saying Goodbye

On weddings, funerals, and the curious business of being human.

I recently made another payment towards my funeral plan. Nothing particularly dramatic about it…just another one of those little financial arrangements we make in life, usually with the hope that we won’t need to call upon them for a very long time. In my case, I intend to hang around for a good while yet, if only to continue annoying people with my opinions and the occasional observation about the state of the world.

Still, there I was, paying towards the cost of my eventual departure, when my mind wandered off in a direction that probably says more about me than it does about the funeral industry. I started thinking about weddings.

Now, bear with me, because I appreciate that weddings and funerals are not usually regarded as natural partners in conversation. One is supposed to represent the happiest day of somebody’s life, whilst the other marks the end of it. One involves champagne, confetti and a carefully choreographed procession of relatives pretending they haven’t fallen out over the seating arrangements. The other involves flowers, sombre music and relatives pretending they haven’t fallen out over the will.

Both, however, can cost an absolute fortune.

Depending on the arrangements, a funeral in Britain (and it would seem here in Spain) can easily run into several thousand pounds, with estimates often falling somewhere between £4,000 and £10,000 once the various costs are taken into account. The final figure depends on what is included, where you live and how elaborate the arrangements become. A wedding, meanwhile, can cost considerably more, with some couples spending sums that would make a second-hand car dealer sit down and have a little think.

And that was when I began to wonder about the curious economics of marking the beginning and the end of our time together.

The happiest day of your life… apparently

I have never quite understood why we have become so attached to the idea that a wedding must be an extraordinary production. Obviously, people want to celebrate their marriage, and I have absolutely no objection to that. If two people love one another and want to stand in front of their family and friends to make a commitment, then good luck to them. I hope they have a wonderful day, the weather behaves itself and nobody’s uncle gets hold of the microphone after three pints.

But somewhere along the way, the celebration seems to have become tangled up with an expectation that the occasion must be bigger, better and more impressive than anything that came before it. The venue has to be special, the dress has to be perfect, the flowers must look as though they have been personally selected by nature herself, and the photographs need to provide sufficient evidence that the entire affair was worthy of the money spent.

Before long, a couple who simply want to get married can find themselves organising what amounts to a small commercial operation, complete with suppliers, deposits, schedules, contingency plans and a budget that appears to have developed a life of its own.

I imagine there are people who begin with the perfectly reasonable thought that a nice meal and a gathering of people they love would be lovely. Six months later, they are discussing chair covers with the sort of intensity once reserved for military procurement.

The wedding industry is very good at selling us the idea that a once-in-a-lifetime occasion deserves once-in-a-lifetime spending. There is a certain logic to that, of course. If something matters deeply to us, we naturally want to make it special. Yet the argument is also rather convenient for the people selling us the specialness, particularly when every additional flourish comes with another invoice.

And there is the rub. We are not simply paying for a wedding. We are often paying for the expectation of what a wedding ought to look like.

Social media has probably added another layer to this. A wedding is no longer merely an occasion remembered by the people who attended it. It can become a carefully presented public statement, complete with photographs, videos and enough visual evidence to convince strangers that the happy couple have achieved something approaching matrimonial perfection. The fact that marriage itself begins in earnest after the guests have gone home is, perhaps, a detail best left until later.

I sometimes wonder how many couples would choose the same arrangements if there were no photographs to share, no expectations to satisfy and no relatives waiting to offer their opinions. Would they still want the grand venue and the elaborate reception? Some undoubtedly would, and why not? Others might decide that the money would be better spent on a house deposit, a decent holiday or simply giving themselves a little breathing room in the expensive business of setting up a life together.

There is no right answer. The point is that a choice becomes less of a choice when everybody around you seems to have an opinion about what is required.

And then comes the funeral bill

My own thoughts on this subject began with a funeral plan, so perhaps I should explain why I have one.

It is not because I spend my days contemplating my own mortality, nor have I suddenly developed an interest in coffin specifications. I have simply reached the age where practical considerations become rather more interesting than they once were. When you are young, the future seems an almost inexhaustible resource. There is always another year, another opportunity and another reason to put off thinking about the less cheerful possibilities.

Eventually, however, you realise that the future is not a bottomless account into which you can keep making withdrawals. It is something you are fortunate enough to have, and it comes with a few administrative responsibilities.

One of those responsibilities is accepting that, sooner or later, somebody will have to arrange my funeral. I would rather that the financial side of it had already been dealt with than leave somebody else trying to find several thousand pounds at a time when they have enough on their plate.

That seems to me a reasonable act of consideration. It is not particularly romantic, but then neither is discovering that a loved one’s death has arrived with an unexpected invoice attached.

The funeral industry, like the wedding industry, has legitimate costs. People provide services, facilities, transport, paperwork and practical support at a difficult time. A dignified funeral takes organisation, and those providing that service deserve to be paid fairly. I have no quarrel with that.

What interests me is how easily the cost of a farewell can become entangled with our feelings about the person who has died. Families want to do the right thing. They want to show respect, provide comfort and honour a life. In the middle of grief, the question of whether something is affordable can become mixed up with the much more painful question of whether it is good enough.

Nobody wants to feel that they have let someone down by choosing a simpler arrangement. Nobody wants to be the person who suggests cutting costs when everybody else is grieving. And nobody particularly enjoys discussing budgets when the person whose funeral is being arranged is no longer there to tell them what they actually wanted.

It is an uncomfortable position in which to find yourself, and one that makes advance planning rather sensible.

Yet it also raises an awkward question. Why do we sometimes measure the respect we have for somebody by the amount of money we spend on their departure?

A modest funeral can be every bit as meaningful as an elaborate one. A simple ceremony, a few well-chosen words and the presence of people who genuinely cared may say more about a life than a room full of expensive flowers. Equally, there is nothing wrong with a grand farewell if that reflects the wishes of the person who has died or brings comfort to those left behind.

The important distinction is between spending money because it adds something meaningful and spending it because we are frightened that doing less might look as though we cared less.

That is a rather expensive misunderstanding.

The curious business of being seen to care

Perhaps weddings and funerals have more in common than we usually acknowledge. Both are occasions on which private feelings become public events. Both bring families together, often with a mixture of affection, obligation and the occasional unresolved grievance that has been quietly fermenting since 1987. Both are shaped by tradition, and both can leave people feeling that there is a certain standard they are expected to meet.

At a wedding, we demonstrate the seriousness of a commitment. At a funeral, we demonstrate the importance of a life. Neither purpose requires an enormous budget, but both can become expensive when the ceremony itself starts to stand in for the feeling it is supposed to express.

There is a peculiar pressure in the idea that love must be demonstrated through visible expenditure. We rarely say it quite so bluntly, of course. We talk about making memories, creating an unforgettable day and giving somebody the send-off they deserve. Those are perfectly understandable sentiments, and they can be entirely sincere.

But the language can also make restraint feel like failure.

A couple who spend £25,000 on a wedding may have a wonderful day and never regret a penny of it. Another couple may marry quietly at a registry office, celebrate with a few friends and spend the money on something that matters more to them. Neither couple has demonstrated more or less love simply through the size of the bill.

Likewise, a family may choose an elaborate funeral because it reflects the personality and wishes of the person they have lost. Another may choose a simple cremation and gather afterwards to share memories over a meal. There is no universal price at which love becomes respectable.

And yet we live in a society that is remarkably good at attaching price tags to experiences and then using those prices as shorthand for their importance. We do it with holidays, houses, cars, anniversaries and birthdays. We do it with weddings and funerals, too, two occasions that sit at opposite ends of the human story but somehow end up in the same conversation about money.

I wonder whether we have become so accustomed to purchasing the trappings of an experience that we sometimes lose sight of the experience itself.

We can spend thousands creating a perfect day, but no amount of money guarantees a happy marriage. We can spend thousands arranging a dignified farewell, but no amount of money can tell us whether the person who has died felt loved during their life.

Those things are built elsewhere, in the unremarkable moments that rarely attract a professional photographer.

What about all the years in between?

This is the part that really interests me.

We make a great deal of fuss about beginnings and endings, and understandably so. A wedding marks a commitment that two people hope will last a lifetime. A funeral marks the end of that lifetime and gives those left behind an opportunity to acknowledge what has been lost. These occasions matter because human beings need ways of marking change, sharing emotion and making sense of events that are larger than the ordinary business of getting through the week.

But the years between those ceremonies are where the real substance of life is found.

A marriage is not built during the wedding breakfast. It is built over years of ordinary living, through compromise, patience, shared responsibilities and the willingness to put up with another person’s peculiar habits long after the novelty has worn off. It is built when money is tight, when somebody is ill, when plans go wrong and when one of you has said something spectacularly stupid and must decide whether to apologise or attempt to defend the indefensible.

That last one can be a lengthy exercise in diplomacy.

The important moments are often the ones nobody else sees. Making somebody a cup of tea without being asked. Remembering that they have had a difficult day. Sitting together in comfortable silence. Laughing at something that would make no sense to anybody outside the relationship. Being there when life becomes inconvenient rather than merely when it is enjoyable.

These things rarely cost very much. Some of them cost nothing at all, apart from a little time and attention, which may explain why we sometimes undervalue them.

The same is true of the years that lead to a funeral. The value of a life cannot be calculated from the arrangements made at its end. It is found in the relationships formed, the things learned, the help given, the mistakes made and, hopefully, the occasions on which we managed to make somebody else’s day a little better.

I am not suggesting that ceremonies are unimportant. Far from it. They can help us acknowledge things that deserve to be acknowledged, and there is comfort in having a moment when the people who matter gather together. But a ceremony is a marker, not the thing itself.

Perhaps we would do well to remember that distinction a little more often.

We are rather good at paying for the wrong things

I have spent enough years watching the world to know that human beings are complicated creatures. We can be generous and selfish, practical and irrational, wonderfully thoughtful and astonishingly concerned about what the neighbours might think. We can recognise the absurdity of something and still find ourselves doing it because everybody else appears to be doing it.

We complain about the cost of living, worry about our finances and tell ourselves that we cannot afford the things that would genuinely make life easier. Then, when a major life event arrives, we can find ourselves spending money we do not really have because the occasion is supposed to be special.

Some of that spending is worthwhile. A memorable celebration can bring people together in ways that remain precious for decades. A funeral can provide a meaningful opportunity to say goodbye, and the arrangements can bring comfort to a grieving family. I would not want to reduce either experience to a spreadsheet.

But there is a difference between spending money because we can afford to do something meaningful and spending it because we feel we have to satisfy an expectation. The former is a choice. The latter can become a burden disguised as a tradition.

It is worth remembering that many of the people attending an expensive wedding will remember the conversations, the laughter and the people they met far longer than they will remember the precise arrangement of the table decorations. At a funeral, people are likely to remember the stories told, the kindness shown and the feeling of being among others who understood their loss. They may remember the flowers, too, but I doubt anybody’s grief is improved by discovering that the lilies cost another £300.

Perhaps I am being unfair to the lilies. They are only doing their best.

The wider point is that the value of an occasion and its financial cost are not the same thing. We know this in other areas of life, yet we seem strangely reluctant to apply the same common sense when emotion enters the room.

And emotion is precisely where the pressure can be greatest. Nobody wants to be accused of being mean at a wedding or disrespectful at a funeral. Those are powerful social levers, whether anybody intends them to be or not.

It is possible to care deeply and still have a budget. It is possible to celebrate generously without going into debt. It is possible to honour someone without turning their funeral into a financial endurance test. None of these things diminishes the feeling behind the occasion.

If anything, making choices that reflect the wishes and circumstances of the people involved may be a more honest expression of that feeling than blindly following a template.

A final payment, and a thought worth keeping

So here I am, having made another payment towards my own eventual departure, and somehow managing to turn it into an essay about weddings. I suspect that is the sort of mental journey that comes with age, although I have known younger people capable of equally peculiar diversions.

I am not in a hurry to discover whether my funeral plan delivers everything promised in the small print. I have other things to do, plenty to write about and a general preference for remaining on the right side of the grass for the foreseeable future.

Still, the payment prompted a thought that has stayed with me. We can spend a great deal of money celebrating the moment two people decide to build a life together, and we can spend another considerable sum marking the moment one of those lives comes to an end. In between, there is an extraordinary amount of living to be done, most of it without a photographer, a venue booking or an invoice from somebody who specialises in making the occasion look important.

Perhaps the sensible approach is not to abandon the ceremonies. Let people celebrate their marriages as grandly or modestly as they wish. Let families say goodbye in whatever way brings them comfort. There is room for all of it, and life would be poorer if we stripped every meaningful occasion of its rituals in the name of economy.

But perhaps we should be a little less inclined to judge the quality of a celebration by what it costs, and a little more inclined to consider what it means. The perfect wedding cannot guarantee a lifetime of happiness, and the most expensive funeral cannot measure the worth of the person being remembered. Those things are determined by what happens beyond the ceremony, in the ordinary days that make up a life.

If I had to choose between spending a fortune on the day I get married and having the money to make the years that follow a little easier, I suspect I know which way I would lean. And if I had to choose between an elaborate farewell and knowing that the people I care about had been able to enjoy their time with me without worrying about the bill, I think the answer would be much the same.

There is something rather comforting about that. We cannot control every part of our lives, and we certainly cannot negotiate the terms of our departure. We can, however, make a few sensible arrangements, spend our money according to our own priorities and try not to confuse the price of an experience with its value.

Which brings me back to that funeral payment.

I have paid my contribution towards an event I have no intention of attending, and I hope the organisers have the good sense to postpone it for as long as possible. I would like to think that, when the time eventually comes, nobody will feel obliged to bankrupt themselves in an attempt to prove that I mattered.

A few honest words, a handful of good memories and perhaps somebody telling an outrageous story about me that is only partly true should do the job rather nicely.

After all, if I have managed to live a life worth remembering, I would hope the evidence will be found in the life I lived, rather than the bill somebody pays when it ends.

And if there happens to be a decent buffet afterwards, I shall consider that a bonus…although, being the guest of honour, I fear I shall be in no position to complain about the sandwiches.

Until Next Time