Over-the-top celebrity froth is undermining marriage

There are now, it seems, whole websites – as well as whole sections of celebrity magazines, for those not yet on the web – dedicated entirely to recording, admiring or speculating on the cost of huge celebrity weddings.

The financial experts at Forbes magazine believe the most expensive ever was the ill-fated union, in New York in 2002, of Liza Minnelli and David Gest, said to have cost $3.5 million (2.3m).

Since then, though, there have been many more candidates for inclusion in the most-extravagant-ever list, including the Italian wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes in 2006, the English and Indian wedding of Elizabeth Hurley and Arun Nayar in 2007, and the all-pink ceremony staged at Highclere Castle in Berkshire by Katie Price (aka Jordan) and the implausibly tanned Peter Andre, some four years before their recent ugly separation and divorce.

Nor do these weddings exist only in the realms of fantasy. The sums spent on them may be far beyond the means of most couples, but a single glance at the celebrity wedding websites shows how closely they are linked to the massive marketing effort that aims to sell the dream of the "perfect day" to much more ordinary mortals.

The dresses, the food, the venue, the music, the decor, the rings, the honeymoon, the gifts and goodie-bags – oh yes, every family is supposed to want its beloved daughter to feel like a star on her wedding day, or at least like a minor celebrity, photographed from every angle and surrounded by implausible signs of extravagance and luxury.

Small wonder, then, that the average wedding is now said to cost as much as 20,000; and small wonder that, in a time of recession, the marriage rate in Scotland has plummeted to an all-time low, with fewer than six people in every 1,000 tying the knot last year, compared with almost nine in every 1,000 back in the late 1930s.

Economic downturns have always tended to depress marriage rates. But whereas couples once delayed marriage and cohabitation until they could afford to support any children who might be conceived, now they set up home together but avoid tying the knot because they can't afford the party of their dreams. "Marriage is not cheap, and it's something people postpone in bad times," says Professor Robert Wright, of Strathclyde University.

But the fact is that marriage itself costs almost nothing; it's the wedding party that brings in the bills. And while there seems to be a widespread feeling that marrying from choice, rather than out of a mixture of sexual frustration and social compulsion, has to be a good thing, I am frankly not sure that good old-fashioned desire isn't at least as sound a basis for tying the knot as a longing to impress the hell out of your friends and neighbours by remortgaging the house, dressing up like Jordan and having a few white-plumed horses arrive at your door.

In making marriage optional, in other words – or in removing the penalties for cohabitation outside wedlock – we seem somehow, unintentionally, to have shifted the emphasis of the wedding day from the substance of the promise being exchanged to the style and the material trappings of the event; and therefore to have left whole swaths of society feeling marriage is an optional extra that only the better-off can afford, and which is not for the likes of them.

That alienation from the very possibility of an officially recognised lifelong bond has its impact on the self-esteem, and the durability, of millions of couples living on or near benefit level.

So what can we do to restore the idea that the mutual public promise of fidelity and commitment is the most important thing about a wedding day, and that the rest is neither necessary nor particularly desirable?

First, we can abandon the current sterile debate about civil partnerships, and whether they should be extended to heterosexual couples, in favour of an information campaign designed to foster the understanding that, legally speaking, marriage is just that – a civil partnership for heterosexual couples. I can see the billboards now, showing modestly dressed couples of all sexes under a restrained shower of confetti, encouraging them to stop making excuses and get hitched, and making it clear that the whole thing can be done for less than the price of a heavy night in the pub.

But second, we need a generation of celebrities to set a new trend by deciding that the age of fluff, frills and pink champagne waterfalls is over, and that the post-credit-crunch wedding should be characterised by a restrained 1940s look, all smart tailored suits on the steps of the municipal register office and a nice lunch at a local restaurant. Any exhibition of wedding dresses will reveal that approaches to marriage – austere, ceremonious or full of empty ostentation – have always reflected fashion, and the style of the times.

So, if we want to change attitudes to marriage, then we could possibly do much worse than begin by cultivating a profound change of style in the way we celebrate it. And then at least we might learn whether today's legions of cohabiting couples are telling the truth when they say that they would marry if they could afford it, or whether their financial concerns mask a much deeper failure of commitment, and a dangerous, deluded feeling that they can somehow drift into partnership and parenthood without losing their "freedom", just so long as they never stand up and speak the words that would bind them, in front of their friends, their family and – if they still have one – their god.