Big wedding = happy marriage?

Published Aug 22, 2014

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THE BIGGER the wedding, the happier the marriage, a study has found. The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia found couples who had formal weddings, with many guests, reported higher marital quality than the rest.

The study’s authors, Galena Rhoades and Scott Stanley, recruited more than 1 000 Americans aged 18 to 34 who were unmarried but in a relationship in 2007 and 2008. Over the next five years, 418 of them married, and researchers examined the history of the spouses’ relationship, their prior romantic experiences and the quality of their marriage.

They found 41 percent of couples who had a formal wedding reported marital quality in the top 40 percent, compared with 28 percent the others; 47 percent of those who had weddings with 150 or more guests made the top 40 percent, against 31 percent for ceremonies with 50 or fewer guests.– Daily Mail

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