Wedding costs.

In "For Love & Money" (December 2, 2005) Barbara Dafoe Whitehead states that "with the average cost of an American wedding approaching $30,000, every man and every woman's dream of a 'nice' wedding is more Buckingham Palace than the parish hall." Whitehead then draws the conclusion that weddings are affordable only to the "successful" and that this is contributing "to the growing economic polarization in this country."

As much as Whitehead might like to bemoan economic injustice in our country, her argument is fatuous. Historically, the cost of a wedding has remained constant with the cost of a new car or one year's college tuition. When I went to college, one year cost my parents about $2,000--roughly the same price as a new car or a "nice" wedding. Today each of these items costs about $30,000. I would argue that this generation has roughly the same economic resources as the previous one, but we chose to allocate our resources to postgraduate education, houses, and other investment vehicles with growth potential rather than a party for friends.

JAY DAVIS

White River Junction, Vt.

THE AUTHOR REPLIES:

If one paid $2,000 for a year of college in (say) 1960, and its price had since remained stable, it would now be about $15,000, not $30,000. The price of college is notorious for having risen faster than inflation. My point is that the people who are now able to pay $30K for a wedding are the people who were also able pay $30K for college. The price of a wedding is not a cause of economic polarization, but a consequence. The price of college, I suspect, is both a cause and a consequence.

BARBARA DAFOE WHITEHEAD