rising wedding – Conservatives warn that liberals are “devaluing” marriage, but a closer look at Gen Z tells a messier story: many young people still want weddings, even as costs climb, timing stretches, and more couples treat marriage as an option rather than a default.
On a Tuesday night. a New Jersey journalist scrolls past engagement photos and ring selfies the way many people do—automatically. But for Kat Tenbarge, the constant stream of weddings on her feeds doesn’t translate into pressure to be married. At 28, she says her life is built around choice, not obligation.
Across the political conversation. conservatives have argued that liberals have “devalue[d]. deny[d]. and discount[ed] the institution of marriage.” Tenbarge’s own experience points the other way. She knows people her age who want weddings. She also hears a more practical reason for delay: marriage is harder to justify when the bill for a modern wedding keeps getting bigger.
That tension shows up in multiple accounts from Gen Z friends and couples—people who describe wedding planning as a kind of stress test, not a romantic fairy tale.
The contradiction between rhetoric and reality is hard to ignore. When Tenbarge asked followers through a callout on her Instagram story to share what they love. what they hate. and why they want—or don’t want—to get married. the responses weren’t muted. Even among liberals who felt nonchalant about the idea of marriage, many still said they wanted a wedding.
“What I was surprised by. ” she said in an interview for this reporting. “was how many of my liberal peers felt strongly about their desire to get married.” She describes the people who shared their views as regular individuals. not pundits—friends and acquaintances trying to work out what marriage means to them.
Tenbarge traces some of the shift to legal and economic changes that gave women more independence long before many women were ready to convert that independence into marriage. She points to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act becoming law in 1974—when. she says. women no longer needed a man to cosign their loans. For her, those rights didn’t just improve day-to-day finances. They changed the marriage math.
“The right to have your own bank account. the right to open your own line of credit. the right to own your own home – all of these relatively recent rights that women have gained have changed the landscape of marriage so much. ” Tenbarge told her. She also cited “centuries of evidence” that women may be more hesitant to marry.
She has her own example. Tenbarge said she has known since childhood that she wanted a wedding, and she got engaged to her partner, Anna, in 2025. Her fascination with weddings, she said, has been shaped by pop culture—from TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress” to YouTubers vlogging wedding-day moments.
At the same time, she added something that lands like a counterpoint to the conservative argument about marriage being “devalued.”
“As much as I wanted to get married,” Tenbarge said, “I think that it’s such a phenomenal advancement that young women in particular could decenter marriage from their lives.”
That decentering, in her telling, is tied to the ability to reach financial goals without needing marriage as the gateway.
Her view echoes a different kind of reality check shared by other Gen Z couples: weddings cost far more than people expect, and the cost can turn timing into a negotiation with money rather than with feelings.
Brighton McConnell, a 29-year-old North Carolina journalist, began dating his wife, Sarah, at the end of their freshman year of college. Despite a decade-long relationship, they didn’t marry until October 2025. In McConnell’s account, the delay wasn’t about commitment. It was about planning.
“We always approached it as we are in a commitment with each other, and we would prioritize our careers or these other aspects of life before basically nuking eight months of our lives,” McConnell said.
For them, wedding spending also became part of the decision. McConnell said the cost was a “good chunk of money,” and that his wife had hesitated at first.
“We ultimately were like, ‘We know what our budget is, we know what certain things we don’t want to spare any expense on to throw a fantastic freakin’ party that we want all of our loved ones to be at,’ ” he said.
National numbers back up the sense that timing has moved. Census data shows that the average age of first marriage has increased by more than seven years for both men and women since 1975.
A big reason, McConnell said, was the expense of weddings.
That explanation became more specific through the perspective of Kate Beckman. one of the cofounders of the AI wedding planning startup Tulle Together. Beckman spoke about “sticker shock” that couples often hit during planning. She pointed to data from the platform showing a 10% increase in expected wedding budgets among users between 2025 and this year—from $45. 520 to $50. 121.
“It definitely puts a damper on the wedding planning process,” Beckman said.
In places where costs are already higher, weddings become even more of a financial challenge. Beckman said that Tulle Together data showed the average venue fee in New York is $23,597—more than twice the national average.
Then come the other line items couples learn to measure in real time: food, photographers, DJs, and outfits.
“If you’re trying to spend $70,000 on an event,” Beckman said, “of course you’re going to push your wedding until you’re older, more established in your career.”
For some, the budget is what forces the bigger question: is marriage the priority, or is a lavish wedding the priority? In the reporting, the cost barrier becomes one reason marriage can feel like an option rather than a necessity.
The practical tradeoffs are clear. McConnell’s story includes a desire to throw a “fantastic freakin’ party” while staying within a budget. Tenbarge describes a world where financial stability no longer depends on a husband’s name on a loan. Others in her orbit. the reporting notes. talk about spending tens of thousands on a single day when that money could be used for a vacation. student loans. or a down payment on an apartment.
Cost also reshapes geography. In the reporting, the question is posed plainly: would you pay New York prices—or do you wait until you can marry in a place like North Carolina, where costs are “slightly less expensive” but still out of reach for many people?
For some couples, the answer is a court house wedding, framed as a more attainable alternative.
But money isn’t the only reason expectations are colliding with what Gen Z is actually doing.
People are also changing the look and feel of weddings. In interviews shared for this reporting. Tenbarge said she has seen friends marry in ways that fit their personalities rather than following a template. One friend’s wedding was described as a small affair in a Philadelphia apartment. with the couple walking down a “metaphorical aisle” to “Adore You” by Harry Styles. Another was more traditional, with a bridal party and a first dance.
Tenbarge said she felt the same warmth from both weddings. She said the common thread was that both couples did their weddings “their way,” a theme that repeatedly came up in conversations with peers.
The shift also shows up in how weddings are officiated. In the reporting, Tenbarge describes LGBTQ+ people excited to get married, and couples who have friends rather than priests officiate.
That. Tenbarge said. is part of why conservatives are angry—not because Gen Z liberals are refusing marriage entirely. but because the relationships and weddings don’t match the “cishetero. patriarchal vision of marriage.” She attributed that framing to Tenbarge’s perspective. saying that “The weddings and the marriages and the relationships have just gotten less traditional compared to the cishetero. patriarchal vision of marriage.”.
Another fact threaded through the accounts is that even for people who are indifferent, marriage is still personal—shaped by experience, finances, timing, and identity.
The push and pull in this moment feels less like a single cultural collapse and more like a negotiation. One side argues marriage is being dismissed. The stories in this reporting show many people moving toward it—just on their own terms. often later. and often without the cost-blind assumptions that older generations sometimes made.
Gen Z marriage weddings wedding costs Equal Credit Opportunity Act Tulle Together AI wedding planning courthouse wedding first marriage age dating trends cultural norms