A wedding party and a kidnapping...

A WEDDING PARTY AND A KIDNAPPING...

SurEconomics staff, July 2026

Before readers begin to speculate that getting married resembles a kidnapping because one spouse is deprived of liberty by the other, or that marriage is a kind of sentence or other nonsense of that sort, we clarify that we are not talking about that, but solely about microeconomics.

A wedding party and a kidnapping are alike in that, in both cases, the price can hardly be negotiated, since they tend to be oligopolistic "industries" with few competitors, in which prices are set by the kidnappers or by the organizers of the wedding receptions.

This is so true that in countries such as India, where weddings are held in volumes as high as 10 million couples a year, or formerly in Venezuela, which had one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world (now, thank God, considerably lower), wedding celebrations and ransoms turn out to be much cheaper than in countries where such situations are scarcer.

To turn to practical examples, a fairly ordinary luxury wedding in Spain costs on average 212 euros per person seated at the table. In the U.S. it can cost twice that. Half of that spending goes to food and the rest to decoration, service, drinks and entertainment. Obviously, what party agencies spend on those items is far less (roughly 40%) than what they charge the couple. We will not even discuss the costs of a kidnapping, since there is little research on the subject and artificial intelligence contributes little on the topic.

Think of the last big purchase you made: a refrigerator, a cell phone, perhaps a car... Before those purchases you could compare prices, you visited several stores, perhaps you waited for a sale, and you knew that someday you would buy something similar again, so it was in the seller's interest to treat you well and give you the best possible price. At a wedding you do none of that.

One usually marries only once (or at least that is what one thinks the first time). The date rarely changes because the guests have already been notified, have already blocked off the day on their calendars, or have already bought their tickets. If you question the price and expenses of "the most important day of your life" in front of your partner, you may come to feel that you are "haggling over love."

By the time you finally understand the absurdity of the price of a banquet or a wedding party, you no longer need to hold a wedding because you went through it long ago. A kidnapper charges whatever he wants because no one can say no to him; a wedding party organizer charges whatever he pleases because no one wants to question him... On second thought, Apple does the same with the iPhone, but that is a different story (or is it...).

Perhaps the rise of social media and artificial intelligence, which democratize information, has made it possible to access better offers for wedding receptions. We do not believe that applies much to kidnappings...

Sources

·       The Knot. Average Cost of a Wedding in the United States, 2025.

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·       Bodas.net. Informe del Sector Nupcial, 2025.

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