Diamonds are for… the divorce lawyers

Don't spend too much getting hitched and your marriage will likely last longer.

If you're getting married, don't splash out; do things modestly and your marriage is likely to last longer. That, at least, is the conclusion of two American economists, Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon, at Emory University in Atlanta, who found, in a study of 3,150 people, that "marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony".

They found, says The Sunday Times, that women whose weddings cost $20,000 (£12,450) or more were three and a half times more likely to end up divorced than those who spent $5,000 to $10,000. The economists also demolished the marketing slogan used by De Beers in the late 1930s that "a diamond is forever".

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