Student Blog: Average cost of a wedding in 2016 for the readers of Hitched magazine was £25,000…. and 48% of parents still foot the bill

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According to the article on The Sun website, researchers have claimed that the average cost of a wedding costs £25,000, and that parents still contribute most of the financial means towards the bill. The data was found to be accurate, when compared with the original published article on Hitched.com, which also stated that the average cost of a wedding in 2016 was £25,000. However, from conducting some research myself into discovering what the average cost of a wedding was in 2015 to ensure that the average cost of a wedding has risen 21 per cent in just one year, I was unable to validate this statistic. I discovered that the average cost of a wedding in 2015 was in fact £24,000. Partly, as the original article published on Hitched.com did not include this information therefore it could be inferred that The Sun fabricated thus statistic in order to make the readers think that the average cost of a wedding has risen drastically. Also from the original research, it stated that 48% of both families foot most of the bill therefore a critique for this article in The Sun newspaper is that instead of using leading words such as ‘most’ they should have stated the exact figure to not be interpreted as misleading. The number of participants in the research was 3,000 which provide a very good diverse sample, which can be generalised to the wider population due to its vast size. Despite this, the participants were readers of the wedding magazine Hitched therefore its generalisability to a wider population has been decreased due to the narrow selection of participants. Also a reader of a bridal/wedding magazine may be more inclined to spend more financial revenue on a wedding as clearly being a reader of such magazine indicates the importance of the wedding to them, therefore is it the AVERAGE cost of a wedding £25,000. It would be valid to state that it is the AVERAGE cost of a wedding for the readers of hitched magazine. Thus instead the headline could have been:

Holy Matrimony – Average cost of a wedding in 2016 for the readers of Hitched magazine was £25,000…. and 48% of parents still foot the bill

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