I think that weddings, and other "rites of passage" like Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and Graduations, are designed to make sure that people cannot think of anything else for weeks at a time. If your brain is completely taken up with flower arrangements and catering and color swatches, etc., there's no way you can do anything that will disrupt the status quo. Revolutions have been stalled by wedding invitations. "Oh, sorry, I can't overthrow the government THAT weekend. My son is getting married." Inventions were conceived and then forgotten because someone had to deal with the parking problem.
Fortunes that could have been made by investing that extra thousand are lost because the cousin who promised to take pictures had a skiing accident and is in traction.
It's part of the "Keep people busy and in debt" strategy of Big Business (you can tell that Big Business is Sinister because I am using capital "B"s) and Big Business's counterparts, Organized Religion and the (dum dum DUM...) Military - Industrial Complex.
Yep, you THINK it's just your graduation but it's really part of an Evil Plot. There's my Random Thought of the Day.