June weddings: 7 measures of matrimony

June has traditionally been the most popular month for Americans to wed. Here are some facts about the American wedding landscape.

Cost

• Average wedding budget: $27,021.
 • Average cost of the rings for bride and groom: $1,016.
 • The couple contributes 83.2 percent of the time to the cost of the wedding.
 • Most wedding guests spend between $70 and $100 on a gift.
 • 11 percent of couples spend more than $40,000 on their weddings.
 • Average dress cost: $1,121.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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