A wedding or a new bike?

I saw a statistic the other day that genuinely made my jaw drop. Apparently the average cost of a wedding in the UK is £16,000. Now I don’t know (or really care) how true that actually is, but if you’d seriously consider spunking that sort of cash on a wedding, I think you need a check-up from the neck up. It’s ludicrous. Think of what you could spend that sort of money on. That kind of dough would buy you a very, very nice motorcycle. A brand new one, straight from the showroom. So what’s it going to be? Do you really need to put a ring on it? Or would you be better off spending the money on something a bit more sensible; like a new bike? If your struggling to make your mind up, why not let us help. Here’s our completely unbiased analysis of the facts.

Weddings don’t come with a warrantee

No, you don’t get a warrantee with your wedding. Judging by the amount of them that go tits-up though, they could probably do with it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a week or a year after you’ve spent £16k on ‘the best day of your life’ (don’t make me vom’), when it all goes to rat shit, you’re not getting a penny of it back. It’s gone. On the flip side, if you’ve bought yourself a new bike and it shit’s itself within a couple of years, you’d be well within your rights to march straight into your dealership and tell them you want it sorting. And you can’t say fairer than that.

And let’s imagine for a moment that after 10 years of owning your bike, you have a spill and write it off. You’d be gutted, but it wouldn’t matter really, because the insurance company would look after you. Now imagine the wife decides she wants to fuck off with someone else after 10 years. Not only are you not getting any of that £16k back (that you wasted on a wedding) she wants the fucking house too. Now the jobs well and truly fucked, isn’t it? You’ve got no bike, no house and no money. You should have bought a bike.

You can’t get to work on a wedding ring

Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Give a man a fishing rod, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime. Why am I quoting an ancient Chinese proverb? Because I think it’s relevant, even if slightly tenuously. You see a £16k motorcycle might seem like a bit of an extravagant purchase. But it’ll not be a toy. It might be the tool you need to get to work and back on a daily basis. It might be the tool you need to do your job on a daily basis. How are you going to bring home the bacon without it? How are you going to put a roof over your head? It’s all good and well having a beautiful wife, but if you can’t feed her, you’re going to have a dead wife.

What value does your £16k wedding bring in later life? Even if you could put a monetary value on your fantastic wedding day memories, I doubt it’d be £16,000s worth.

Is it a sound investment?

With the second hand market as buoyant as it is today, you’d have to say that any motorcycle purchase, new or used, is a sound investment. £16,000 spent in a dealership today, might not fetch £16,000 on eBay tomorrow, but it’s value isn’t going to plummet. And well looked after bikes are always going to be sought after. In fact, with a bit of luck, the very model you opted for might just turn out to be somewhat of a classic one day. You might find that, in 20 years’ time, your beautiful bike’s worth double what you paid. Ok, that might be a bit ambitious, but it’s always going to be worth something.

As far as the wedding goes, well you haven’t invested the money have you? You’ve spent it. It’s gone. Wasted. You might as well have shoved it up your arse.

Street cred

This is where the wedding thing might have the edge. We all know motorbikes are cool. Owning a bike, without doubt, improves your street cred. That’s a given. But so, in all fairness, can a wedding. Although it really does depend who you get married to. If you’ve put a ring on a supermodel, than you’re laughing. The same goes for pop stars, TV stars and generally anyone who’s ever been on the cover of Heat magazine. You’ll be the coolest kid around with your Tinsel Town wife. There’s only one problem. Your film star fiancé isn’t going to want an ‘average’ £16k wedding. You’ll need to spend ten times that to keep Little Miss Hollywood happy. In fact you’re probably looking at the thick end of half a million quid, by the time everyone’s had a glass of bubbly and you’ve flown Cirque du Soleil over.

• 

• 

No, don’t count on a £16k wedding doing anything whatsoever for your street cred. A £16k bike though, well that’s another story.

‘Til death do us part…

As far as morbid wedding vows go, this one doesn’t do bad, does it? Imagine someone harping on about death and dying when you’ve just picked your shiny new bike up. No, the ‘til death do us part’ thing doesn’t really sell it to me. What if you get married and you both live until you’re a hundred years old or something. Who wants to be married to a hundred-year-old, fuck that! No thanks. I’m not overly keen on wiping my own arse, the last thing I want to do is wipe someone else’s. Especially if I have to pay £16,000 for the privilege.

Arse wiping aside, I do understand the sentiment. And if you are going to keep hold of a bike until the day you die, its residual value doesn’t matter a shit. But when you’re sat in your rocking chair with your pipe and slippers, ravaged by arthritis and senile dementia, you probably won’t even remember whether you’re married or not. But you will be able to stare at the beautiful bike that you bought for £16k, all those years ago. The bike you bought from new and cherished for half your life. Your pride and joy. The love of your life.

Boothy