The cost of a celebration cannot measure how carefully people will live afterward.

Money spent on a day proves that money was spent on a day. It says nothing about patience in year three, or about who gets up when someone is ill, which are the things the occasion was supposedly about. Expense is easy to compare and easy to mistake for commitment, partly because everyone can see it. What follows is private and takes decades to show.

If you are planning something, decide what the day is for before deciding what it will cost. Then put some of that attention into the arrangements that will still matter the following winter.