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Resolving YES, as promised, based on the arguments presented

Gr = average guests at a wedding divided by average guests at a funeral. Anecdotally I guess 4 > Gr > 1.5

W = weddings per capita = 0.4-0.5

F = funerals per capita = .75-0.95

Iff Gr > (F/W) this resolves yes

The fact that for two people there are 2 guaranteed funerals but 0 or 1 marriage (ignoring re-marrying) speaks strongly in favor of funerals. But it's likely a much wider circle is invited to marriages than the people who come to the funeral. It's a close one honestly, so I won't bet.

I believe the wedding counts used in the below threads are conflating marriage licenses granted with wedding ceremonies performed, because that's what google's top results are doing when I search for those concepts separately. I strongly suspect that more than 10,000 of the marriages in the US each year are non-events which marriage blogs do not even count as "small weddings" for attendance averages.

This means the napkin math for marriage attendence has been making an equivalent of the earlier "not everyone who dies gets a funeral" error. There is a "marriage licenses without a wedding" dark matter that it is much harder to get data for.

I think this is totally fair to get better data on. Looking a little past the first results on google, I get a one source of data for wedding events specifically:

Wedding Report gives 3-4% of weddings as courthouse weddings. Taking a rough average over non-covid years as 2.15m weddings overall, that gives 2.064m traditional weddings a year. It doesn't seem to change the conclusions of the math much. It would have to be much, much larger than that to outweigh the larger attendance weddings get.

I think the math on # of event * average # of attendees is still the most convincing to me, having just skimmed the comments. In the US, seems like there’s a similar number of both, but weddings have at least double (maybe even triple or more) the attendees.

Unless we’re talking about the median and there are wedding hyper-attenders (which I think is far more likely for funerals, eg church members or parish), the average person must be going to more weddings. Harder to say for absolute sure globally but as many have pointed out weddings are big in India.

All the other arguments seem either speculative or roundabout. We can guess at the number of supposedly qualifying events in an average person’s life, but that’s different than actually going to the event.

@DanMan314 yes, I'm inclined to agree. I think this might resolve YES after close if no other evidence comes forward

@DanMan314 How could there possibly be a similar number of both weddings and funerals? Everyone dies, but not everyone gets married (only 53% according to Pew in 2019), and when two people get married, that's still just one wedding. Some people get married more than once, but not nearly enough to overcome the ~4x discrepancy.

If you're considering weddings to have triple the attendees, you still go to more funerals because there's just 3-4 times as many of them.

@whenhaveiever I’m just going by the data that shows up when I google. Unfortunately, not everyone has a funeral. I see 2.4m funerals/year in US (and roughly 3.4m deaths), and 2.1m weddings/year.

I dont think the data will be perfect (and we’re using it to proxy globally anyway), but probably better than guessing based on what feels right.

extending. some good points have been made but I feel there isn't consensus. I'm leaning towards weddings based on the arguments, but not enough to resolve!

I feel like funerals have to win over.

Most people attend their parent's funerals plus their grandparent's funerals at a minimum. If they do get married there's a 50% chance they will attend their spouse's funeral, plus there's a chance they will also have to attend their spouse's parents' funerals (plus assorted relatives).

So marriage increases the number of funerals attended.

@Odoacre You can say the same about weddings. You probably attend your kid's wedding, etc.

@BenjaminIkuta Yeah, this point basically boils down to "do you have more descendants who get married while you are alive vs ancestors who die while you are alive". That answer will vary by individual, but on the whole it will roughly correspond to the birth rate (note that funerals and weddings for in-laws who are not directly related should have roughly the same proportions). The birth rate may be below replacement in many rich countries, but worldwide (and historically) population has been growing, so weddings should have the edge by this metric.

@DanielParker your pont about the birth rate is a good one, but marriage rate is going down, people get married later and later, or not at all, even in developing countries, but they still die eventually.

My feeling here is that it is almost certain that every person will have 6 direct ancestors in range, but it's not clear to me that each person has 6 descendants that will all get married in useful time.

Marriage brings funerals in range, since you marry as an adult and you adopt your spouse's ancestor tree, but the opposite is baked in.

@Odoacre
1. I do grant that marriage rate is going down, so that is a factor which reduces the number of family member weddings one would expect to attend.
2. A person may attend some weddings of some of their direct ancestors.

3. We need to count more than just direct ancestors/descendants here (i.e. many people will attend the funerals/marriages of their uncles/aunts/cousins/nephews/nieces).
4. Marriage does bring funerals in range, but it also brings weddings in range (e.g. siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins, nephews/nieces). I'm not convinced that in-law funerals are generally going to be more numerous than in-law marriages (the opposite has been true for me, though that may change over time).

It is difficult to say, but I do think that one person's attendance at family marriages will be higher than their attendance at family funerals based on the population growth, though these numbers should be roughly similar. But the rate of attendance at friends' weddings vs. funerals will almost certainly be higher.

I've re-opened this for a shorter period to see if I can be convinced or if there is consensus.

Yes: early in life social circle is bigger and one has more energy, means and desire to travel. Late in life social circle decreases. Family weddings and funerals should mostly cancel out.

I sense consensus hasn't been reached, but it's growing in favor of YES, and I'm slightly inclined to agree at the moment. This close date will likely be extended to allow for more arguments to be presented, if they surface themselves.

Could you rename this question "Does a person attend more Weddings than Funerals in their life?" so that it's more obvious which side is YES?

@toms good shout. done

To me this feels pretty simple.

You will attend your friends wedding. Your friend will attend your wedding. Many people have multiple weddings.

You will attend your friends funeral. There’s only one of those. Your friend will not attend yours.

@cburns483 How many friends do you have when you are 25-40? How many do you have when you are 70+? The amount of friends changes over time

@Shump So I think the amount of close friends you have (those you’d go to a wedding or funeral) probably stays close to the same? The friends just change. The wedding you went to where you and your friend was 22? You may not be close at age 40+. But interesting point overall, I’m only speaking from my own experience.

@cburns483 People definitely get lonelier towards the end of their life. Check out the thread below. The average wedding in the US has 117 guests. The best I could find for funerals was from some church in Finland, where the average funeral had 36.