[sudont]

I agree with your signaling hypothesis for the earning potential. I personally think that weddings are already taken for other signals, though since language drifts, these signals could as well.

This is entirely anecdotal, but currently there are big, expensive and pragmatic weddings. These lavish wedding party tends to be signaling for the family in relation to others in a diaspora situation. As an American, I think our concept of "love" and Christianity have blurred the original point of marriages which have existed for long before our current Victorian ideals.

As an example: a friend of mine is ethnically Cambodian, and weddings in her social circle tend to be orchestrated on reputation as well as connection. IE, at the wedding participants will leave an envelope with the name of the clan who gifted it. Supposedly the bride and groom (or, possibly their family members) will spend part of the wedding accounting for the debts to neighbors. Her wedding, largely put together by her father, involved more than 500 people of a group that is not very populous in my area.

As she put it, lavish weddings were fundraisers for capital investments for members in a spread-out community. They are tabulated and redistributed to other newlyweds after a while, effectively socializing it.