Apparently, the Queen has seized command of the royal wedding. The British press, which analyses each clench of every royal jaw, reports that Queen Elizabeth is setting the menu as well as arranging the seating of the wedding banquet to be held in April. According to Trevor Kavanagh, political editor of London’s the Sun newspaper, she is even putting Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in different wings of Windsor Castle the night before the denouement of the couple’s long affair.

Well, hey, it is her castle.

And that may be the problem. When a parent, even a 79-year-old sovereign trying to wash out the memory of a slew of seedy divorces, not to mention the reality nightmare of Princess Diana’s death, takes control of a wedding, they may not be operating in the best interest of their kid. Even if he is a 56-year-old prince.

The Queen is calling the shots because she is the Queen – and the largest landholder in the world. But the same principle can hold true for us commoners.

According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, “classical economists like John Stuart Mill considered money as a veil obscuring real economic phenomena.” Well, money is also a veil obscuring dynamics in the family.

If parents insist on throwing a big party for their kids – be it a Sweet Sixteen, bar or bat mitzvah, or the ultimate wedding – it can often be more about them than about the prodigy progeny. “It can even become a competition about how good a parent he or she is – a way to show off their parenting prowess in front of friends and relatives,” explains Stanley Siegel, a family therapist in New York.

The question of who pays for a wedding used to be simple: the parents of the bride. To be historically accurate, and cinematically referential, it was the Father of the Bride whose wallet took the hit for the big day. Now, the parents of the bride pay for less than a third of all weddings.

On the other hand, the costs of weddings are now about the same as one year’s tuition at a private university: an average of $33,424 in New York City – slightly less in other parts of the country. Education, wedding? Wedding, education?

In some families, one member of the betrothed couple might try use the wedding as emotional blackmail. The about-to-be-married might demand a $15,000 band or $10,000 worth of flowers to redress feelings of neglect, a hangover of sibling rivalry, or a lonely childhood. “The money spent is seen as affirmation of love – that the parent will go to every inconvenience and expense. In high emotion events like wedding, it’s never just about the money, it’s about the relationships,” Mr. Siegel adds.

The absurd expense of wedding paraphernalia turns up the emotional heat. There seems to be a wedding license to double the price of everything nuptial, from toothpicks to tents. Weddings are a $70 billion per year industry.

My brother, an avid sailor whose daughter is getting married on July 4, offers this less psychological interpretation: “It’s like marine hardware. If a hook is 60 cents, they call it a marine hook and price it at $2.50. If it’s a cake, it’s $20. If it’s a wedding cake, it’s $200.”

The irony of all this conspicuous display of connubiality is that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Some 43% of first marriages end within 15 years. Only 38% of Americans say they are “happily married.”

Okay, not to be a total spoilsport, rituals are important; in fact, they are essential to family life. And a wedding is the ritual to kick off all other rituals. But perhaps the party animal spirits in us are overtaking what is, or should be, the commitment of a lifetime. Liza Minelli’s fourth wedding cost $7,000 for each day the marriage lasted.

Then there was The Royal Wedding. It was billed back then as the wedding to end all weddings. On the contrary, it seems to have kicked off a golden age of weddings during a period of the decline of marriage.

Here’s an idea. If Queen Elizabeth would really like to do something for her son, perhaps as a wedding present, she could make him King!

Ms. Bailey is a family therapist and business writer in New York. Email: ebailey@nysun.com.