Try our quiz to find out the relationship between the size and cost of your wedding and its likely success

How likely is your marriage to succeed? Start by counting the guests – quiz

Does the size and cost of your wedding predict the success of your marriage? Answer these two questions to find out.

1) How many people came to your wedding? (a) Just the two of us (b) 11-50 (c) 51-100 (d) 101-200 (e) 201 or more.

2) How much in total did you spend on the wedding? (a) £0-1k (b) £1-5k (c) £5-10k (d) £10-20k (e) £20k+ (f) don’t know.

According to a 2014 study conducted at Emory University in Atlanta, the more people that come to your wedding, the better. Those with 50 or more guests (c-e) are half as likely to end up divorced as the just-the-two-of-us couples (a). Those with 11-50 guests (b) are 60% as likely to get divorced as those who eschew guests altogether (even after controlling for age, income, ethnicity, etc). Why? Presumably, if you’re not sure it will last, you’re reluctant or embarrassed to invite anyone that you don’t absolutely have to.

But the less you spend the better. Compared with couples who spend £5-10k (the average ballpark figure) (c), couples who spend £0-1k (a) or who don’t know (f) are around 35% less likely to end up divorced. But couples who spend £20k+ (e) are around 32% more likely to end up divorced than the middle-of-the-road couples. So you can reassure yourself if your wedding budget is tight, that outlandish wedding spending may be a way of papering over the cracks.

For a fully referenced version of this article, visit benambridge.com. Order Psy-Q by Ben Ambridge (Profile Books, £8.99) for £6.99 at bookshop.theguardian.com