Entry to a temple requires a recommend, a card issued after two interviews, one with a member of the bishopric and one with a stake president, covering belief, honesty, chastity, the Word of Wisdom, tithing and support of church leaders. It is renewed every two years. The requirement is what gives the practice its social weight: a temple wedding is not a grander version of a chapel wedding but a room from which anyone without a current recommend is excluded, including a parent who has left the church, a sibling who has not paid tithing, and any friend who is not a member at all.
The church is aware of the cost. In many countries a civil marriage had to be performed first for legal reasons, and until 2019 the church's own policy imposed a one-year wait between a civil marriage and a sealing in countries where a temple marriage was legally recognised, which meant that couples in the United States often faced a straight choice between a sealing and their families. That waiting period was removed in May 2019, and couples may now marry civilly with everyone present and be sealed the same day. The change was widely reported inside the movement as one of the more humane adjustments of recent years, which indicates how much the earlier arrangement had cost.
The other consequence of the doctrine is genealogical. A couple who died without the ordinance can be sealed by proxy once their names and dates are established, which converts family history research from a hobby into a religious obligation and explains the scale of the archive the church has built.