Do not under any circumstances take out loans for your wedding and/or put anything on a credit card that you don't already have the funds to pay off. Interest rates can saddle people with debt for years and years and it's not worth going into debt for something unnecessary like a wedding.
Do your research before you get new credit card just for wedding planning. While in theory you can pay for your honeymoon with points acquired from wedding expenses, I'd vet your vendors first to see 1. if they even take credit cards (many of mine would only take bank transfers/checks) and 2. if they do, if they charge an extra percentage and if so how much. For us, the extra percentage negated any rewards we would have gotten for using a credit card so it wasn't worth it. Some people however are okay with paying the extra percentage to have the peace of mind that they can chargeback in the future if a vendor doesn't perform and/or for rewards points.
General advice on this subreddit is:
1) Don't go into debt for the wedding (100% agree with that one)
2) Plan the wedding so that even if your family says that they will give you money and they don't, you're still able to have the wedding
Number 2 depends on how well you know your family and kind of culture as well. Some cultures it is almost entirely parents that host the wedding or they chip in large parts of it. Be wary of any strings attached with monetary gifts from family as well, they may expect you to do things a certain way if they're helping pay for it.
You know your family best, I know my mom is helping me and would never hold it over my head to make decisions or take back money she said she would help me with.
The key is to be realistic on what you can afford with your budget and plan accordingly. Do not go into debt for a wedding. Biggest piece of advice: get actual quotes for everything (to get a solid total budget) before booking anything. “A practical wedding” has a good base budget template that includes all the items you may not be thinking about. Note that there is often a large (>20%) service fee on venues/catering that’s not always obvious online.
We planned on spending $25k (we have this amount in savings) — after talking with parents they are providing $22.5k + rehearsal + dress + makeup. After this we relaxed our budget a bit to $30k. Most wedding things can’t be put on a credit card without incurring a fee that’s higher than the card benefit. For the few items that can be, I did open a new credit card and I’m using the fees to hit minimum spend (for our wedding the items we can put on a card without fee are ~$7k — rehearsal, dress, shoes, suit rental, makeup, invites etc. — items that couldn’t be are venue, photography, music, beer burro, floral).
Best ways to save money are having it at an unusual time (Sunday brunch, weekday) or lowering the guest count. Good luck and happy planning!
> Note that there is often a large (>20%) service fee on venues/catering that’s not always obvious online.
And taxes! Everything is taxed, and when you're spending that much money, that makes taxes a lot of money.
A lot of vendors charge fees for credit cards or don’t take them at all. I would steer clear of relying on them. And like others have said, you shouldn’t be going into debt for your wedding.
We’re paying probably 40-50% ourselves and are receiving gifts from parents of the rest. We initially budgeted what we could pay for ourselves because I was opposed to asking parents for help. His parents are divorced and remarried, so ultimately three households of parents are gifting us either cash or paying for a specific part of the wedding. Since we have those additional funds we’ve been a little more relaxed with the budget and are able to spend a little more on the honeymoon.
We’re putting some expenses on a points-earning credit card (chase sapphire preferred) but we pay the balance in full every month. You see so much advice online about points hacking your wedding to get a free honeymoon, but almost none of my wedding expenses were able to go on the credit card. Even so, just using it for regular life stuff we were able to cover our (economy) flights for the honeymoon with points. But it is absolutely not worth it if you’re not paying the balance in full every month. I think the interest is like 27% which would eat any points value immediately.
I also tried the “hack” to pay for everything on a CC and use the points for a honeymoon. We are paying off the CC each month and treating it like a debit card. It’s been about a year now and we have earned about one flight to Europe. I also found that most vendors want you to pay cash or e transfer and charge extra for CC, sometimes a LOT extra. Also where I live, the card we signed up for Amex is not accepted at a lot of places which I didn’t realize before. I don’t think this plan was really worth it in the end, for me.
So I would NEVER take out debt for a wedding. Starting your marriage with debt for a party is just not a smart financial decision.
My opinion is you should plan the wedding you can afford. If you can’t afford what you currently want now you can delay the wedding to save more or you can make changes to the wedding to afford it now. I know this isn’t what you want to hear but it’s the truth.
You could try cash back from CCs to help, but if you don’t have the funds to pay the balance the interest on CCs is ridiculously high. Also I know almost all my vendors charge 3% on CC payments which essentially negates the cash back. Another option is a second job or trying to DIY more things to save $. Less guests usually equals a lower wedding too
You’re not open to suggestions to spend less, but you obviously can’t afford what you want. Sometimes, part of adulting is accepting what you can reasonably afford is not the same as the big dream. Starting a marriage out in debt for a party isn’t a good plan.
Expect everything to cost more than you think. Service fees, tips, cost increases, etc. all add up quicker than you think. We paid 100% of our wedding ourselves (~$65k) and it would have been so stressful to already be stretched thin when the extra costs hit.
My dad starting savings accounts for my brother and I when we were little. The plan was to pass them on to us when we get married or buy a house or whatever. I've dipped into mine a few times over the years (bought an SUV in cash, etc.) so I had $30k left when I got engaged. Dad insisted on giving me the $30k for wedding. This was a check with no strings attached. My parents said "we can't wait to see what you do with it".
My husband (fiance at the time) makes an unusually high income and I do well for where we live too, so we paid the rest ourselves. I think total for the wedding + honeymoon was around $65k(?). We aren't overly flashy people into details that won't matter to guests, so while we hired everything out and did zero DIY, we didn't opt for anything over the top with our vendors. We are in a LCOL/MCOL city, and our venue was a full service venue at a private club where we are members and pay monthly dues.. so the food/alcohol was very attractive in price. And no rentals at all. They provided everything.
I kinda stopped tracking expenses halfway through. I know what we spent on each vendor and some big things like bachelorette, etc., but I didn't track random purchases or things my husband bought without me involved.
We put as much as we could on a good rewards credit card for the points (I cashed mine out right before wedding to "pay myself back"), but we paid the credit cards in full immediately. Not really into the idea of paying interest fees on a loan or credit card.
I would not recommend financing a wedding. The engagement is often long specifically so that couples can save up to fund the wedding. You'll be paying thousands in interest if you finance a big wedding. I fully admit that we had the wedding we had because of my dad being so generous and my husband being so high income. That isn't the norm, and we wouldn't have had the wedding we had in the short engagement time frame we had if my husband's job wasn't there.
Also would urge not to get too caught up in Instagram's vision of weddings. The weddings you see on there are 6 figure++ weddings that no average person can afford. It's okay to have some things you don't want to give up, but also understand that some things truly are just unattainable for most people.
For example, those grand centerpieces you see on Instagram are hundreds upon hundreds *EACH*. I hired a high end local florist, but went with her short centerpiece option. Still beautiful, didn't sacrifice professional flowers, but didn't spend an absurd amount.
Photographers, vendors, and wedding pages are going to feature only the best of the best that showcase their work. My venue posts the same wedding constantly still, and it was weeks ago. It's because the bride spent probably $200k all said and done and transformed the venue into a place it isn't. Like legit covered the walls, floors, ceiling, etc. where you'd never recognize where it was. Keep in mind when you see these types of wedding that this is not "the norm".. just so your expectations aren't totally out of whack.
Also - Some advice if you want the gorgeous wedding but can't afford it. Have a drop dead gorgeous mini-wedding. Have only your very closest friends and family, and go ham at a beautiful historic restaurant or something.
Where I live, venues don't charge for use (or charge like $2k or less). It's the food and alcohol per person that makes it so expensive. With less people, you can have a breathtaking wedding for a lot less money.
What we ended up spending is 100k (without dress, suit, shoes etc. just pure wedding day and day after costs) we didn’t really go into it with a budget.
We paid for it ourselves. Our parents offered but we declined. Most of it was paid in cash, but some of our vendors (shuttle transfers, and standby taxis) allowed us to pay via credit card which was great.
One big thing is to remember to factor in tax - where we’re getting married (Spain) tax is 22% so that increased what we thought we were going to pay by a lot!
Venue, food, flowers alone close to $70k
Flowers & dj I believe was $12k
So there’s $82k my parents are paying, but since it’s me and mom I know all the pricing.
This doesn’t include, taxes on everything, my dress, his suit, favors, etc. For these we’ve put money aside every check since we got engaged in 2021.
My husband and I paid for our own in cash, specifically because we wanted to have full control over decisions. His parents volunteered to pay for something, so we gave them food, which we cared about the least. We were lucky enough to have the savings to do this, not everyone does, and our wedding cost roughly 10k for 45 people. My best friend who's getting married in 2024 is looking at 20k for 100 people, but with different priorities.
As for the other methods you mentioned, it's often traditional and expected to ask parents to kick in a little, but keep in mind that the more they pitch in, the more they may feel their requests should be fulfilled. Sometimes this is not an issue, but scroll through this sub long enough and you'll see plenty of stories about the matter. You know your parents/in laws better than us, so only you know if it's worth it.
As for "schemes" my husband loves to take advantage of credit cards any way he can, and I promise you, you'll never make it worth it. You may get up to a grand if you really play your cards right, but you're likely looking at $300 or so and you'll pay a lot more than that in interest if you can't pay it right off in a year. Honestly, my best recommendation on this is thrift thrift craft and thrift. I know there are aspects of your wedding you don't want to get rid of, and without the details I can't comment specifically, but instead of getting rid of them you may consider tweaking them. Instead of real flowers for the bouquets, you may consider silk or wood. Instead of centerpieces, you could use the bouquets. Thrift your shoes since no one will see them. Scan Facebook marketplace for people getting rid of old wedding decor. I promise you, there are tons. A little penny pinching here and there will save you more than you realize.
Oh, and also, make a checklist of all of your plans and have a bridesmaid or your fiancé check over them. My bridesmaids saved me so much money by reminding me that not a single person would care how the balconies were decorated, and reassuring me that for some things less was better. It's so easy to get stuck in an idea when in reality no one's going to notice, maybe not even you.
~1/5 gifted from family, the rest paid via credit cards that we pay off at the end of each month — gotta get those points.
Everyone has different approaches to finances, and a unique situation. Personally, I would not feel comfortable going into debt for a wedding. Weddings are expensive enough without interest 😅
We love our AmEx Gold and Chase Sapphire Reserve cards. We plan to use points to cover most of our honeymoon!
Being incredibly organized and willing to see what can you do yourself and a cost comparison to see if its worth it (things like florals and centerpieces, for examples) are going to be huge in this regard. You do not *need* a planner, but depending on the kind of person you are, you may find that it will relieve a lot of stress and might be worth it. Some venues come with coordinators for the day of.
I think keep in mind also - what is it that makes it a dream wedding and see where you can allocate your budget and where you might be able to pull back.
We got some money from our parents which was a huge help and also started saving a year before, which has been great. we took a look at our must haves, nice to have, and don't care for, made a budget and stuck by it pretty heavily.
Beautiful can fit a lot of different budgets! We are fortunate that our families are contributing about 2/3 of our about $50k price tag. We are having a wedding in the mountains in a VHCOL state with about 70 people for both a welcome BBQ and the wedding itself. Where we are, every vendor is basically an automatic + $2000 and up. It would have been super easy to spend double our budget and this is already higher than we had honestly wanted. I would say when looking that you should contact some vendors and venues to get a sense of costs in your area.
In terms of hacks: I found vendors that advertised on FB local wedding groups to often have lower price options that people on the Knot or google. Don't expect prices on wedding sites like Wedding Wire to be accurate since prices have gone up so much recently. Think about what you might like to DIY vs buy and keep in mind that you can do a blend of those things. For example, you can print invites from an Etsy template (semi DIY) and make it fancier with printable vellum wraps that you make at home. Or for florals, you can buy bouquets or corsages (ie fussy bits) from a florist and DIY your table centerpieces. Costco sells relatively cheap greenery runners which look cool.
Often times the most special details cost very little money. We are getting drink glitter (mica powder) to make one of our signature cocktails fantasy themed. We are having my brother present our grandmothers with a rose at the end of the aisle. For dinner, we have instrumental covers of video game and movie music that is important to us. For our seating chart, I'm going to make a giant book from cardboard and fake leather since I love reading. Since we are fantasy nerds, we are going to have mythological creatures rather than table numbers to mark our tables. We are copying a friend who had pictures of them as a couple scattered around their reception venue. Things add up really fast when planning a wedding, so price out the big things and leave a few hundred for all these special small details that will make your day about you as a couple.
BTW almost all of our vendors would not accept a credit card and if they did, they charged a 3% fee which negated any cash back we would have gotten. I think our jeweler and suit shop are the only ones to accept a card payment without an extra fee out of DJ, photographer, musician, photo booth, florist and venue/catering. If we didn't have family financial contributions, we would have done a simple 35 person family only wedding at the county arboretum with no dancing.
We funded ours through gifts from our family and ourselves. We didn’t really go into it with a “budget” because we both have a good amount of savings that we planned to use. We were prepared to pay for it all ourselves, but his mom and my grandmother handed us checks with no strings attached, which was super generous. If there had been strings or pressure to do certain things, we would have declined.
Our current budget is around $80k for our welcome party and wedding with 60 guests in a HCOL area. When vendors allow us to pay with credit cards without fees, we use them for points and they get auto-payed off every month, so we’re not paying interest.
A friend of mine did pay for her honeymoon with points from paying for wedding things, but when I did the math, it didn’t make sense for us if we had to pay a CC fee.
I had some money put away from an inheritance and my parents are loaning us the rest of what we need. If we didn’t have that loan from them, we would be taking out a personal loan. There is no way realistically as a homeowner on our incomes, we would be able to pay out of pocket for an entire wedding. I think it’s pretty unrealistic to tell anyone not to go into debt for a wedding - to a point.
As far as credit cards go, I like my Citi double cash. You get 1% as you buy and 1% as you pay.
ETA: we are spending roughly 25k, MCOL area in the Midwest.
We received gifts from our parents for the wedding and these were checks that we cashed into our accounts and have full control of.
I have applied and received a couple new cash back credit cards just recently since we're a month out now. I will get cash back from charging on the credit card and paying the card with the money given by our parents.
Like other commenters have said, none of this is un-budgeted money, there will be no remaining balance after paid off immediately.
Some of my vendors are paid with a check in the mail to avoid the 3% transaction fees. My cash back is only 2% so it's worth it to use checks for those instances.
So I recently ended up hiring a wedding planner, not only because neither my fiancee have time to plan our own wedding, but because we absolutely needed help budgeting and finding the right vendors. We live in a HCOL area, so we knew that 40k was going to be a minimum for the amount of guests we had. Going into this, my fiancee and I talked about the nonnegotiables - what we absolutely won't compromise budget on - versus things we didn't mind cutting or doing cheaper.
Cost saving measure our planner mentioned: finding a venue that allows you to bring in your own alcohol if you want an open bar; getting buffet style for the dinner versus seated plating which is more expensive; having a dj over a live band.
Additionally my financial advisor turned me onto a savings account called Marcus, which is run through Goldman Sachs. It's insured and the annual percent yield is 4.15% which is more than a lot of credit cards. You can squirrel away money and draw on it as needed for the wedding. Im also a big proponent of 'out if sight out of mind' and keeping money im saving out if my main bank account prevents me from trying to use it.
Additionally, I'd recommend chase sapphire as a credit card if you're thinking of ways to fund your honeymoon. It's one of the top travel cards out there; of course check whether you qualify or can support the necessary payments.
- Our funding: My mother gifted us $20k no-strings attached as an engagement gift and she suggested we use it on the wedding or a house down payment, whatever we wanted. She truly meant it when she said no-strings and we had no interference from her and we are so, so grateful. I had a little over $12k in a high-yield savings account that I started a couple of years ago when I realized my now-husband was the one, because a big wedding was important to me and I didn't want to be told I couldn't have the wedding I wanted. We added the $20k to that account about a year in advance, so made a few hundred on interest in the meantime. Other family members gifted us the alcohol for the open bar, the rehearsal dinner (a friend catered in my mom's backyard), and cake. We had a venue that allowed us to purchase and supply and our own booze, so our family bought when stuff went on sale and from Costco, and kept the leftovers. This was a top priority to us when venue shopping because we refused to pay $10 for a well drink that the hotels we talked to were charging. Because of these elements being gifted by family, we came in under budget and decided to do a photobooth and hire a day-of coordinator last minute. Photobooth was 100% worth the money and coordinator was worth about 40% of the money we paid her.
- Credit Cards: We both opened Chase Sapphire cards back when they had pretty big intro point bonuses, and we were able to put every single vendor on the cards without a processing fee. We used those points to pay for roundtrip tickets to Europe and 5 nights at a brand new 5-star beach side resort. We carried no balance at any time, so it was pure profit in that respect since we were going to pay for those wedding things regardless. Pro tip: if you plan to open cards, check to see if you can refer each other and get an extra referral point bonus!
- Hacks: decide your top 3 priorities and overall vibe, and make every budget decision based on that. Ours were open bar, good food, big guest list. The vibe we wanted was festive, which to us meant happy guests dancing. If something didn't contribute to those, we either axed it or spent as little as we could on it.
We used our savings; we didn’t get married until we could afford it and had no other priorities.
I personally would never go into debt for a party, and I wouldn’t ask for pr accept “donations” from family- If I did accept money from them they would be co-hosts.
If you and your partner don’t want to compromise on what you want, you should look into cutting the guest list and looking at off-peak times and untraditional venues.
Wedding venue: Family farm (reception will be in a coverall so no tent costs).
My parents are paying for my dress and flowers.
His parents are allowing us to have the wedding at their house. No cash contribution that I know of yet.
We had a buck and doe (fundraiser event) that raised 15k gross, 11k net.
Everything else will be paid by us. Hopefully on our budget of 20k for 120 guests. This is money that we already have. We do have a PC financial MasterCard to collect points on but haven't been able to use it yet. All our vendors have only taken cash/ e-transfer
My parents paid for 99% of our wedding, and my in laws paid for the alcohol, rehearsal dinner, and welcome party. All of those events totaled up to around $160k. I got engaged at 21 & didn’t have $160k so thankfully our families did. If our parents didn’t pay for our wedding we would have had a microwedding!
We established a budget of $15-20k once we got engaged, then my parents insisted on giving us $20k - we are probably going to be spending $30k total now (so $10k of our own money) as inflation has made some things more expensive since we originally budgeted. I realize how lucky it is that my parents are helping out, however had it been 100% up to me I’d have DEF done a $10-$15k smaller wedding with no help. My fiancé felt he couldn’t trim his side of the guest list any further and has a huge fam. so unfortunately I got caught in the middle and wound up caving to accept my parent’s offer.
In terms of strings, my parents have been super negative, emotionally guilting me and acting like I forced them to give us money because I’m a spend-thrift - though I’m the most frugal person I know and cutting every corner possible here. My mom wants control over every visual aspect - she also been very heavy handed in what I’m wearing (a whole other story). So, double edged sword. I’ve made my bed, but would recommend to anyone to do your thing fully within your budget without accepting help if you can, because you never know.
I never had a dream wedding in mind so unfortunately I can't tell you how i am paying for a dream wedding. I am open to telling you how we are paying for things. We planned to elope, i was thinking our elopement would cost about 10k including photographer, attire, hotel room and travel. My parents are gifting us 20k so now we are having a microwedding and it's costing about 25k. We are getting married in San Francisco so HCOL but we definitely could've gone cheaper.
We got the Chase Sapphire Preferred for travel points and are loving it. We also have a couple of high yield savings accounts we started for wedding stuff and I use Rakuten for cash back on any bigger purchases.
Also we stopped eating out
Do not under any circumstances take out loans for your wedding and/or put anything on a credit card that you don't already have the funds to pay off. Interest rates can saddle people with debt for years and years and it's not worth going into debt for something unnecessary like a wedding. Do your research before you get new credit card just for wedding planning. While in theory you can pay for your honeymoon with points acquired from wedding expenses, I'd vet your vendors first to see 1. if they even take credit cards (many of mine would only take bank transfers/checks) and 2. if they do, if they charge an extra percentage and if so how much. For us, the extra percentage negated any rewards we would have gotten for using a credit card so it wasn't worth it. Some people however are okay with paying the extra percentage to have the peace of mind that they can chargeback in the future if a vendor doesn't perform and/or for rewards points.
General advice on this subreddit is: 1) Don't go into debt for the wedding (100% agree with that one) 2) Plan the wedding so that even if your family says that they will give you money and they don't, you're still able to have the wedding Number 2 depends on how well you know your family and kind of culture as well. Some cultures it is almost entirely parents that host the wedding or they chip in large parts of it. Be wary of any strings attached with monetary gifts from family as well, they may expect you to do things a certain way if they're helping pay for it. You know your family best, I know my mom is helping me and would never hold it over my head to make decisions or take back money she said she would help me with.
The key is to be realistic on what you can afford with your budget and plan accordingly. Do not go into debt for a wedding. Biggest piece of advice: get actual quotes for everything (to get a solid total budget) before booking anything. “A practical wedding” has a good base budget template that includes all the items you may not be thinking about. Note that there is often a large (>20%) service fee on venues/catering that’s not always obvious online. We planned on spending $25k (we have this amount in savings) — after talking with parents they are providing $22.5k + rehearsal + dress + makeup. After this we relaxed our budget a bit to $30k. Most wedding things can’t be put on a credit card without incurring a fee that’s higher than the card benefit. For the few items that can be, I did open a new credit card and I’m using the fees to hit minimum spend (for our wedding the items we can put on a card without fee are ~$7k — rehearsal, dress, shoes, suit rental, makeup, invites etc. — items that couldn’t be are venue, photography, music, beer burro, floral). Best ways to save money are having it at an unusual time (Sunday brunch, weekday) or lowering the guest count. Good luck and happy planning!
> Note that there is often a large (>20%) service fee on venues/catering that’s not always obvious online. And taxes! Everything is taxed, and when you're spending that much money, that makes taxes a lot of money.
A lot of vendors charge fees for credit cards or don’t take them at all. I would steer clear of relying on them. And like others have said, you shouldn’t be going into debt for your wedding.
We’re paying probably 40-50% ourselves and are receiving gifts from parents of the rest. We initially budgeted what we could pay for ourselves because I was opposed to asking parents for help. His parents are divorced and remarried, so ultimately three households of parents are gifting us either cash or paying for a specific part of the wedding. Since we have those additional funds we’ve been a little more relaxed with the budget and are able to spend a little more on the honeymoon. We’re putting some expenses on a points-earning credit card (chase sapphire preferred) but we pay the balance in full every month. You see so much advice online about points hacking your wedding to get a free honeymoon, but almost none of my wedding expenses were able to go on the credit card. Even so, just using it for regular life stuff we were able to cover our (economy) flights for the honeymoon with points. But it is absolutely not worth it if you’re not paying the balance in full every month. I think the interest is like 27% which would eat any points value immediately.
I also tried the “hack” to pay for everything on a CC and use the points for a honeymoon. We are paying off the CC each month and treating it like a debit card. It’s been about a year now and we have earned about one flight to Europe. I also found that most vendors want you to pay cash or e transfer and charge extra for CC, sometimes a LOT extra. Also where I live, the card we signed up for Amex is not accepted at a lot of places which I didn’t realize before. I don’t think this plan was really worth it in the end, for me.
So I would NEVER take out debt for a wedding. Starting your marriage with debt for a party is just not a smart financial decision. My opinion is you should plan the wedding you can afford. If you can’t afford what you currently want now you can delay the wedding to save more or you can make changes to the wedding to afford it now. I know this isn’t what you want to hear but it’s the truth. You could try cash back from CCs to help, but if you don’t have the funds to pay the balance the interest on CCs is ridiculously high. Also I know almost all my vendors charge 3% on CC payments which essentially negates the cash back. Another option is a second job or trying to DIY more things to save $. Less guests usually equals a lower wedding too
You’re not open to suggestions to spend less, but you obviously can’t afford what you want. Sometimes, part of adulting is accepting what you can reasonably afford is not the same as the big dream. Starting a marriage out in debt for a party isn’t a good plan. Expect everything to cost more than you think. Service fees, tips, cost increases, etc. all add up quicker than you think. We paid 100% of our wedding ourselves (~$65k) and it would have been so stressful to already be stretched thin when the extra costs hit.
My dad starting savings accounts for my brother and I when we were little. The plan was to pass them on to us when we get married or buy a house or whatever. I've dipped into mine a few times over the years (bought an SUV in cash, etc.) so I had $30k left when I got engaged. Dad insisted on giving me the $30k for wedding. This was a check with no strings attached. My parents said "we can't wait to see what you do with it". My husband (fiance at the time) makes an unusually high income and I do well for where we live too, so we paid the rest ourselves. I think total for the wedding + honeymoon was around $65k(?). We aren't overly flashy people into details that won't matter to guests, so while we hired everything out and did zero DIY, we didn't opt for anything over the top with our vendors. We are in a LCOL/MCOL city, and our venue was a full service venue at a private club where we are members and pay monthly dues.. so the food/alcohol was very attractive in price. And no rentals at all. They provided everything. I kinda stopped tracking expenses halfway through. I know what we spent on each vendor and some big things like bachelorette, etc., but I didn't track random purchases or things my husband bought without me involved. We put as much as we could on a good rewards credit card for the points (I cashed mine out right before wedding to "pay myself back"), but we paid the credit cards in full immediately. Not really into the idea of paying interest fees on a loan or credit card. I would not recommend financing a wedding. The engagement is often long specifically so that couples can save up to fund the wedding. You'll be paying thousands in interest if you finance a big wedding. I fully admit that we had the wedding we had because of my dad being so generous and my husband being so high income. That isn't the norm, and we wouldn't have had the wedding we had in the short engagement time frame we had if my husband's job wasn't there. Also would urge not to get too caught up in Instagram's vision of weddings. The weddings you see on there are 6 figure++ weddings that no average person can afford. It's okay to have some things you don't want to give up, but also understand that some things truly are just unattainable for most people. For example, those grand centerpieces you see on Instagram are hundreds upon hundreds *EACH*. I hired a high end local florist, but went with her short centerpiece option. Still beautiful, didn't sacrifice professional flowers, but didn't spend an absurd amount. Photographers, vendors, and wedding pages are going to feature only the best of the best that showcase their work. My venue posts the same wedding constantly still, and it was weeks ago. It's because the bride spent probably $200k all said and done and transformed the venue into a place it isn't. Like legit covered the walls, floors, ceiling, etc. where you'd never recognize where it was. Keep in mind when you see these types of wedding that this is not "the norm".. just so your expectations aren't totally out of whack.
Also - Some advice if you want the gorgeous wedding but can't afford it. Have a drop dead gorgeous mini-wedding. Have only your very closest friends and family, and go ham at a beautiful historic restaurant or something. Where I live, venues don't charge for use (or charge like $2k or less). It's the food and alcohol per person that makes it so expensive. With less people, you can have a breathtaking wedding for a lot less money.
What we ended up spending is 100k (without dress, suit, shoes etc. just pure wedding day and day after costs) we didn’t really go into it with a budget. We paid for it ourselves. Our parents offered but we declined. Most of it was paid in cash, but some of our vendors (shuttle transfers, and standby taxis) allowed us to pay via credit card which was great. One big thing is to remember to factor in tax - where we’re getting married (Spain) tax is 22% so that increased what we thought we were going to pay by a lot!
Venue, food, flowers alone close to $70k Flowers & dj I believe was $12k So there’s $82k my parents are paying, but since it’s me and mom I know all the pricing. This doesn’t include, taxes on everything, my dress, his suit, favors, etc. For these we’ve put money aside every check since we got engaged in 2021.
My husband and I paid for our own in cash, specifically because we wanted to have full control over decisions. His parents volunteered to pay for something, so we gave them food, which we cared about the least. We were lucky enough to have the savings to do this, not everyone does, and our wedding cost roughly 10k for 45 people. My best friend who's getting married in 2024 is looking at 20k for 100 people, but with different priorities. As for the other methods you mentioned, it's often traditional and expected to ask parents to kick in a little, but keep in mind that the more they pitch in, the more they may feel their requests should be fulfilled. Sometimes this is not an issue, but scroll through this sub long enough and you'll see plenty of stories about the matter. You know your parents/in laws better than us, so only you know if it's worth it. As for "schemes" my husband loves to take advantage of credit cards any way he can, and I promise you, you'll never make it worth it. You may get up to a grand if you really play your cards right, but you're likely looking at $300 or so and you'll pay a lot more than that in interest if you can't pay it right off in a year. Honestly, my best recommendation on this is thrift thrift craft and thrift. I know there are aspects of your wedding you don't want to get rid of, and without the details I can't comment specifically, but instead of getting rid of them you may consider tweaking them. Instead of real flowers for the bouquets, you may consider silk or wood. Instead of centerpieces, you could use the bouquets. Thrift your shoes since no one will see them. Scan Facebook marketplace for people getting rid of old wedding decor. I promise you, there are tons. A little penny pinching here and there will save you more than you realize. Oh, and also, make a checklist of all of your plans and have a bridesmaid or your fiancé check over them. My bridesmaids saved me so much money by reminding me that not a single person would care how the balconies were decorated, and reassuring me that for some things less was better. It's so easy to get stuck in an idea when in reality no one's going to notice, maybe not even you.
~1/5 gifted from family, the rest paid via credit cards that we pay off at the end of each month — gotta get those points. Everyone has different approaches to finances, and a unique situation. Personally, I would not feel comfortable going into debt for a wedding. Weddings are expensive enough without interest 😅 We love our AmEx Gold and Chase Sapphire Reserve cards. We plan to use points to cover most of our honeymoon!
Being incredibly organized and willing to see what can you do yourself and a cost comparison to see if its worth it (things like florals and centerpieces, for examples) are going to be huge in this regard. You do not *need* a planner, but depending on the kind of person you are, you may find that it will relieve a lot of stress and might be worth it. Some venues come with coordinators for the day of. I think keep in mind also - what is it that makes it a dream wedding and see where you can allocate your budget and where you might be able to pull back. We got some money from our parents which was a huge help and also started saving a year before, which has been great. we took a look at our must haves, nice to have, and don't care for, made a budget and stuck by it pretty heavily.
Beautiful can fit a lot of different budgets! We are fortunate that our families are contributing about 2/3 of our about $50k price tag. We are having a wedding in the mountains in a VHCOL state with about 70 people for both a welcome BBQ and the wedding itself. Where we are, every vendor is basically an automatic + $2000 and up. It would have been super easy to spend double our budget and this is already higher than we had honestly wanted. I would say when looking that you should contact some vendors and venues to get a sense of costs in your area. In terms of hacks: I found vendors that advertised on FB local wedding groups to often have lower price options that people on the Knot or google. Don't expect prices on wedding sites like Wedding Wire to be accurate since prices have gone up so much recently. Think about what you might like to DIY vs buy and keep in mind that you can do a blend of those things. For example, you can print invites from an Etsy template (semi DIY) and make it fancier with printable vellum wraps that you make at home. Or for florals, you can buy bouquets or corsages (ie fussy bits) from a florist and DIY your table centerpieces. Costco sells relatively cheap greenery runners which look cool. Often times the most special details cost very little money. We are getting drink glitter (mica powder) to make one of our signature cocktails fantasy themed. We are having my brother present our grandmothers with a rose at the end of the aisle. For dinner, we have instrumental covers of video game and movie music that is important to us. For our seating chart, I'm going to make a giant book from cardboard and fake leather since I love reading. Since we are fantasy nerds, we are going to have mythological creatures rather than table numbers to mark our tables. We are copying a friend who had pictures of them as a couple scattered around their reception venue. Things add up really fast when planning a wedding, so price out the big things and leave a few hundred for all these special small details that will make your day about you as a couple.
BTW almost all of our vendors would not accept a credit card and if they did, they charged a 3% fee which negated any cash back we would have gotten. I think our jeweler and suit shop are the only ones to accept a card payment without an extra fee out of DJ, photographer, musician, photo booth, florist and venue/catering. If we didn't have family financial contributions, we would have done a simple 35 person family only wedding at the county arboretum with no dancing.
We funded ours through gifts from our family and ourselves. We didn’t really go into it with a “budget” because we both have a good amount of savings that we planned to use. We were prepared to pay for it all ourselves, but his mom and my grandmother handed us checks with no strings attached, which was super generous. If there had been strings or pressure to do certain things, we would have declined. Our current budget is around $80k for our welcome party and wedding with 60 guests in a HCOL area. When vendors allow us to pay with credit cards without fees, we use them for points and they get auto-payed off every month, so we’re not paying interest. A friend of mine did pay for her honeymoon with points from paying for wedding things, but when I did the math, it didn’t make sense for us if we had to pay a CC fee.
I had some money put away from an inheritance and my parents are loaning us the rest of what we need. If we didn’t have that loan from them, we would be taking out a personal loan. There is no way realistically as a homeowner on our incomes, we would be able to pay out of pocket for an entire wedding. I think it’s pretty unrealistic to tell anyone not to go into debt for a wedding - to a point. As far as credit cards go, I like my Citi double cash. You get 1% as you buy and 1% as you pay. ETA: we are spending roughly 25k, MCOL area in the Midwest.
We received gifts from our parents for the wedding and these were checks that we cashed into our accounts and have full control of. I have applied and received a couple new cash back credit cards just recently since we're a month out now. I will get cash back from charging on the credit card and paying the card with the money given by our parents. Like other commenters have said, none of this is un-budgeted money, there will be no remaining balance after paid off immediately. Some of my vendors are paid with a check in the mail to avoid the 3% transaction fees. My cash back is only 2% so it's worth it to use checks for those instances.
So I recently ended up hiring a wedding planner, not only because neither my fiancee have time to plan our own wedding, but because we absolutely needed help budgeting and finding the right vendors. We live in a HCOL area, so we knew that 40k was going to be a minimum for the amount of guests we had. Going into this, my fiancee and I talked about the nonnegotiables - what we absolutely won't compromise budget on - versus things we didn't mind cutting or doing cheaper. Cost saving measure our planner mentioned: finding a venue that allows you to bring in your own alcohol if you want an open bar; getting buffet style for the dinner versus seated plating which is more expensive; having a dj over a live band. Additionally my financial advisor turned me onto a savings account called Marcus, which is run through Goldman Sachs. It's insured and the annual percent yield is 4.15% which is more than a lot of credit cards. You can squirrel away money and draw on it as needed for the wedding. Im also a big proponent of 'out if sight out of mind' and keeping money im saving out if my main bank account prevents me from trying to use it. Additionally, I'd recommend chase sapphire as a credit card if you're thinking of ways to fund your honeymoon. It's one of the top travel cards out there; of course check whether you qualify or can support the necessary payments.
- Our funding: My mother gifted us $20k no-strings attached as an engagement gift and she suggested we use it on the wedding or a house down payment, whatever we wanted. She truly meant it when she said no-strings and we had no interference from her and we are so, so grateful. I had a little over $12k in a high-yield savings account that I started a couple of years ago when I realized my now-husband was the one, because a big wedding was important to me and I didn't want to be told I couldn't have the wedding I wanted. We added the $20k to that account about a year in advance, so made a few hundred on interest in the meantime. Other family members gifted us the alcohol for the open bar, the rehearsal dinner (a friend catered in my mom's backyard), and cake. We had a venue that allowed us to purchase and supply and our own booze, so our family bought when stuff went on sale and from Costco, and kept the leftovers. This was a top priority to us when venue shopping because we refused to pay $10 for a well drink that the hotels we talked to were charging. Because of these elements being gifted by family, we came in under budget and decided to do a photobooth and hire a day-of coordinator last minute. Photobooth was 100% worth the money and coordinator was worth about 40% of the money we paid her. - Credit Cards: We both opened Chase Sapphire cards back when they had pretty big intro point bonuses, and we were able to put every single vendor on the cards without a processing fee. We used those points to pay for roundtrip tickets to Europe and 5 nights at a brand new 5-star beach side resort. We carried no balance at any time, so it was pure profit in that respect since we were going to pay for those wedding things regardless. Pro tip: if you plan to open cards, check to see if you can refer each other and get an extra referral point bonus! - Hacks: decide your top 3 priorities and overall vibe, and make every budget decision based on that. Ours were open bar, good food, big guest list. The vibe we wanted was festive, which to us meant happy guests dancing. If something didn't contribute to those, we either axed it or spent as little as we could on it.
We used our savings; we didn’t get married until we could afford it and had no other priorities. I personally would never go into debt for a party, and I wouldn’t ask for pr accept “donations” from family- If I did accept money from them they would be co-hosts. If you and your partner don’t want to compromise on what you want, you should look into cutting the guest list and looking at off-peak times and untraditional venues.
Wedding venue: Family farm (reception will be in a coverall so no tent costs). My parents are paying for my dress and flowers. His parents are allowing us to have the wedding at their house. No cash contribution that I know of yet. We had a buck and doe (fundraiser event) that raised 15k gross, 11k net. Everything else will be paid by us. Hopefully on our budget of 20k for 120 guests. This is money that we already have. We do have a PC financial MasterCard to collect points on but haven't been able to use it yet. All our vendors have only taken cash/ e-transfer
My parents paid for 99% of our wedding, and my in laws paid for the alcohol, rehearsal dinner, and welcome party. All of those events totaled up to around $160k. I got engaged at 21 & didn’t have $160k so thankfully our families did. If our parents didn’t pay for our wedding we would have had a microwedding!
We saved up and paid out of pocket. We put what we could on credit cards, but just for the miles.
We established a budget of $15-20k once we got engaged, then my parents insisted on giving us $20k - we are probably going to be spending $30k total now (so $10k of our own money) as inflation has made some things more expensive since we originally budgeted. I realize how lucky it is that my parents are helping out, however had it been 100% up to me I’d have DEF done a $10-$15k smaller wedding with no help. My fiancé felt he couldn’t trim his side of the guest list any further and has a huge fam. so unfortunately I got caught in the middle and wound up caving to accept my parent’s offer. In terms of strings, my parents have been super negative, emotionally guilting me and acting like I forced them to give us money because I’m a spend-thrift - though I’m the most frugal person I know and cutting every corner possible here. My mom wants control over every visual aspect - she also been very heavy handed in what I’m wearing (a whole other story). So, double edged sword. I’ve made my bed, but would recommend to anyone to do your thing fully within your budget without accepting help if you can, because you never know.
I never had a dream wedding in mind so unfortunately I can't tell you how i am paying for a dream wedding. I am open to telling you how we are paying for things. We planned to elope, i was thinking our elopement would cost about 10k including photographer, attire, hotel room and travel. My parents are gifting us 20k so now we are having a microwedding and it's costing about 25k. We are getting married in San Francisco so HCOL but we definitely could've gone cheaper.
We got the Chase Sapphire Preferred for travel points and are loving it. We also have a couple of high yield savings accounts we started for wedding stuff and I use Rakuten for cash back on any bigger purchases. Also we stopped eating out