Wedding Debt

I would avoid it because of "what ifs". What if you get unexpected medical bills, what if you can no longer rent the current house you're in, what if your car breaks down, what if this, what if that. It can be spun in either direction

I didn't want to buy a house because of the "what if" I loose my job and have to relocate or cant afford my mortgage, but I did anyway because that's the decision my husband and I made. You never know what will happen in the future. If it's something you and your fiancé want to take on, go for it. These are the choices/decisions you and your future spouse will have to agree on

The big question is, will you have regrets afterwards?

This is completely up to you and your fiancé. I know people advise against going into debt for a wedding, but tons of people do it. If your wedding is a huge priority for you, and you feel it is worth (responsibly) taking on debt for, then I wouldn’t worry about what anyone else says. It is your life, and the two of you know what you want and what you can responsibly handle. FH and I ended up having to postpone our wedding because of the pandemic. Unfortunately, I also had to quit my job because of the pandemic and my being high-risk at the time. Going from two incomes down to one overnight was a huge blow financially. We had budgeted appropriately for our $45,000 wedding, but unexpectedly a large chunk of our income obviously changed everything. We want to pay for our wedding ourselves, so accepting money from family was not an option. And we both agreed having a courthouse wedding or something similar was also not an option for us. It was important to us both to have the wedding we have been envisioning and planning. Which meant we would either need to postpone indefinitely until we knew when I would be able to return to work and how long it would take us to save up that money again, or we would carry on as planned and go into debt for the wedding. We chose to go into debt. Our situation is very similar to yours in that we see this as one of the major events in our lives that we want to splurge on and we also do not plan to have children. We own our home and do not plan to buy or build a new one any time soon. So for us, temporarily going into debt was worth it for this special occasion.

Personally, I wouldn't choose to take on debt for a wedding, even if there aren't any other major expenses that you anticipate. Something could always come up unexpectedly: your car suddenly needs major repairs (or you have to replace it and take on a car payment), or you lose your job, or really anything else.

Most people end up taking on some amount of debt for their wedding. whether thats short term on a CC, or long term on a loan doesnt really make a difference. If you feel like this is what you want to invest your money in then go for it.

None of your "what ifs" convince me that going into debt for a wedding is a good idea. But you don't need to convince me. You seem bound and determined to rationalize it, so go all out and enjoy.

I’m definitely not one of those who sees life as black and white with debt—I think life is short and we can’t take anything with us. I think especially if you have a reasonable plan for paying it off in a timeframe you’re comfortable with, who cares what others who don’t pay your bills think?
Some people think certain investments are objectively more important than others, but I don’t.

If your wedding is your number one priority in the next 5-10 years and you don’t mind suffering the consequences of interest, then no one is stopping you.
I personally wouldn’t go into debt for one day but I’d much rather have a bigger house in the near future.
But I’d also like to reiterate what Janet said. There are tons of what if’s to ask yourself on both ends. So analyze your financial situation and decide what’s best for you 2.

I would strongly advise not taking on any unnecessary debt in what is looking like the start of an economic downturn due to the global pandemic.

The way I see it is regardless of the reason for incurring a debt, there is no good reason to go into debt and it should be absolutely avoided except where it is most certainly necessary (i.e. taking out a mortgage to buy a home).

My partner and I have no plans to buy a home anytime soon (we live in an area where upsizing to a reasonable 3 bedrooms would cost us $1.8mil) and won’t be having children for a few years so we were in what I would believe to be a fairly similar circumstance to you and I still wouldn’t be able to justify going into debt because of a wedding.

Be mindful just the same that you may have “two years to build [savings] up before paying for any vendors” but you may be required to put down deposits which are heftier than you think. We had to fork out $10K in deposits alone within the first 3 months of being engaged and wedding planning.

It depends on how much debt we're talking about. I did take out a small loan to cover some things but definitely not the whole thing. I did consider the negative what ifs first. And sure enough, I lost my job thanks to COVID but was still able to make my payments because it was manageable. It'a a once in a lifetime experience which should be thoroughly enjoyed as long as you don't put yourself in a situation you can't recover from.

My hubby & I owned a house, no kids, no debt. There’s no way I’d go into much debt over a wedding. Life has taught me these lessons: what if you lose your job? What if you both do? What if there’s a big medical expense? What if there’s an unexpected car, dental or house expense? Actually, I DID lose my job while wedding planning/paying and got a job 6 weeks later at 1/3 the pay. 😳


Our budget was what we could each comfortably save for 15 months prior to our wedding. We went way over budget but we paid cash or paid off our credit cards within 1-2 months.
Sounds like if you’re saving up for 2 years that’s a great budget!

I know several couples who went into deep debt to finance their weddings. None of them accepted parental gifts of money so they could have things their way. But it was clear they spent money to keep up with the Jones and nothing was “personalized” to the couple. It felt like you could take out Bride and Groom A and switch them out with Bride and Groom B with all matching generic details. Most of those couples who went into debt are still paying off the wedding after the divorce. The couples who spent within their means, cake and punch in the church dining room with everyone they love for example if they didn’t have a big budget, are not continuing to pay off the wedding and they also didn’t let money break up the relationship as is very common.


Yes a full meal with photo booth and everything else that Pinterest pressures you into are nice but if it’s not realistic financially then don’t go into debt for a 5 hour event. Some people are happy in an apartment or that’s all they can afford with their incomes which one can lose at any time pandemic or not, so a home purchase is not in the cards for everyone and should not be deciding factor.

I wouldn’t suggest you taking on debt it’s one day, have the wedding you could afford, easier said than done our original budget was 15k but with tax return and stimulus our budget is just over 30k

I mean, all of these answers are super sensible and ideally, taking on debt to finance a wedding isn't a good idea. I guess I'd say it would really depend how much debt you were talking about, and how quickly you'd be able to recover.

I think my perspective is, I can guarantee that just about every single person I know spends their salary on something I think would be a complete waste of money. Someone I know buys limited edition sneakers. Someone else chooses to send his shirts out to be washed and ironed. One couple we know like to go to really, really expensive restaurants and have degustation meals. And we can't be bothered to cook most Friday nights and either go to the pub or order pizza at home.

Some people reading that would be horrified that my sneaker friend is happy to drop $1k+ on shoes. Some would think it's ridiculous we don't cook Friday-Sunday, or that my non-ironing friend could save $520 a year doing his own washing and starching.

It all comes down to what you choose to put your money towards. What you value, what you don't... you can't have everything in life. So, if you value having a big wedding and don't mind that maybe you can't travel or eat out or buy sneakers or have your shirts ironed for you or whatever... then it is worth it to you! It's your money. Spend it how you want, I say.

My fiancé and I will be going into debt. Probably not smart however. Our wedding is about $30k. We’ve already paid $7500 of that. We already know roughly what we’re getting as gifts for the wedding and we’ll be going to use that to lay off debt and hopefully we’ll only have a few thousand dollars to pay off after all that

I think it depends on how much debt like if you're talking about something you're certain you can pay off in no time and is generally a pretty low number then that's not the worst thing, i guess.