My wife and I have four children – all boys – and I used to joke that this was a strategic financial planning decision because it meant that we wouldn’t need to pay for any wedding expenses in the future.
The short-lived Kardashian celebrity wedding covered by the E! Network was said to have cost $10 million. And TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress” routinely shows brides and their parents forking out tens of thousands of dollars for a dress. According to Bride Magazine, the average cost of a wedding in 2010 was $26,501. Sure, that’s chump change next to the Kardashian debacle, but seriously, 26 grand? Are you kidding me? These days the average cost of a wedding almost makes a year at Northeastern University affordable.
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| Running of the Brides at Filene's Basement |
The news gets worse for frugal brides: just last week Filene’s Basement filed for bankruptcy protection. For years, Filene’s advertised an annual bridal sale where dresses sold for $249 to $649 – a huge markdown from full retail prices of $900 to $9,000. Now that the 102-year-old retailer is closing its doors, their annual “Running of the Brides” event is a thing of the past.
The cost of dresses, photographers, caterers, flowers and honeymoon all add up. So what kind of impact does this sort of expense have on newlyweds? Here are four consequences:
1. Debt.
Some couples start their marriage deeply in debt. Sure, it’s not unusual for most twenty-somethings to have school loans to pay back, but adding debt to pay for an expensive wedding compounds the problem and often strains a couple’s resources and adds stress to a young marriage.
Couples can avoid wedding debt by listing what they really want and identifying what they can do without. Learning to prioritize is a key financial skill for couples to develop. What is more important... to have a down payment on a house or a big wedding with a costly open bar? If you can afford both, great! If not, make some concessions: invite fewer people, change the venue, use a DJ rather than a band. In all cases, couples should make a budget and avoid wedding debt by putting money aside. The old wedding custom of “something borrowed something blue” wasn’t referring to bank or credit card debt.
2. Lost Opportunity.
The biggest cost of a wedding isn’t the actual dollar spent on the event itself. It’s all the money you could have accumulated if it were saved instead. Economists call this “Opportunity Cost”. Here’s a hypothetical example using a 25-year old bride who invites fewer people to her wedding and consequently cuts her wedding expenses by $10,000. If she saves that $10,000 over her working life of 40-years, her savings could grow to more than $70,000 assuming a five percent interest rate. Some would say that the true cost of inviting the extra guests wasn’t $10,000, but $70,000.
3. Obligation to Dom and Dad.
I often advise parents that they should not create a retirement problem down the road by trying to solve a wedding funding problem for one of their kids today. According to wedding planners, the tradition of having the bride’s parents pay for everything is slowing fading away. Why? Because newlyweds realize that if mom and dad can’t afford to pay for their own retirement, they’re going to have to have to invite mom and dad to live with them, or pay for their assisted living.
4. Crime?
Here’s a weird story. Earlier this year, police say that one Pennsylvania couple resorted to crime in order to pay for their wedding. April Carter, 24, and Joseph Russell, 23, allegedly stripped more than $7,000 worth of copper wire from 18 utility poles and then sold it to a salvage company. PennPower officials inspected the area and found that transformer ground wires had been cut. Surely there are better ways to plan and pay for a wedding than resorting to theft! I can’t imagine that spending a honeymoon in the clink would be much fun either…
