The key to all my advice about paying for weddings is straightforward: It's absolutely OK to make your wedding your own, but it's also your partner's.
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Courtesy Olivia Christensen
Wedding planning is notoriously stressful. Maybe this is due to our expectations, the number of people typically involved, or the hundreds of tasks it takes to make it happen, but mostly, I think it's the money.
According to a 2023 study from The Knot, the average cost of a wedding in the United States is $35,000. Or, you know, the price of a brand-new car. However, when we buy a car, most of us save, strategize, and take out a loan.
But since weddings are technically just parties, spending well into the five figures can feel as ridiculous as it is unavoidable, and what's more stressful than that?
As a columnist who advises those stuck at the intersection of personal finance and personal relationships, it is no surprise that more than one stressed-out wedding participant has written to me asking for advice on Big Day drama.
I tend to put a lot of pressure on how I respond to these letters because it's a tricky and sensitive season that, for the brides and grooms, will go on to impact one of these most important days of their lives.
To ensure that I am offering guidance that will help rather than hurt my readers, I always begin by removing the idea of winning and losing.
For instance, a bride-to-be asked how she could convince her fiancé to spend big on their wedding, even if it meant taking out a wedding loan. The trouble is, I am only hearing her side of the story.
By advising her on the best way to defeat her fiancé in the tug-of-war of wedding styles, I would only be helping her hurt him and, in doing so, undermining their relationship.
Instead, I reminded the bride of this very truth — this wedding is no more "her day" than their marriage will be hers alone. She shares it with him now, so she also must share the decision-making.
However, some wedding-related letters I receive don't center on conflicts between the couple getting married. Often, they involve interested family members. For example, I received a letter from an aunt who paid a pretty penny for her niece's floral arrangements, only for the wedding to be called off and for the would-be groom to steal all the wedding funds, including the aunt's contribution.
It seemed that what hurt the aunt most was that this niece later married the guy anyway, without a big wedding, inviting the aunt, or repaying her.
While I understood the aunt's frustration, several clues in her letter told me she was missing the true story of her niece's wedding drama, and that is that her niece appears to be in an abusive marriage. Like the bride who wanted a big, expensive wedding, it can be so easy to see events only in the way they relate to us personally.
This aunt's letter shows how much we miss when we slip into this self-centered thinking. From her letter, it's clear this aunt loves her niece very much, which is why I'm sure she'd be devastated if she found out she'd missed her niece's suffering due to her own hurt feelings.
Empathizing can solve many of our problems. But what do we do when the situation is reversed, and our issues stem from someone refusing to see our point of view? When this happens, all we can do is insist upon it.
This was the case for a reader who signed her letter to me, "It's Just One Day." She wrote me asking what to do about her mother's big dreams for her daughter's small wedding. Unlike the first bride I mentioned, she had no desire to spend money on a wedding, yet her mother was pressuring her to do just that — without offering to help out financially.
I encouraged the bride to lean into the universally acknowledged truth that a person's wedding day is their own. As bratty as "It's MY day" can sound, I reminded this writer that the saying isn't just the product of selfishness; it is also the truth. For the people getting married, a wedding holds epic importance due to its lifelong legacy, but to everyone else, even to parents who care more than most, it's just a wedding.
This is perhaps the most important thing for everyone involved in a wedding to remember — it can be a great party — but it's the ceremony that matters most. Two people choose one another for as long as they both shall live. As long as they are happy with the way they choose to take and celebrate those vows, the rest is just details.
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