Keeping Up With The Bulls

A personal finance blog focused on making more money, saving money and smart spending.

  • Start Here
    • Start Here Latest Posts
    • Personal Finance Terms to Know
    • Money in Your 20s
    • Saving Money Tips
  • Career
    • Career Latest Posts
    • Advance Your Career
    • Corporate Benefits
  • Investing
    • Invest Latest Posts
    • Passive investing
    • Invest in startups
    • Retirement
  • Smart Spending
    • Smart Spending Latest Posts
    • Saving Money Tips
    • Housing
    • Food
    • Holidays
    • Wedding Guest
    • Wedding
  • Tools
    • Tools and Resources Latest Posts
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Smart Spending / Saving Money as a Wedding Guest: Tips and Tricks for Sticking to Your Budget

Saving Money as a Wedding Guest: Tips and Tricks for Sticking to Your Budget

07.07.2019 by admin // 2 Comments

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
saving money as a wedding guest

The costs of being a wedding guest really add up between the wedding, the bridal shower, the bachelorette party and the engagement party. Especially the years you attend multiple weddings, saving money as a wedding guest is key as you could be spending thousands of dollars. Saving money as a wedding guest is critical if you want to be there for your friend’s special day. While it’s exciting when your friend gets engaged, we all know that excitement starts to wear when you see your credit card bill and those wedding checks cashed during wedding season. So, how can you attend weddings, and also have money to pay your own bills? In order to save money as a wedding guest you need to create a budget for how much you’ll spend attending weddings and stick to it. Here are ways to save money as a wedding guest.

Create A Budget For Wedding Season

In order to save money as a wedding guest, you need to know your limit on how much you will spend attending weddings each year. How much are you willing to spend to attend each wedding? How much are you willing to spend attending weddings this year? This includes the weddings, the bachelor or bachelorette parties, the engagement parties and the bridal showers. If you’re traveling to a wedding, include all costs you’ll incur that weekend. Don’t forget to estimate the outfit costs.

Next, create a good estimate of how much you’ll spend on weddings for the year based on the weddings you’ve been invited to. Add a bit of a buffer in case there are engagements and/or weddings you get invited to later on in the year. The table below is a good way to develop that first estimate.

How to save money as a wedding guest budget for engagement gift, wedding guest hotel, wedding guest flight and wedding gift

Sticker shock? Same. Below are a few ideas to attend weddings without going broke.

As much as your friends want you to be a part of their big day(s), if they’re really your friend they don’t want you to end up broke because you attended their wedding. It’s important to remember it’s a lose lose lose situation for your friend, yourself, and your wallet if you do this.

Save Money By Skipping The Bridal Shower

Are you a bridesmaid? If not, save money attending weddings by skipping the bridal shower. Do this especially if attending a bridal shower involves a flight. Send a gift from the registry or chip in with a group of friends for a larger gift. If you do attend, check out additional ways to save money attending a bridal shower.

Save Money By Skipping The Bachelorette

Attending every bachelorette (or bachelor party) you’re invited to will cost you thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars. Are you a bridesmaid or groomsman? If not, consider skipping the bachelorette or bachelor party. It’s not fun for you or the bride / groom if you attend and then are stressed the entire time about spending money while there. If you still want to do something for the bride / groom at the bachelorette / bachelor party and can’t afford to attend ask a friend to buy a bottle of wine or champagne on your behalf and reimburse your friend. It’ll show the bride / groom you are thinking about them and you don’t have to worry about spending too much money.

If you do decide to attend the bachelorette party, there are plenty of ways to save money attending a bachelorette party. Splitting a hotel room, carpooling or sharing an Uber and limiting the nights you participate in the bachelorette party are a few ways to save money when attending a bachelorette party.

Save Money Attending The Wedding

Use Credit Card, Hotel, Airline and Car Rental Points

One way to reduce the cost of attending weddings is to use credit card, hotel, airline and car rental points for wedding travel. Mentally, it will make you feel better about spending less money on attending weddings. However, you always had the option of using these points for other travel so you should be careful about justifying using points as a way to save money.

Save Money On Wedding Flights

If you will need to fly to the wedding, book your flight early! Use Hopper to track flight prices as soon as you get the invite and buy when tickets are low. If you wait too long, ticket prices are guaranteed to go up.

Do you travel for work? Is your work travel unpredictable? If work travel doesn’t allow for early booking of flights look for opportunities to align a work trip to a wedding. Sometimes, you’ll be able to have one or both legs of a flight paid for with this approach.

Save Money On The Wedding Lodging

Stay with Family or Friends

The cheapest lodging option is to stay with family or friends. Even if it’s a bit of a drive, it can be cheaper to be a little farther and Uber instead of paying for a hotel. If your friends / family are attending the same wedding offer to pay for the transportation to / from the wedding or pay for a meal.

Share a Hotel Room

The hotel is one of the most expensive parts of the wedding. If you need to save money when attending a wedding, splitting the hotel with friends will make a huge difference. This is especially true if you just graduated college. You just spent 4 years sleeping 2 feet from a roommate, sharing a hotel will feel like a dorm. As you age this will become a less attractive option so save money by splitting a hotel room here while you’re young.

Wedding Guest Outfit

Your Wedding Guest Dress

Let’s be real, with social media there are only so many times you want to wear the same dress. Don’t spend $200-400 on a dress and justify it you’ll wear it all the time. You’ll probably wear it 2-3 times max.

If you and your friends are similar sizes, the best way to save money on your wedding guest outfit is to borrow it. This way, you each can rotate your outfits and only have to buy one dress. The second cheapest option is to buy a dress second hand and sell it after you know you’re not going to wear it any longer. You can also rent a dress on Rent The Runway but sometimes this ends up being more expensive than the two options above. If you are going to buy a dress, plan ahead so you can get it on sale.

If you buy a wedding guest dress (second hand or new) and you’re not going to wear it again, sell it so it lessens the net cost.

Wedding Guest Accessories

Buy the essential accessories ahead of time when you find a good sale. You’ll always have something that goes with the dress and can take advantage of sales.

  • Shoes: open toe / heeled sandals in nude, black, gold and silver. The shoes I bought are no longer sold, but the newer version of BP shoes are, and are only $60!
  • Purse / clutch: nude, black, gold, silver. I found the best deals at the Kate Spade Outlet Store when they were having a sale and got a sparkly clutch for $50.
  • Jewelry: invest in nice pieces that will go with anything such as diamond studs or get a few pieces of classic costume jewelry.

Save Money By Not Bringing A Plus One To The Wedding

If you have a significant other it is nice to attend weddings together. But, this also increases the cost. At minimum, you have to give a gift for two people instead of just yourself. This will save you $50- $150 depending on how much you gift the bride and groom. If you have to fly, this easily adds another couple hundred dollars there as well.

Save Money On The Wedding Gift

How much should you spend on a wedding gift? Give what you can afford, but spend at least $50 per person. The Knot outlines proper wedding gift etiquette here. In the wedding budget above, I used $150 which is the high end etiquette for a close friend and low estimate for an urbanite. You can also buy your wedding gift on the registry early as sometimes the cheaper gifts are taken earlier, or buy it when the gift is on sale to make your gift go further.

Skip The Wedding All Together

As mentioned in the beginning, being a wedding guest is expensive. If you can’t afford to attend a wedding don’t go. Saving money as a wedding guest sometimes entails saying no. Weddings are expensive for the bride and groom too, so if you feel bad remember how much it costs the bride and groom per plate. Attending weddings are not worth going into debt for. Studies also show that 40% of Americans can’t cover a $400 emergency expense. Don’t be that person that can’t cover a $400 emergency expense because you spent too much money attending weddings. Saving money as a wedding guest isn’t always easy, true friends will understand if you’re unable to make the wedding due to cost.

What other ways have you been successful saving money as a wedding guest?

Related

Categories // Smart Spending Tags // Money in Your 20s, Saving Money Tips, Wedding, Wedding Guest

Comments

  1. Tyler Johnson says

    August 23, 2019 at 9:47 am

    That’s a good idea to spend less on something you would only wear a few times. I would think that could save you a lot of money and could let you get multiple outfits. I’ll have to consider getting a cheaper outfit when I go to a wedding.

    Reply
    • admin says

      September 3, 2019 at 6:34 pm

      One of the easiest ways to spend less attending weddings that I’ve found!

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search Blog Posts

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts

  • 2023 Roth IRA Rules: What You Need to Know February 2, 2023
  • Affordable Self-Care: Cheap and Easy Ways to Take Care of Yourself January 31, 2023
  • Why Learning to Code is a Valuable Investment for Your Career and Future January 24, 2023
  • Unlocking the Potential of the Mega Backdoor Roth 401(k): A Comprehensive Overview January 17, 2023
  • How to Buy Treasury Bills at Charles Schwab January 10, 2023

Follow Us

  • Twitter
  • Pinterest

Copyright © 2023 · Modern Studio Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Print