Tips to Have a Beautiful Wedding Way Below the Average Wedding Cost

Weddings are a time filled with joy but also have become synonymous with spending a lot of money.

Before you can truly relish every moment your wedding day has to offer, you will need to dig deep into budgets and come to conclusions on plenty of wedding questions. One of the top questions couples wonder about is what does a wedding actually costs? The answer is… it’s complicated.

There are a host of factors that play into the overall cost of a wedding. There are averages to consider (and toss aside). The location where your wedding takes place accounts for several factors, such as the average cost of living where your wedding professionals reside.

What is the Average Cost of a Wedding?

Sharing the average cost of a wedding can be a dangerous subject to tackle because averages are a bit problematic. They can be important to touch on because averages can provide somewhat of a baseline of potential costs.

Take Averages with a Grain of Salt

The averages reported by The Knot are important, but they don’t tell the whole story. Keep in mind, for an average to be reported, there must be people and residents of specific states spending more than the average and less than the average.

You also have to consider that the average is taken from a group of couples who specifically use The Knot’s platform to plan their weddings. These couples tend to be those who plan to hire professionals for every aspect of their day and plan a more “traditional” full-service wedding.

Why Do Wedding Professionals Charge So Much?

Understanding the average wedding cost and putting it in context also requires understanding how certain wedding expenses are priced. To understand how (and why) a wedding professional sets the rates for their services, one of the best things to do is to consider your own salary.

A wedding professional is an entrepreneur, and they are considering the same things as someone in a corporate role. They are also factoring in the costs of self-employment (taxes; funding benefits, life insurance, and retirement plans, on their own). Like other careers, the more experience and ability a wedding professional has, the more they will charge.

The amount you and your partner decide to invest into your wedding day is entirely up to you. Before you begin researching wedding day details, we encourage you to pause and meet with everyone contributing financially toward your big day budget.

The goal is to come to a consensus about how much you can afford to spend. This includes deciding who will contribute financially (and to what aspects of the day), as well as how much you’re comfortable spending in total on what is essentially a party.

Our best and only advice is this: don’t take on debt to pay for a wedding. Don’t take out a wedding loan or rack up wedding expenses on a credit card that you can’t afford to pay off in full each month. Spend what you can realistically afford and have a wedding within your means.

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