4 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Got Married

By The Financial Diet Friday, April 20, 2018

These days, getting married is one of the most expensive things you can possibly do. It has always been a pretty expensive time in people’s’ lives, but more recently the average cost of having a wedding has just gone up (and up, and up). When you’re trying to live a life that is at least somewhat frugal (and we know you are — you’re here reading this on TFD, after all) it is hard to imagine spending upwards of $30,000 on what is essentially a glorified party.

But people do (and hey, power to you if that is “your thing” and is affordable for you), and the very fact that people do just makes more people do it. Social media has given even more weight to weddings — you’re now expected to have the perfect (expensive-as-hell) dress to be heavily photographed, insane choreographed dances for guests to record post on Snapchat (or, let’s be real, Instagram stories), and a #weddinghashtag to keep your wedding’s media presence well contained, yet easily accessible to anyone on the outside who cares to stalk it while sitting on their couch drinking wine and wondering when they’ll get married, or why they weren’t invited.

Weddings are getting so over the top these days that more and more people are opting out of them — or, at the very least, opting out of the “traditional” white-dress-fancy-banquet-hall-$1200-cake weddings that we’ve all grown accustomed to. If you haven’t heard, Chelsea recently got married to her longtime partner, Marc, but she did it (and is doing her upcoming ceremonial wedding) in a less-than-traditional way. So, in this week’s video over on the TFD YouTube channel, Chelsea talks through some of the financial implications of having a wedding, discusses her experience, and goes over the four things she wishes she knew about weddings before she got married.