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Wedding Costs Are Skyrocketing — All the Expenses Impacted by Inflation

July 5, 2024

3 min Read

Written by Vance Cariaga

Edited by Susan Kim

A wedding cake topper showing a groom and bride with one hundred dollars fanned out in the background with flowers.

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Getting married doesn’t have to be expensive — as long as you head to the local justice of the peace or city clerk, buy the license and agree to a few terms. Otherwise, you can expect to pay a tidy sum to get hitched, and that sum keeps moving higher.

Couples paid an average of $30,000 to get married last year, according to data cited by The Wall Street Journal’s Buy Side site. Prices since have risen even further due to stubbornly high inflation.

A survey conducted by the wedding registry platform Zola found that the average wedding expense for couples getting married is about $33,000. The most expensive state to get married in is Rhode Island, at an average cost of $49,207. The cheapest state is Alaska, with an average cost of $14,444.

Prices are even higher in certain U.S. cities. As Buy Side From WSJ reported, you can expect to pay about $63,000 for a wedding in New York City, and $56,000 in Chicago. Those costs aren’t likely to come down anytime soon, experts say.

“[Inflation is] leading to rising costs across the board,” Jessica Bishop, founder of wedding planning website The Budget Savvy Bride, told Buy Side. “Supply chain disruptions have also led to higher costs in specific areas — including catering, flowers and wedding attire.”

Because of high prices, many couples must go into debt to pay for their weddings. But that’s not an option for everyone. Recent research conducted by BadCredit.org found that an estimated 580,862 couples will not be tying the knot this year due to poor credit.

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Personal loans have traditionally been a popular way to finance weddings, but couples with subprime credit “often find themselves ineligible for such borrowing opportunities,” according to BadCredit.org.

If you’re planning to get married this year, here are some of the average line-item expenses you will face, according to The Knot. All have been impacted by inflation.