$90 million nuptials: How much is too much to spend on a wedding?

Last week, a star-studded three-day event took place in India, where Rihanna performed for a host of international guests, including Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Ivanka Trump, all of whom were issued with a nine-page dress code guide before their arrival.

When they weren’t being serenaded by one of the world’s biggest pop stars (whose performance fee was reportedly $US9 million, or $13.6 million in our currency), guests had the opportunity to visit an animal rescue sanctuary or sample one of 500 dishes cooked by 100 chefs as part of a celebratory feast.

A no-expense-spared wedding can leave you with a serious debt hangover.Credit: Dionne Gain

So, what were they attending? Not a global summit or major international merger, but a wedding, of course.

The happy couple, Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, are both the children of billionaires (Ambani’s father is the ninth-richest person in the world and the richest person in Asia), meaning their wedding was never going to be a modest affair at the registry office, but even by Instagram-envy standards, their celebrations took things to the next level.

Lavish spectacles like that of Ambani and Merchant (who aren’t actually tying the knot until later this year) never fail to grip us. In November last year, the nuptials of American couple Madelaine Brockway and Jacob LaGrone – also dubbed “the wedding of the century” – went viral on social media thanks to the couple’s rumoured budget of $US59 million ($90 million). The wedding included a stay in the Palace of Versailles for guests, private jet transfers and a performance by Maroon 5, spread across several days.

But whether it’s billionaires, millionaires or regular Toms, Dicks and Sallys you went to school with, thanks to social media, we are now constantly flooded with picture-perfect wedding content.

Rarely do the words “they lived happily ever after” follow where there is a mountain of untenable financial debt.

It can make you gush with genuine happiness for the happy couple while simultaneously feeling envious at how impossibly perfect it all looks and suddenly wondering if you should be spending or should have spent more. Yet when I look at these pictures or videos, I can’t help putting on my financial adviser’s hat and doing a quick crunch of the numbers.

Whether you’ve been lucky enough to be born into exorbitant wealth or have simply worked and saved hard for what you have, no matter which way you look at it, weddings are expensive. According to Forbes, the cost of an Australian wedding in 2023 was $34,715.

While that’s a drop in the ocean to couples like Ambani and Merchant, that figure is almost exactly half the average Australian salary. So even if you didn’t take advanced maths in high school, you’d know that spending half of your annual income (or a quarter of a couple’s combined income) on a single day isn’t exactly a solid financial decision.

Of course, that one day – or several days, if you’re an extroverted couple who loves to host – is hugely significant and unlike any other day in your life. But spending beyond your means and overextending yourself financially is a fast-tracked, guaranteed way for that one magical day to morph quickly into years of financial burden.

Radhika Merchant, Mark Zuckerberg and Anant Ambani at their pre-wedding bash in Jamnagar, India.Credit: Reliance

While I understand the temptation to create an Instagram-perfect wedding, waking up to married life with a burden of debt has the potential to be the worst hangover of your life.

It blows my mind that so many couples are willing to rack up credit card debt or take out personal loans to finance their weddings, not least because roughly half of all marriages end in divorce.

On that fact alone, spending $35,000 on an investment that has a 50/50 chance of failing is, quite frankly, a terrible idea. What’s more, in 2015 The Economist published a study looking into divorce rates, and among the top listed reasons for separation were couples who were experiencing “money problems” and living above their financial means.

Of course, I’m not saying you shouldn’t spend money on your wedding (that would make me a hypocrite!). What I am saying is that you and your partner need to have a clear agreement on your current financial situation and your short- and long-term financial goals, and you need to set a wedding budget that aligns with those.

Having a firm and realistic budget that won’t negatively affect your ability to live comfortably and enjoy financial freedom after your big day is done and dusted is arguably the best wedding present you can give to yourself as newlyweds.

Say you’re planning to follow the Australian average and spend $35,000 on your wedding. You’re getting married at the median age, which, according to the Australian Institute of Family Services, is 29.4 years for women and 30.8 years for men.

If you took that $35,000 and placed it in a managed fund for 25 years with an annual return rate of 9.3 per cent instead of spending it on a wedding, you’d have almost $200,000 by the time you reach retirement age.

Now you might be thinking, OK, that sounds like a nice top-up for retirement! Another way to look at it is that by not investing that lump sum in such a way, the real long-term cost of your wedding day is close to $200,000, not $35,000.

I can’t tell you the exact moment that weddings stopped being a modest celebration of love between two people and became all-out lavish productions in which the happy couple became the leading stars of their own Hollywoodesque movie.

What I can tell you is that the super-rich have wedding budgets that are more than most of us will earn in a lifetime because it’s in line with what they can afford. But the vast majority of us aren’t in that wealth bracket and shouldn’t give in to the desire to pretend we are, no matter how strong the social media pull is.

Rarely do the words “they lived happily ever after” follow a mountain of untenable financial debt. My advice? Enjoy the experience of living vicariously and sliding through images or watching reels. Then, log off.

Victoria Devine is an award-winning retired financial advisor, best-selling author and host of Australia’s No. 1 finance podcast, She’s on the Money. Victoria is also the founder and co-director of Zella Money.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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