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Wealthy millennials are blowing their pandemic savings on $200,000 postponed weddings

Aug 17, 2021, 00:53 IST
Business Insider
Wealthy millennials are spending big on their delayed weddings. SUSANA VERA/Reuters
  • $100,000 weddings have turned into $200,000 weddings as millennials splurge on delayed nuptials, The NYT reported.
  • They saved extra money during the pandemic, but vendors are also raising prices to compensate for 2020 losses.
  • Wealthy millennials are set to drive the US' economic recovery. Weddings are one way they're doing it.
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Finally ready to have the wedding they put on the back burner last year, some wealthy millennials are now doubling the price tag of saying 'I do.'

It's partly out of desire and partly out of necessity, reported Jeanna Smialek for The New York Times: They've been able to save discretionary money during the pandemic to blow on celebrations, but vendors are also inflating prices to recoup their losses after the wedding industry hit pause in 2020. It's fueling a wedding boom that experts expect to last through 2023 as couples compete with one another for venues and vendors amid a backlog of nuptials, she wrote.

"People were postponing, and now they have more savings," New York wedding planner Magdalena Mieczkowska told Smialek. She said that her clients typically spent $100,000 per event before the pandemic. Now, some are spending at least $200,000 for a weekend.

Prices for catered meals and cutlery rentals are also higher, she added: "Everyone is trying to make up for their financial losses from the 2020 season."

While the economy was shut down, six-figure earning millennials fortunate enough to retain their jobs during the pandemic spent a year tucking away excess cash that normally would've been spent on brunches or plane tickets. A financial adviser told Insider last summer that clients of this ilk were saving as much as $3,000 a month in some cases.

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Coupled with the fact that wealthy millennials are part of a generation that is America's largest and that holds the most spending power, these hefty savings have put the cohort in a prime position to help drive the US' economic recovery. Spending lavishly on weddings is just one way they're stimulating the economy.

Wedding expectations - and costs - are on the rise

Weddings have never been cheap, becoming increasingly expensive alongside the rise of social media. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, the average cost to get married in the US was $38,700. But that differs based on location. In the New York City metro area, for example, the average wedding cost was $50,000.

And multiple wedding ceremonies - a rising pre-pandemic trend among wealthy millennials who had a destination wedding or came from different cultural and religious backgrounds - easily threw those numbers into the six-figure range.

That doesn't even include the cost of the engagement ring and the honeymoon, which clock in at an average of $5,000 and $4,500 respectively. The latter is yet another way wealthy millennials are set to help boost the economy. They're most likely to spend their pandemic savings on travel, so it only makes sense that they'd be willing to splurge on an equally lavish honeymoon.

To be sure, the Delta surge could put a halt to such travel plans. It's also, on the other side of the spectrum, prompted couples to plan smaller weddings.

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Marvin Alexander, a makeup artist in New York City, told Smialek that many of the last minute wedding bookings he's done have been for more "modest" and "smaller" events. "I'm starting to see a few people being more comfortable about 2022, even with the Delta variant strong on our heels," he said.

But regardless of whether millennials are tying the knot in ways big or small, that they're even getting hitched at all this year is acting as one piece of the economy's recovery.

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