Andrew Schleeter will make every effort to attend a friend’s wedding — even when the celebration is taking place abroad.
“I love weddings, and I think weddings are such a fun way to travel,” said Schleeter, 32, who lives in Manhattan and is a founder and the chief revenue officer of the merchandising agency MerchCamp. “People work a year of their entire lives to plan their wedding, and they want to include you in it. I think it’s very special, so I always try to go.”
Americans want to attend weddings. In a PayPal survey conducted in May, 90 percent of respondents said they would rather cut back on dining out, shopping and gym memberships than miss a best friend’s nuptials. But attending a wedding doesn’t come cheap: American guests estimate spending an average of about $1,400 per celebration, according to a Bank of Montreal United States survey.
While reducing everyday expenses can help ease the burden, budget-minded wedding guests like Schleeter are implementing other clever hacks to trim spending on lodging, flights and attire.
Since May 2025, Caroline Sacks, a content creator living in Brooklyn, has gone to 16 weddings. Sacks, 30, views most of these celebrations as opportunities to reconnect with long-distance friends rather than romantic getaways for her and her fiancé, Jack Bushell, an account executive. So the two will often split the cost of a hotel room with another couple in order to curb their expenses.
“The hotel room is really the lowest priority,” said Sacks, who would rather allocate funds toward other costs like airfare, rental cars or pre-celebration beauty treatments. Besides, she added, a shared room is often favorable because it can become a gathering place for others who “want to be in the mix” throughout the weekend.
For guests who aren’t as interested in staying at hotels, home-swapping communities such as Kindred are becoming increasingly popular. Operating on a “give to get” system, Kindred members receive one credit for each night they host guests. They can use these credits to book stays across Europe and North America, paying only a small service and cleaning fee. Founded in 2021, Kindred has recently experienced major growth — 150,000 of its 400,000 members joined last year.
Schleeter, who has been a Kindred member since 2023, recently redeemed credits he had accrued on the platform to secure lodging for two weddings in Paris and another in Mexico. When he learned that fellow guests were struggling to find affordable accommodations in Paris, “I was like, ‘No, no, no, you have to come stay with me — I have a free place,’” he recalled telling them before registering them as guests on his account.
For some guests attending multiple weddings, or for whom missing the celebration is simply not an option, opening a new credit card with a significant cash back or rewards offer can be a strategic way to help offset some of the costs. Sacks and Bushell did exactly that before attending weddings in Greece and Mexico last summer. “We knew we needed to hit a minimum spend within a certain amount of days,” Sacks said. “We’re like: ‘Perfect. We have to spend this money anyway. This is the best time to do it.’”
But attendees considering this route should first evaluate their overall financial situation carefully. “Try to avoid letting tangential benefits be the primary motivation for undertaking key financial decisions,” said Vincent Birardi, a senior wealth adviser at Halbert Hargrove in Long Beach, Calif. “People should be mindful of opening too many new credit card accounts too quickly, as doing so can potentially lower your credit score temporarily. Carrying unpaid balances on multiple cards can have an even larger negative impact on your credit score.”
Sacks also tries to be intentional with her flight choices. “We’re currently loyal to Delta,” she said. If it’s significantly cheaper to depart the morning after the wedding rather than in the evening, she recommends doing so, even if that means missing a farewell brunch. “Unless you’re the maid of honor, I promise no one is scanning the room looking for you,” she said.
The idea that it’s more economical to buy flights on certain days of the week is outdated, said Brian Kelly, the founder of the Points Guy, a travel advice website. Rather, Kelly said, “it’s all based on demand.” Booking a domestic flight four to six weeks ahead of time is “the sweet spot,” he added. “The airlines penalize nervous Nellies, and then they penalize last-minute travelers.”
In addition to booking lodging and travel, wedding guests also have to consider apparel. The PayPal survey revealed that millennials and Gen Zers considered attire to be the biggest expense when attending a wedding. Many attendees are choosing to re-wear favorite outfits to multiple celebrations, and some of them even let friends borrow their attire.
For the past two years, Maura Judge, 29, has mostly worn the same two dresses to weddings: a black, strapless gown from Reformation, and a blue tulle dress from Hill House. Judge, who lives in Manhattan, first purchased the blue dress to wear as a bridesmaid at her friend Katie Sweeney’s wedding in 2024. Sweeney recently wore the dress to Judge’s wedding in June.
In 2021, the writer Caitlin Poole, 37, ordered a bright pink Farm Rio dress from the resale marketplace Poshmark after a friend requested that close friends wear either hot pink or red. “It came, and it was so perfect and comfortable, and I felt good and confident in it,” said Poole, who lives in Durham, N.C., and paid $250 for the dress. It was new with tags, and she has worn it to eight weddings.
For Poole, repeatedly wearing the same dress is more than a money-saving technique. “I’ve always been interested in sustainable and ethical fashion,” she said. Having a go-to option also alleviates decision fatigue. “Leading up to weddings, I used to feel this amount of stress,” Poole said. “‘Am I going to feel comfortable? Is this going to work? How is it going to look?’ Now, everybody just knows, ‘Oh, that’s Caitlin’s wedding guest dress.’”
The post When the R.S.V.P. Comes With a Hefty Price Tag appeared first on New York Times.
