Spending $13,000 to Attend Weddings Put This 30-Year-Old Into Debt

When the 2018 wedding season wraps up this fall, Georgina Childs hopes to finally finish paying off her credit card debt, debt she attributes to attending 20 weddings and almost as many hen (bachelorette) parties over the past four years. To date, the London publicist has spent £9250 (around $13,000) to be a wedding guest and six-time bridesmaid at weddings of friends and family, and has six more coming up this year. Right now, her debt is sitting at £2000 (around $2,750).

Overspending on weddings was never Childs’ plan, but the expenses associated with being a good friend quickly added up. In 2014 the 30-year-old received her first wedding invitation as an adult, spending an estimated £500 (around $680) to attend a weekend outside of London with a group of friends. “It was amazing, they threw a really good party,” she tells Glamour of the first big weekend splurge. Two more weddings that same year added several hundred more pounds to her expenses, and an average of four weddings per year ever since began to take a toll on her finances. “There wasn’t a moment where I thought, This is going to cause me to go into debt,” Childs says, but 2017 became the year that overspending and weddings became inseparable, and Childs decided to stop paying the approximate equivalent of $820 per month to live in a London flat and moved back in with her parents, rent-free.

“Last year it started to feel a bit more like money [anxiety] was [the feeling associated] with going to a wedding rather than being excited about it,” Childs says. Still, she says that’s not a reason to not attend. “You don’t say no to a family wedding,” noting that all the nonrelatives’ weddings she’s attend have been “really good friends.”

Child’s wedding-related debt started slowly, with her booking accommodations for weddings months in advance with the idea of saving money before prices increased. “You get the invite and, you know, you need to book a hotel and transportation,” she says, noting all the costs aren’t always transparent when you RSVP yes. “I would put everything on a credit card thinking I would pay it off, but because there were so many weddings, a month would pass, and then the next month’s weddings would come and I think I would pay if off.…” But she didn’t.

Add to the wedding weekend the hen parties that Childs would attend: local weekends where bridesmaids are expected to pay for decorations, bonding activities (including pottery classes, making flower crowns, willow weaving, paddle boarding, says Childs) and accommodations for the bride, along with themselves. Childs estimates it costs £250 (approximately $340 to attend an average hen party, but then add another $70 or so per round of drinks for the guests, plus more if you’re a bridesmaid and don’t want to ask other guests, like colleagues, to chip in on decor or other small items that all add up. She's since realized the bells and whistles of these weekends aren't always worth it. ”I think people should think about what the hen party is about, being with your friends and having a good time, and remember that it’s about feelings and people instead of material things or experiences,” Childs says.

Childs says she now feels less obliged to say yes to all bachelorette parties, but weddings are still important to her. “I think it’s a real privilege to be invited and the [couple] wants you to go,” she says. “If you’re a bride, you’re probably not thinking about the guests’ budget, you’re thinking about your flowers and your cake.”

To mitigate the costs of wedding attendance, Childs is trying to rewear outfits or borrow clothes from a friend. For her seventh bridesmaid stint next month, the bride purchased Childs’ dress, which has helped.

After appearing on a British talk show, Childs has been bombarded with media attention for talking about the expenses associated with being a wedding guest, but she says her friends aren’t upset by her public commentary. In the future, the attention may make it easier to discuss budgeting and finances with brides-to-be and bridesmaids.

“It’s a true fact that weddings are really expensive; even if you stay in the cheapest hotel and buy the cheapest gift off the list and borrow a dress, you still need to travel and get accommodations and maybe get a taxi to the wedding,” Childs says. “Even if you try to save money, you end up spending a lot.”

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