Til debt do us part: The coming collapse of the American wedding industry

Opinion>Opinions - Finance The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Til debt do us part: The coming collapse of the American wedding industry Comments: by Lydia Love, opinion contributor - 07/12/26 11:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Lydia Love, opinion contributor - 07/12/26 11:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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Weeks ago, I had the honor of my life: marrying my best friend, Stephen. The day was absolutely perfect. A beautiful spring afternoon beneath the trees and twinkling string lights, followed by an evening of dancing, Greek food and chocolate cake. I could not have hoped for anything better.

Though my parents graciously funded the affair, sparing me from seeing the final bill, I know that feeding and hosting 250 people is not cheap, especially the moment the word “wedding” gets attached to anything. Through months of planning, I watched the quotes roll in, the negotiations unfold, and the industry reveal itself for what it is: a masterclass in capitalizing on emotion.

I don’t entirely blame the vendors. When you are entrusted with someone’s so-called “greatest day of their life,” that responsibility entails a premium. And with every couple apparently willing to pay it, the market just keeps climbing.

But what is undeniable is that the traditional wedding has become a luxury purchase — one that is quickly pricing out the average couple.

A generation ago, a wedding was something a community built together. Neighbors brought food, cousins helped with flowers, and the church hall was free. Today, friends and family have been replaced by specialists, each of whom bill for their expertise. The result is a product that has priced out its own meaning.

It is an unsustainable model that COVID made even worse. Stimulus money and supply chain mismanagement drove costs up across the board by flooding the economy with easy money. It gave wedding vendors every reason to raise prices, specialize further, and bet on demand that was never here to stay.

In recent years, elopement has emerged as the most visible response to this out-of-reach wedding cost. In 2021, elopement inquiries to wedding planners rose 72 percent; 41 percent of Gen Z couples now plan to skip the aisle altogether. With median savings reported at $22,500, this suggests the decision is less about romance and more about the budget. What once was scandalous has become a generational trend, with the savings speaking for themself.

So, how did we get here?

Like so many things, COVID takes some of the blame. Weddings postponed in 2020 cascaded into the years that followed, creating an artificial surge in demand against a limited supply of venues, caterers and photographers that couldn’t just scale overnight. When everyone wants your Saturday in June at the same time, you charge accordingly. Prices climbed, and some never came back down.

However, the pandemic is only part of the story. Wedding costs were already climbing, long before anyone heard of COVID.

The average wedding cost in 1990 was around $4,000; by the turn of the millennium, that figure had nearly quadrupled, to $15,000. Much of that jump can be traced to a single shift: couples moving away from church ceremonies toward dedicated wedding venues. This carries a typical price tag of $6,900 to $10,300 and represents the single largest line item in most wedding budgets.

The trajectory has not slowed. Today, most U.S. couples spend between $20,000 and $40,000 on their big day. That’s more than many people spend on one year of a college degree. And as with college, a growing number of couples are starting to ask if it’s really worth the price.

It’s bubble behavior, just like the housing bubble of 2008 or the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. These industries were propped up by inflated expectations, easy money, and the soft assumption that prices only go one direction. The wedding industry has all the same fingerprints. But underneath the economics is a cultural warning sign. Society has stopped valuing the marriage and started fetishizing the wedding. As marriage began to lose its institutional weight, the wedding was asked to carry more.

Social media has poured fuel on the fire. Brides-to-be are served an endless scroll of trends, aesthetics and must-have moments, each one raising the bar for what a wedding is supposed to be. Add in celebrity-obsessed culture and the very natural human desire to signal “you’ve made it,” and it becomes easy to feel like you’re the only person in the world not doing it right. That feeling of inadequacy is exactly what the industry capitalizes on. Couples are not just paying for a wedding any more — they are buying the version of themselves they want the world to see. When that pressure meets a $40,000 price tag, debt is often the path of least resistance.

Credit is not inherently the problem. People finance cars, homes and education all the time. But those things are assets, something that holds value and builds equity and income. A wedding is a single day. When more than two-thirds of couples in 2025 reported using personal loans or credit cards to pay for their weddings, the numbers start to look uncomfortably familiar. Debt taken on to meet an artificially inflated standard, by people who can’t comfortably afford it, propped up by an industry that profits from insecurity. This is not just a personal finance problem, but a systematic one. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

This raises the question of what happens when the model breaks. The instinct is to assume that the bubble-burst will automatically lead to cheaper weddings. But that probably won’t be how it plays out.

Consider what happened to Airbnb when rising interest rates and overcrowding broke its model. Prices didn’t fall, but quality sure did. High-quality rentals moved to personal use or longer-term rentals. What remained on the platforms were properties that could not attract longer-term tenants, listed by hosts who were desperate to keep trying. Guests did not get a discount — they got a worse product at the same price.

A wedding industry bust would likely follow a similar trajectory, but unevenly. Wedding venues hold a hard asset that can easily be redeployed into another industry, so prices will likely hold. Photographers have transferable skills and will survive at lower margins. But wedding planners and florists are in a different position. Their adjacent markets are thin, and there is no comparable industry waiting to absorb them. Many will be forced to exit as price wars and closures follow, which will ultimately lead to some level of price stabilization.