Planning a wedding is expensive.
I know this to be the case since we’ve been planning our wedding for the past year.
Though if there’s a silver lining in spending so much on an event -- it’s been an amazing
opportunity to build points and meet minimum spend.
And these points have helped to offset the cost of our honeymoon.
Hey, how’s it going, everyone?
It’s Ernest from Trip Astute.
In this video, I want to share how Fiona and I have earned about $2,500 of travel with
our wedding planning this past year, and how you can do the same with a bit of planning.
I realize not everyone is planning a wedding, but you probably know someone who is.
And if you’re planning any special event, this video will hopefully be relevant to you
as well.
Fiona and I are getting married this weekend and heading out for a two week honeymoon afterwards.
We’re going to be taking a short two week break from our channel.
It’s actually the first time I’ve not posted a video since starting the channel
in 2017, so you know I’ll probably be freaking out and suffering from a case of FOMO.
Though I think it’s necessary, and we’ll be posting updates on our community tab and
Instagram on our travels.
We’re doing a roadtrip to visit seven different national parks, so you know I’ll still be
working on getting footage for future videos, even if you don’t see a new video on the
channel for the next two weeks.
As I mentioned earlier, planning a wedding is expensive.
The average cost of a wedding in the US is $30,000.
If you can find ways to capture points from the experience, it could be enough to offset
the cost of your next trip, or even your honeymoon.
In fact, our wedding has come out to about $35,000, so I’ll show you a high-level breakdown
of our costs and the estimated points that we earned.
Before we get started, if you’re new here, welcome to our channel.
Trip Astute is a travel channel that is focused on sharing ways to make travel easier, affordable,
and more enjoyable.
Traveling can be stressful and expensive, so we’re looking for ways to help you maximize
your experience through travel tips, points and miles, and innovative gear.
If that sounds interesting to you, please consider subscribing.
For the sake of simplicity, I’ve broken up wedding costs into three big categories:
Food, Beverage, and Venue; Gifts, Clothing, and Supplies; and Service and Vendors.
The reason I combined food and beverages with the venue is because these costs are often
from the same place, like a restaurant or hotel.
Obviously, everyone’s situation will be different, but I’m basing this video on
our personal experience.
Starting with the food, beverages, and venue, this accounts for about 50% of our wedding
cost.
A lot of weddings have receptions in restaurants or hotels.
With dining out often being a bonus category for many travel credit cards, this can be
an easy way to earn points.
For example, the Chase Sapphire Reserve earns three points per dollar on travel and dining
out expenses, while the American Express Gold earns four points per dollar on dining out.
Both of these would be great cards to use depending on where you are having your wedding.
In our case, we’re having both our wedding and reception at a hotel here in Southern
California.
Since the venue is not only charging us to use the space, but also for the food and drinks,
we’ve been putting all the charges on my Sapphire Reserve.
The reason I opted for the Sapphire Reserve over other cards is that both the Sapphire
Reserve and Sapphire Preferred provide a bonus on dining out and travel expenses.
Since Chase has a wide definition of what constitutes a travel expense, it seemed like
a good choice.
Since I wasn’t sure if the food and drinks were going to be coded as a hotel or restaurant
charge, I wanted to use a card that would earn a bonus on both types of spend.
Plus, since I love Chase Ultimate Rewards points, it seemed like the best approach for
us.
Looking at the actual breakdown, we spent close to $18,000 this past year on food, beverage,
and venue costs.
Since we put all of it on my Sapphire Reserve, we earned about 53,000 Ultimate Rewards points.
Since each Ultimate Rewards points is worth at least 1.5 cents to me, the value is about
$800.
Of course, we’re often able to get even more than 1.5 cents, so that number is a conservative
figure.
Services and vendors are another huge expense when planning a wedding.
This includes the cake, flowers, photographer, planner, to name a few.
These types of expenses are typically not captured by a bonus earning category.
Also, we found the vendors to be a bit more tricky when it comes to making payments.
Some of them preferred payments through PayPal or Venmo, which meant that we had to choose
between paying cash or incurring a processing fee with a credit card payment.
For these types of expenses, I recommend using it as an opportunity to meet minimum spend.
If you have a new credit card with a large welcome offer, there is often a large spend
requirements as well.
You might pay a processing fee to pay with a credit card if the vendor prefers payment
methods like Venmo, but it could be worth the extra cost in order to earn a big welcome
offer.
Venmo charges 3% for credit cards, so you’d have to weigh the cost versus the benefit.
Also, you could reduce the processing fee to 2.5% if you use a service like Plastiq.
Plastiq works like your bank’s bill pay system, so they can charge your credit card
and send a check or electronic payment to your vendor.
We did a whole video on Plastiq, so check it out for more details.
The other strategy would be to use a card that earns a flat-rate.
If you’re invested in the Chase Ultimate Rewards program, then the Freedom Unlimited
might be a great card for this purpose, especially if you’ve paired it with a Sapphire card.
It only earns 1.5 points per dollar, but since Ultimate Rewards points can usually be redeemed
at 1.5 cents of value at a minimum, the card has a higher adjusted earning rate.
For more information on that concept, see our video on point valuations.
Also, at the time of this video, Chase is offering three points per dollar on up to
$20,000 of spend for the first year on new applications.
At 3X points, you would be offsetting the processing fee of services like Plastiq and
Venmo, and potentially earning even more.
If you’re looking for a more simple and straightforward way to earn points on your
general spend, then the Capital One Venture might be a good card to check out.
You’ll earn 2 points per dollar.
Since each point is worth one cent, you’ll earning a flat rate of 2%.
This can then be used toward travel expenses using Capital One’s purchase eraser tool.
And if you’re just interested in cashback, then a card like the Citi Double Cash might
be the way to go.
It also has a 2% earning rate without an annual fee.
You might be wondering why you would bother getting the Capital One Venture over the Citi
Double Cash if they earn at the same rate.
Keep in mind that the Capital One Venture does include additional travel protections
and benefits, along with a Global Entry reimbursement.
Also, the annual fee is waived in the first year for the Venture card.
In our case, we had a mix of cards that we used for this category.
Though for simplicity sake, we bucketed the majority of theses charges on Fiona’s Capital
One Venture card.
She got this card late last year, so we used these expenses to help meet her minimum spend.
When Fiona applied, Capital One had a welcome offer of 75,000 points.
So in addition to the spend she put on the card, we earned a $750 welcome offer, which
meant that we earned about $1,000 with her Venture card.
Lastly, weddings are filled with other expenses like gifts, clothing, and supplies.
This includes things like attire, rings, stationary, and gifts.
Like the services and vendor category, these expenses tend to be non-bonus spend.
However, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to find additional value or bonuses through
your credit cards.
In terms of credit cards, we used different cards for this category.
However, the bulk of it went on Fiona’s SPG Amex, which is now a Marriott Bonvoy card.
She needed $3,000 of spend to meet the minimum spend requirement to earn 75,000 SPG points.
Most of the remainder went on my Chase Freedom Unlimited, which means that I earned at a
1.5 points per dollar.
But since I can redeem at a minimum of 1.5 cents on the Chase Travel Portal since I have
the Chase Sapphire Reserve, I’m earning at an adjusted rate of 2.25% with this card.
There are other savings not captured by our breakdown as well.
We earned additional cashback and points by using different portals.
I recommend checking CashBack Monitor if you plan to purchase anything online.
The site shows you if there are any travel or cashback portals that can award you extra
points for your purchase.
Also, make sure to check your American Express and Chase offers for relevant deals.
As an example, we purchased Fiona’s wedding ring from Blue Nile.
We originally looked at local jewelry stores, but I felt like the prices were all over the
place, and were getting all sorts of conflicting advice.
We liked that Blue Nile offered more transparency without trying to upsell us.
When I looked online at the time, Cashback Monitor showed that TopCashback was offering
5% back on purchases from Blue Nile.
I also noticed that American Express had an offer for $100 back after spending $600 or
more on a piece of jewelry.
So, I essentially combined the offer.
I clicked through the TopCashback portal offer for 5%, then used my American Express card.
In the end, I was able to save quite a bit of money off the normal price.
We also opted for our guests to purchase travel experiences for us that we could use on our
honeymoon.
We used Zola to manage our wedding registry, and found the platform to be very helpful
in keeping track of our guest list and budget.
I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a tool to keep you organized when planning
a wedding.
Since we are getting married this weekend, I think we are mostly done paying for our
wedding.
At the end of the day, we ended up with the following points from our spending.
Again, the value is a bit subjective.
I listed fairly conservative point value figures, though we’re often able to get a higher
per point value on our Chase Ultimate Rewards redemptions.
For most couples, I recommend evaluating your projected expenses and upcoming travel goals
to determine how to capture the most value from your spend.
For example, if we were new to credit card rewards but wanted to build our Chase portfolio,
you could see how different card set-ups could result in different total values due to the
earning rates and welcome offers.
In this scenario, I mapped out our spending into scenarios where one or both partners
have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve, and at least one person has a Freedom
Unlimited.
You’ll notice that the total value is different depending variations on the set-up.
This assumes that you’re earning welcome offers on the Sapphire cards and the 3X points
first year promotion on the Chase Freedom Unlimited.
You’ll notice that having a Sapphire Reserve as one of the cards tends to improve your
overall value.
This is due to the Reserve’s additional minimum earning rate of 1.5 cents on the Chase
Travel Portal and the 3X earning rate for travel and dining out.
Since this would affect the redemption rate for all the cards in your Chase portfolio,
you can see how this might be more strategic and valuable way to go, especially since Chase
points can be transferred and shared within a household.
Keep in mind that I’m not accounting for the annual fees in this model since it is
complicated.
For example, the Chase Sapphire Reserve has a $450 annual fee, which is much higher than
the $95 annual fee on the Sapphire Preferred.
But when you consider that you get $300 back in travel credits and get lounge access, the
real annual fee can be lower depending on your usage.
Also, I should add a caveat that you should plan to pay your statement balance every month
as paying any interest would negate the value earned from your points.
This is an important concept, especially for those of you new to the points and miles hobby.
I think the big takeaway from this video is that if you’re planning a wedding or any
type of event, it helps to start thinking about the type of expenses that you’ll be
incurring, and what cards and programs can earn you the most points.
I know I stress it all the time, but it pays to be strategic and deliberate with your points
and miles strategy and approach.
Have you paid for a major event, like a wedding, that allowed you to earn a lot of points?
What tips or cards do you recommend for these types of situations?
Just a reminder that we are taking the next two weeks off for our wedding and honeymoon.
Though we’ll be posting updates on our community tab and instagram feed, so make sure you to
subscribe to both our YouTube and Instagram and enable notifications for both.
If you’re interested in applying for a credit card, we would love it if you used our link
in the video description or on our website.
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be valuable and helpful.
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sign-up for our free card consultation service.
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Until next time, travel safe and travel smart.