How I Used Credit Cards To Save Thousands On Wedding Costs

When it came to using credit cards to save on wedding expenses, we focused on finding cards with valuable welcome bonuses and redemption options.

Most credit cards offer 1% or 2% cash back on purchases, with some cards going as high as 5% or more for purchases in specific categories. Earning 2% cash back on the cost of a wedding can mean saving hundreds of dollars. That’s not bad, but welcome offers tend to be far more lucrative.

Welcome offers are one-time rewards that card issuers offer to help convince people to apply for a new credit card. Some bonuses can offer the equivalent of 40% back on your initial purchases.

Rewards Earning Strategy

My wife and I focused on Chase credit cards because of their high bonuses, flexible redemption options, ability to pool points, and long-term potential. We wanted to avoid credit cards we’d only use for the welcome bonus and never use again.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card was one of the cards we both opted to apply for. The welcome offer at the time allowed each of us to earn 60,000 points. To earn those rewards, we each needed to spend $4,000 within the first three months of getting the card.

Thankfully, holding a wedding made it relatively easy to meet that requirement. Between the initial payments to the venue, hiring a DJ and other expenses, we quickly met the requirements, earning roughly 128,000 Ultimate Rewards® points in total.

We also each applied for Chase Freedom Unlimited® cards, which at the time offered a $200 (20,000 points) bonus after a $500 spend in the first three months from account opening. A few smaller expenses, such as decorations helped us hit those spending requirements, adding another 41,500 points to our balance.

Earning these points did not result in immediate savings, but they quickly came in handy.

Rewards Redemption Strategy

My wife and I planned to take a honeymoon to France. Unfortunately, despite taking precautions, I tested positive for Covid-19 a few days after the wedding. We delayed our trip by a year, leaving for France the following December.

One of the reasons we chose to apply for Chase cards is that Chase offers several different ways to redeem points, including cash back, travel, or transfers to Chase’s partners. Ultimately, we used the option to redeem points by booking flights and hotels through the Chase Travel℠ portal.

One benefit of the Chase Sapphire Preferred is the option to redeem points through Chase Travel for 25% more value or 1.25 cents per point. This meant the welcome bonuses we earned from the cards were worth a bit more than $2,100.

Admittedly, earning points on spending doesn’t automatically mean you’re saving money. However, we would have gone on this honeymoon anyway. So using the credit card rewards we earned from paying for our wedding to cover these honeymoon costs was as good as saving $2,100 on our wedding.

If you want to use credit card welcome bonuses to save money on a wedding, here are three key factors to consider:

• Minimum spending requirement. Most credit card welcome bonuses require that you spend a certain amount within a few months to earn the bonus. Make sure you’re already planning to spend that money on your wedding or daily purchases. You’re not saving money if you wind up overspending to earn credit card points.
• Value of the welcome bonus. The more you can earn from a credit card, the better. Keep in mind that different rewards have different values. A cash-back reward of 1% is worth 1 cent, but 1 airline mile or credit card point could be worth more or less depending on the redemption.
• Redemption options. The value of your credit card rewards doesn’t matter much if you’re never able to make a redemption. For example, getting an airline credit card for a regional airline that doesn’t offer flights near you is a bad idea because you’ll never get to use those miles. If you have a specific redemption in mind, that information can guide you to the right card. If you don’t have a specific redemption in mind, look for cards with flexible rewards.

Earning and redeeming rewards is just one way to cut costs when you’re paying for a wedding. Another common way is to utilize a 0% intro APR offer on a credit card to avoid interest charges for a period of time.

As with welcome bonuses, these offers serve as an incentive to draw people to apply for new credit cards. Typically, credit cards charge high rates of interest, so carrying a balance can add up quickly. Intro APR offers flip that script, reducing the interest rate of your credit card as low as 0% for a set period, usually a bit longer than 12 months.

The intro APR can refer to purchases, balance transfers or both. If you’re looking for a credit card to pay for upcoming wedding expenses, you’ll want one that offers an intro APR on purchases. You still need to make minimum payments each month, but interest won’t be added to the balance during the introductory period.

If you were considering taking out a wedding loan, a credit card with an intro APR offer can be a solid alternative. An 18-month, $5,000 loan at 10% interest would cost you a total of $405.14 in interest, so using a 0% intro APR card would save you more than $400.

Even if you weren’t planning to use a wedding loan, having the chance to spread out your payments at no cost may be appealing. If you put the money you would have spent on the wedding in a high-yield savings account and let it grow during the intro APR period, you’ll also earn some extra money.

By paying for our wedding expenses with credit cards and earning welcome bonuses, my wife and I were able to easily earn a lot of points quickly. Those points were worth thousands of dollars toward travel, effectively saving us a huge amount of cash to offset our honeymoon.

If you are confident you can keep your spending in check and pay the full balance each month or before the introductory APR period ends, this strategy could save you thousands. That said, accumulating interest charges is a big wedding crasher that will quickly negate any rewards you earn. Make sure you have a plan to pay off your cards before you try this at home.