Choose: Big Wedding or Down Payment?

Filed in archive Marriage and Finance on July 26, 2007

I was reading this very good column by Laura Rowley today about the craziness of weddings and how over-the-top expensive they can be, when I remembered two couples I've known whose parents gave them the choice between a big traditional wedding and a down payment on a house.

Which would you choose?

It's a tough choice, especially if you're talking about the cost of a wedding being $10,000 or $15,000 or even more. Depending on where you live and how much money you have going in to a marriage, that could be a sizable down payment, and an awesome start on your new life together. On the other hand, your wedding day happen only once (at least that's the goal), and forgoing the big reception and bigger memories in favor of cold hard cash could leave you with regrets in the years to come.

Conveniently for this post, my two sets of friends chose differently-one chose the wedding over the house and one the house over the wedding. I've asked the ones who went for the wedding if they have any regrets and of course they say "No way!" But I've never had the courage to ask the ones who went for the down payment if they ever regret it. That seems rude, because it's likely to make them feel there's a judgment in the question, which I'm sure is how I would take it if I were them. So, I don't know what they think of their decision.

What would you do? Or, if you actually did have this decision to make, what did you do?