My wife and I had a relatively modest wedding by most modern standards and it still cost us around $12k. It was over very quickly and honestly, it wasn't much fun. It was a giant waste of money and we could have really used that $12k to help us early in our marriage. Because of our generous guests, we were able to receive a good amount of cash as gifts and we didn't spend any of it. We took it and invested 5k of it in an IRA and put the rest in mutual funds. 7 years later, we had saved enough, largely from this initial wedding gift money to buy our first home and put 20% down. We would have received the same gifts if we had a small informal wedding with just beer/wine and BBQ and honestly it would have been more fun and we could have done it for under $2k. Live and learn. But I would guess that many couples start off their marriage in debt due to their elaborate weddings.