Claudia had the wedding of her dreams — a lavish affair, held in Venice, Italy — earlier this summer.
But as bills for the blushing bride’s big day began to pile up, panic — and then reality — quickly set in for the Upper East Sider, who declined to share her last name, due to privacy concerns. Married life for the Gen Zer and her husband wouldn’t be starting out in the perfect, pricey Manhattan apartment they’d had their hearts set on.
“I mean there’s just so many costs that add up — things you don’t even think about,” said the 26-year-old, who told The Post she was at least fortunate enough to have family help cover the cost of the nuptials. “And when you look at the budget growing you just keep thinking, ‘Wow, I could buy an apartment with this money.'”
Claudia and her husband, who say they have no regrets, are among the many young couples increasingly faced with a choice between the perfect wedding and the perfect home. The conundrum has become commonplace enough to have inspired a Netflix reality show, called “Marriage or Mortgage.”
Each episode follows a different couple in the Nashville, Tennessee, area as they try to decide whether to put cash toward their big day or invest in a house. A wedding planner tries to push the couples toward a blowout event, while a local real estate agent tries to entice them to choose the mortgage.
And while most millennial and Gen Z couples don’t have a wedding planner and real estate agent directly competing for their cash, most could likely use the expert guidance.
“Millennials are struggling financially,” finance expert Haley Sacks, also known as “Mrs. Dow Jones,” told The Post. She noted that student loans, low-paying jobs that haven’t increased with inflation and multiple recessions have impacted the generation’s finances.
“Millennials still consider owning a home part of the American Dream but do not have the means to afford one,” she said. “If it’s between a wedding and a down payment, think it through. A party is one night, real estate is forever.”
In 2022, the final average spend on the big day ran around $30,000 nationally, or $46,000 in New York, according to wedding planning site The Knot. And that price tag only covers the wedding day — there’s still engagement rings, bachelor and bachelorette parties and the honeymoon to add in.
The discrepancy between what couples are typically able to budget and the higher final spend is often pushing them to take out loans and go into debt to afford their special day. In the end, a majority of engaged couples are now going into debt to pay for their wedding, according to LendingTree.
And that’s debt, more and more couples are realizing, that might best be taken on as part of a mortgage.
The average age of marriage is 31 in the United States and 33 in New York, according to The Knot, leaving more couples paying for their wedding with their own money, as opposed to relying on a big check from mom and dad, as they might have in their early 20’s.
So, too, the typical age to buy a first home has jumped — all the way to 36 years old, according to the National Association of Realtors, the oldest ever on record.
And as couples are scrolling on Zillow looking for their dream home, they are also facing a challenging housing market with fewer homes on the market, expensive asking prices, and high-interest rates forcing them to choose what parts of their dream they really want.
Newlyweds Chris and Jo Vargo decided to forgo a big wedding celebration, opting instead for an intimate ceremony at home costing about $5,500.
“It started bigger and then we were like, no, it didn’t feel right. We had a venue picked out and then we nixed everything to make it really authentic to us,” Jo told ABC News Live.
The pair ultimately decided to downsize their wedding and focus on the home purchase.
Others are still trying to have it all — just in smaller measures.
Melissa 30, and Chris Dionne, 30, were married in September 2021. After being together for 10 years and engaged for two their wedding “was definitely something [they] had been thinking and planning for a while,” she told The Post.
But once they decided to have a big wedding and not just elope or do something small they knew they would be paying for it themselves meaning that we would have to put off buying a house, which they had also dreamed of for a while.
They cut a lot of people from their guest list getting it down to 120 of their closest family and friends and picked the cheapest venue- but they still went over budget.
“Our original budget was $35kish and I think we ended up at around $40k honeymoon not included but to be honest I stopped keeping track at the end,” Melissa admitted.
After the big day, the Dionne’s had to wait about a year and a half to purchase a “very modest” 1,000-square-foot home in Portland, Connecticut, near Hartford.
“If we didn’t have the wedding we could’ve bought a house sooner and probably a bigger house,” she said. “It was definitely a little frustrating.”