Here's why 1 in 3 people now turn down wedding invitations

By Weston Blasi

Blame macroeconomics

It costs a lot more to throw a wedding than it did a few years ago - the national average is $35,000 in 2024, compared with $28,000 in 2021. But the cost to attend a wedding has gone up even more, percentage-wise.

The current average cost to attend an out-of-town wedding that's within driving distance is approximately $680, up from $120 in 2021. It's $1,600 for weddings that require a flight, according to wedding site the Knot.

And that's led a lot more people to say "No, thank you" when they RSVP to an invitation.

One in three Americans say they decided not to attend a wedding they were invited to this year because of the total cost involved, according to an August 2024 survey about wedding etiquette from DatingNews.com, a website that examines wedding and dating trends. That's up from the one in five Americans who said they declined wedding invitations due to financial strain in 2016.

Cameron Marzi is one of the people who declined a wedding invitation this year because of the expense.

He said the person who invited him "was a decently good friend," but it was a destination wedding in Hawaii and Marzi wasn't in the wedding party.

Marzi, a 27-year-old financial planner living in Oregon, said that he and his partner, who is now his wife, crunched the numbers for the total cost of attending and decided they couldn't make it happen financially.

"We'd have to pay for all of our travel. It would have been $3,500 to fly there, accommodations, everything," he said. And that didn't include the price of a gift, which averaged $150 last year, according to the Knot.

"If it was our close friend and it was the same exact situation, things would have been different and we would've coughed up the money," he said.

See: My girlfriend and I are having a symbolic 'wedding.' She does not want to lose her health benefits - and I don't want to lose my shirt. Is that wise?

Why is it so much more expensive to attend a wedding than it used to be?

"The investment to host and attend weddings has been on the rise due to macroeconomic conditions impacting the cost of flights and accommodations, among other factors," the Knot's Anni Jones told MarketWatch.

Declining wedding invitations is a hot-button topic on social media. There are numerous posts with thousands of comments on the popular r/wedding Reddit page and on other Reddit forums focused on personal finance. Those discussions also tackle issues like when it's OK to say no to a wedding invitation and how to respectfully decline.

"If they are mad you turn down the invite because of your own personal finances ... then they are being a bad friend," one user said.

"I predict we will see more trends like this emerge as we navigate a new wedding industry where traditions such as gifts and favors are entirely optional," Amber Brooks, an analyst at DatingNews, told MarketWatch.

If you're a millennial - currently between the ages of 28 and 43 - you might be invited to several weddings in the same year, which could lead to spending thousands of dollars on wedding-related events.

Marzi, who recently got married himself, said he was conscious about making the wedding as affordable as possible for his guests.

"We had it locally and tried to have it as close to everybody we love as possible. It was right here in town and we kept it really small," he said.

Another person who declined a wedding invitation this year over cost concerns is 36-year old Andrew Petrie.

Petrie, a videogame producer living in Washington state, had to turn down a friend's invitation to a wedding in Buffalo, N.Y.

"The cost to go and the time to actually attend the wedding is just hard to contend with," Petrie said. "You have all these little pieces that start to add up. When I calculated it, there was no way [it would cost] less than $1,500 to go for just one day."

And if his partner came with him, the price tag would have jumped to $2,500, not including the cost of a dogsitter.

"The biggest bummer for me ... [is that] I'd really like to spend some time with my friends," he said. "It's a lot to take on."

-Weston Blasi

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10-02-24 1337ET

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