She Spent $15,000 on Seven Weddings and Three Bachelorettes This Year. Here Is How to Say No.
The invitation is a request for a weekend, a flight, a hotel, a gift and, increasingly, a second and third trip. Etiquette consultants and a family therapist agree on the sentence that solves it, and it has one word in it.
By Sean Anees Saifi · Capital Wealth · Published Saturday, September 19, 2026 · Source: The Wall Street Journal, September 19–20, 2026 weekend edition, whose market figures are the Friday, September 18 close
Key Points
Wedding spending rose 8.5% in the first half of 2026 from a year earlier, per a Bank of America Institute study. In another, 57% of respondents said they would decline a wedding invitation from a close friend or relative for budgetary reasons, up 3 points from 2025.
Emily Shatz, 26, a San Francisco publicist, spent about $15,000 on seven weddings and three bachelorette parties in a year. Gregory Gerla, 36, a New York entrepreneur, spent about $10,000 on 13 events. Nearly half of survey respondents say couples expect too much financially for bachelor and bachelorette parties.
More than two-thirds of weddings now last two to three days, according to The Knot’s 2026 study of 10,000 couples, raising hotel and transport costs for guests.
“‘No’ is a complete sentence,” said Atlanta therapist Shatavia Thomas. Decline in person or on video, thank the couple, offer a local celebration or a dinner instead. Etiquette consultant Lisa Grotts: “A smaller gift is perfectly appropriate.”
One guest caps gifts at $100 a couple when travel is involved; a 69-year-old real-estate executive gives more than $1,000 to close family. Cash requests via Venmo links on wedding websites are now common; Grotts calls the honeymoon fund a “money-moon.”
+8.5%
wedding spending, first half of 2026
57%
would decline a close friend’s wedding on budget grounds
$15,000
one 26-year-old’s wedding spending this year
2–3
days for more than two-thirds of weddings now
Two-thirds of weddings now run two to three days. The guest’s budget did not get a second and third day to match.
In one line: A $15,000 wedding year is a retirement contribution that went to someone else’s honeymoon fund, and the sentence that fixes it is one word long.
Emily Shatz is 26, works in public relations in San Francisco, and has spent about $15,000 in the past year on seven weddings and three bachelorette parties. Gregory Gerla, 36, a New York entrepreneur, spent about $10,000 on 13 events. Both did it willingly. Neither is oblivious. “A lot of the time, the brides lose sight of what they’re asking their guests to do because they’re spending so much money,” Shatz said.
The numbers behind her are in a pair of Bank of America Institute studies. Wedding spending rose 8.5% in the first half of this year. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they would decline an invitation from a close friend or relative for budgetary reasons, up three points from 2025. Nearly half said couples expect too much for bachelor and bachelorette parties — which, per a 69-year-old Los Angeles real-estate partner married in 1988, used to mean a card game or a tea and now means Cabo. More than two-thirds of weddings run two to three days, according to The Knot’s survey of 10,000 couples, and every extra day is a hotel night the guest pays for.
How to decline, per the professionals
The Journal’s Perri Ormont Blumberg collected the etiquette. For the bachelorette: thank the bride, say you hope she can spend the time with her closest friends, and do it in person or on a video call, not by text. For the destination wedding: you can attend without staying at the resort — say you are excited to come and have booked a hotel nearby. If the trip is beyond your means, offer to attend any local festivities or take the couple to a celebratory dinner before or after. Shatavia Thomas, a marriage and family therapist in Atlanta: “‘No’ is a complete sentence.” Close friends get more detail; acquaintances get none. “Genuine friendships will survive any kind of rift.”
On gifts, Lisa Grotts, an etiquette consultant in Sonoma: “A smaller gift is perfectly appropriate.” It should reflect the relationship and what you can afford. Shatz caps at $100 a couple when she has to fly. Cash requests through Venmo links on wedding websites are now routine; Grotts is not a fan of the honeymoon fund — she calls it a “money-moon” — but concedes that once given, it is the couple’s to spend.
Our read
Fifteen thousand dollars is the maximum an under-50 worker could put into a Roth IRA in two years, or a full year of the employee 401(k) match at most employers, twice. It is not a moral point. It is a cash-flow one, and the reason it belongs in a planning paper is that the wedding line is the largest discretionary item most people in their twenties and thirties never put on a budget, because each invitation arrives one at a time.
The fix is the same one this desk uses for every irregular expense: a named annual number, decided in January, before any invitation exists. Then every invitation is a draw against a budget rather than a test of the friendship. The couple has every right to plan a three-day wedding in Puerto Vallarta. You have every right to a line item, and the line item does the saying no for you.
What It Means For Your Portfolio
Watch — set the annual number in January; let it say no
A $15,000 wedding year is two years of Roth contributions. Decide the annual number before the first invitation arrives, and the number does the declining.
General planning principles, not advice for anyone in particular. Put a named line in the budget for weddings and celebrations, decided once a year, and treat each invitation as a draw against it. Fifty-seven percent of people already decline on budget grounds; the budget line lets you do it without a story.
For the couple on the other side: a three-day destination wedding is a request for roughly $2,000 to $3,000 of each guest’s money. Knowing that number is how you decide whether you are asking for a celebration or a subsidy.
