Tying the knot is an exhilarating life milestone – and potentially an expensive hit to the budget as well. But whether your heart is set on an intimate ceremony or something grander, a wedding is a perfect time to maximise your points haul.
Every wedding is different so these strategies won’t work for every couple. But this is how we leveraged our wedding expenses for another Business Class trip to Europe.
1. Put supplier expenses on a rewards credit card
If you’re lucky, some of your vendors will accept credit card payments. We were particularly fortunate to work with a wedding planner who accepted credit card payments online with no further fees.
But most other wedding suppliers tend to be smaller businesses that only take bank transfer payments. In this case, you might benefit from using a third-party payment platform to earn points.
To further boost my points, I also applied for a rewards credit card just before all the major payments became due and used those payments to meet the minimum spend very quickly. The sign-up bonus further helped boost my balance to secure Business Class flights.
For example, for our remaining vendors, we used Citi PayAll with a Citi card that earned 1 point per dollar. Best of all, there was also no fee at the time. However, a 0.95% fee has since been re-introduced since November 2023. I would probably still do it at that fee since the points are worth it to me at that cost.
If you don’t have a Citi card or want to earn full reward points on other cards, you may also want to consider using Sniip which allows personal payments to Australian bank accounts now. Fees will vary.
Earn 2 Citi Rewards points per dollar spent online, including when making payments to vendors online or through a third-party payment processor.
2. Use cashback websites where possible
Distilled to its essence, cashback can be free money if you earn it on things that you were planning to buy anyway. Whether it’s hand-made wedding favours and fancy fonts off Etsy, menu printing at Vistaprint or bridesmaid dresses from your favourite retailer, be sure to check for upsized cashback offers.
My best cashback wins were 25% back at Liquorland, First Choice Liquor and Vistaprint.
As a general theme, we cut back on costs by not outsourcing whatever we could do ourselves. Apart from the drinks, this also included some printing and also creating the wedding favours (personalised luggage tags for each guest, fittingly!)
3. If you can, consider buying your own drinks
I’ve long sung the praises of the bonus points offers at Qantas Wine. So it would be rather remiss for me not to take advantage of those deals myself.
Of course, if you’ve booked a beverage package to sort out your drinks (particularly for larger weddings), this won’t be applicable. But my wife and I were given the option to source our own drinks, and we decided to take it on – we’d provide the drinks and the venue would provide a bar front and staff to serve them.
There can be significant cost savings even when you match the selections of a beverage package, but you’ll need to work those sums out and balance it with the extra work needed (which in our case, was perfectly manageable).
We bought our sparkling and red wines from Liquorland and First Choice Liquor when it was 25% cashback, sending a good chunk of change back into our budget. I sourced our white wine from Qantas Wines when there was a particularly attractive points bonus and discount on top.
I was fortunate to have a few overseas trips before our wedding. Each time I arrived back in Perth, I’d pick up two bottles of sharply-priced Bombay Sapphire gin from duty-free, for our signature cocktail. The cost per litre from this method wound up being more than half the price of retail.
Sourcing our own drinks worked out well for us as we ended up with thousands of bonus points, spent much less than if we had opted for a beverage package, and also ended up with surplus stock that we could enjoy slowly at home.
Summing up
None of these strategies are particularly ground-breaking but put together, they helped me leverage my wedding expenses into tens of thousands of extra frequent flyer points (not including a hefty credit card sign-up bonus on top), as well as save a few hundred dollars without much effort.
Featured image credit: Samuel Fear @flowstatevisuals_
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