The ridiculous cost of Australian weddings

Publishing a story (ABC + Kidspot + Money Magazine + Sky News + The Nightly + Commercial Real Estate + Sunrise + News.com.au) starting with something like “The ridiculous cost of Australian weddings” is a fantastic story that gets people clicking and advertisers spending.

It gives everyone something to be angry about while they’re eating their morning toast and scrolling the news.

Which is why, every few months, we get another round of headlines about weddings being too expensive, couples being foolish, and the wedding industry apparently running some kind of national scam involving candles, canapés, and chairs with nice backs.

So let’s talk about talking about how much weddings cost.

And more importantly, how Australian media talks about them.

The average wedding cost is not your wedding cost. In 2024, there were 120,844 marriages registered in Australia. That’s a lot of weddings. But it’s also 120,844 wildly different stories and Easy Weddings who curate the annual survey ask about 4,000 people who already follow Easy Weddings or whose vendors advertise with Easy Weddings.

Some of those 120,844 couples married at a registry office. Some married in a backyard. Some eloped with two witnesses in Europe. Some had lunch with twenty people at the yacht club. Some hosted a hundred guests at a venue. Some had multi-day cultural weddings with hundreds of family members, several outfits, several meals, and enough logistical pressure to make a federal election look casual.

The surveyors ask couples what they spent.

They add the numbers together.

They calculate an average.

The maths is fine.

The storytelling by the media is where the lies start.

Once you put all of those weddings into one big bucket, you get a number that might be useful for statisticians, economists, advertisers, and journalists.

But it’s almost useless for you.

Imagine trying to understand the cost of transport by averaging everyone who walked, caught the bus, bought a second-hand Corolla, leased a new LandCruiser, and flew private.

Technically, you’d get a number.

But it wouldn’t help you get to the shops.

That’s what the “average wedding cost” feels like.

It tells you something happened.

It doesn’t tell you what should happen for you.

The headline wants you angry.

I want you married.

Jason Zweig once shared something his father told him:

1. Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2. Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3. Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.

Ranting about how weddings cost $40,000 is pretty close to lying.

Not because no wedding costs that much.

Plenty do. Some cost less. Some cost much more. But the headline usually skips the context.

It rarely explains what is included. It rarely explains the guest count. It rarely explains whether the number includes rings, honeymoon, outfits, pre-wedding events, accommodation, family contributions, or all the little extras couples add because Pinterest has a lot to answer for. It rarely asks whether the wedding was expensive because the couple was being wasteful, or because they invited 110 people to be fed, watered, hosted, photographed, entertained, and cared for over six or eight hours.

A wedding doesn’t cost money because someone said the word “wedding” and every supplier immediately added a zero.

A wedding costs what it costs because of what is being created.

How many people are coming.

Where they are gathering.

What they are eating.

What they are drinking.

How long the day runs.

How much labour is involved.

How much skill is required.

How much equipment needs to be brought in, set up, packed down, insured, cleaned, maintained, and replaced.

How many moving parts need to work perfectly, once, with no second take.

What are your expectations and values as a couple, as a family, as a person?

That context matters.

But context doesn’t get shared on Facebook with a furious caption from your uncle who got married in 1983 and thinks beer should still cost $2.

No-one in the wedding industry is ripping you off just because their quote is higher than you expected. That doesn’t mean every quote is good value. That doesn’t mean every business is excellent. That doesn’t mean every couple should spend whatever a supplier asks. But most wedding suppliers are not sitting around in a smoke-filled room inventing fake prices because they saw you coming with a diamond ring and a Canva mood board.

They are quoting for the product or service you asked for. They are either trying to meet, or assume what, your expectations are.

And what version of the product or service you probably expect from them.

If you want beautiful flowers, delivered fresh, designed well, installed on site, handled carefully, packed down later, and created by someone with taste, training, tools, staff, a van, a studio, insurance, taxes, and a mortgage, that costs money.

If you want food for 90 people, served hot, on time, with staff, plates, cutlery, dietary requirements, drinks service, bins, cleaning, and a kitchen that may need to be built in a paddock for one night only, that costs money.

If you want photos that don’t look like they were taken by your cousin’s mate who “has a good camera”, that costs money.

If you want someone to manage the ceremony, the legal paperwork, the emotions, the timing, the family dynamics, the microphone, the energy of the room, and the small miracle of making it all feel relaxed and human, that costs money too.

If the price feels high, sometimes there is a mismatch between expectations and understanding.

That’s not a conspiracy.

That’s just business.

One of the laziest lines in wedding discourse is that a wedding is “just a party”.

It’s not.

A wedding is closer to setting up a you-themed private restaurant and no-one else is paying for their food and drink. You are often tasked with providing somewhere for people to gather with chairs, shade, heating, cooling, bathrooms, lighting, power, food, drinks, music, microphones, staff, parking, transport, a wet-weather plan, a timeline, and someone with a clipboard who knows where the cake knife went.

You need the ceremony to be legal and engaging and enjoyable and to be heard.

You need the room to feel good.

You need people to know where to go.

You need Uncle Mark to not accidentally stand in the aisle filming on an iPad.

You need to be able to arrive, breathe, be present, and not spend the whole day solving logistics in nice clothes.

That’s the work.

The work is often invisible when it’s done well.

Which is why people underestimate it.

There is no standard price for an Australian wedding.

A wedding costs what you choose to create.

The budget reflects how many guests you invite.

It reflects your priorities.

It reflects your family expectations.

It reflects how much hospitality matters to you.

It reflects whether you want a simple ceremony and lunch, or a fully hosted event from 2pm until midnight.

It reflects whether you want to do things yourself, or whether you want professionals to take the weight off your shoulders.

It reflects whether you’re planning a marriage ceremony, a family gathering, a cultural celebration, a luxury experience, a destination holiday, or all of the above.

This is why averages are so unhelpful.

The average wedding cost tells you what lots of very different couples spent.

It tells you almost nothing about what your wedding needs to cost.

The most expensive wedding decision is not always the venue.

It’s not always the dress.

It’s not always the flowers.

Often, the most expensive part is trying to meet the world’s expectations while ignoring your own intentions.

That is a very expensive way of life.

It’s expensive financially.

It’s expensive emotionally.

And it usually doesn’t create a better wedding.

You do not need to have the wedding Instagram wants.

You do not need to have the wedding your aunt imagined in 1998.

You do not need to copy the wedding your friends had.

You do not need to invite people out of guilt.

You do not need to spend money proving that your marriage matters.

Your marriage already matters.

The wedding should serve that.

Not swallow it.

This is the part that actually gets me mad.

Not the cost of weddings.

Not couples choosing to spend money on beautiful things.

Not suppliers charging properly for their time, skill, risk, labour, and experience.

What gets me mad is the way these conversations can make marriage itself look stupid.

The tone is often: look at these silly people, spending money to gather their favourite humans and talk about love, commitment, family, faith, hope, and the future.

As though that is embarrassing.

As though celebration is childish.

As though the only grown-up thing to do is sit at home, optimise your spreadsheet, and slowly become the kind of person who comments “waste of money” under a stranger’s wedding article.

And yes, some weddings are wasteful.

Some weddings are built around pressure, performance, and family politics.

Some weddings cost too much because the couple never stopped to ask what they actually wanted.

But that is not the same thing as saying weddings are bad.

It is not the same thing as saying celebrating marriage is foolish.

And it is not the same thing as saying that gathering people for a public moment of love and commitment is some kind of financial disease.

I believe with all my heart that one of the easiest, most sustainable, most powerful ways to make the world better is for people to marry good people.

Because loving marriages make good families.

Good families can help make good kids.

Good kids can grow into good adults.

And good adults, together, make good communities, cities, and nations.

A good marriage gives people somewhere to practise forgiveness, patience, generosity, sacrifice, humour, honesty, and repair.

A good marriage can become a stable place for children.

A good marriage can become a small act of resistance against loneliness, selfishness, and despair.

A good marriage can make two people braver, kinder, steadier, and more useful to the world around them.

That’s worth celebrating.

So what should your wedding cost? Your wedding should cost what makes sense for the life you’re building and the marriage you are celebrating within the community you call home. That might be $5,000 or $500,000.