Wedding season is busier and pricier than ever. Here’s how guests can save money

Weddings are back and more expensive than ever. Here's how attendees can split or share the costs of attending a slew of big days this year.

Talia Pankewycz, a 33-year-old living in Toronto, once received seven wedding invitations in one year.

To lower expenses, she attended five of them, but since she was in the wedding party for two and travelled to her hometown of Winnipeg for four, the costs were still significant.

“Saying ‘no’ to things is really hard in the face of someone expecting a ‘yes’ both because you want the people you love to be happy and because we grow up thinking we need to have good reasons to miss these events,” she said.

While you don’t have to attend every celebration you are invited to, figuring out how to incorporate these events into your budget can make wedding season easier on your wallet.

The cost of attending a wedding this year is expected to be even higher because soaring inflation has made everything from beauty services to air travel more expensive.

And as attendees budget to spend more on wedding costs, they also might find more celebrations in their calendars as COVID-19 restrictions lift.

Shannon Kennedy told The Canadian Press earlier this month that the 2022 season is forecast to see the largest number of weddings taking place worldwide.

“You have people who have postponed from 2020 and 2021 and then … couples who just always intended to get married this year,” said the owner of Ottawa-based Kennedy Event Planning.