NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Spend Smarter This Wedding Season: Travel, Tipping, and More, (featuring The Knot)
Mon, 05 May 2025
Learn smart ways to budget for your wedding and how to navigate tipping expectations without overspending. What money lessons did you learn from your mom? How can you budget for a wedding without overspending — especially when your family is helping with costs? Sean and Elizabeth discuss the financial values we inherit and the realities of modern wedding planning to help you reflect on your own money habits and make smart spending decisions. They begin with a discussion about the money lessons they learned from their mothers, including the importance of saving consistently, using money to support joy and values, and balancing financial security with family priorities. Then, Lauren Kay, executive editor at The Knot, joins Sean and Elizabeth to answer listener Colleen’s questions about budgeting for her upcoming wedding. They explore how to prioritize spending when you're working with a fixed contribution from family, how to approach tipping vendors — especially when they own their own businesses — and which costs can easily catch you off guard. Whether you're in the middle of planning or just curious about the financial side of weddings, this conversation is packed with real talk and actionable insights. Download the free NerdWallet app to get help with your budgeting: https://click.nerdwallet.com/3687710914/smpc In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: wedding budget tips, how to budget for a wedding, wedding tipping guide, who to tip at a wedding, how much to tip wedding vendors, budgeting for wedding expenses, saving for a wedding, splitting wedding costs with parents, tipping wedding vendors who own a business, cost-effective wedding planning, prioritizing wedding spending, how to stay under wedding budget, budgeting for a honeymoon, wedding spreadsheet tips, wedding transportation etiquette, managing family wedding contributions, early retirement inspiration, financial values from parents, learning about money from mom, budgeting lessons from childhood, saving and spending balance, how to use money to bring joy, wedding cost in urban areas, budgeting for a reception, how to cut wedding costs, tips for affordable weddings, tipping musicians at weddings, wedding vendor contracts, tipping etiquette weddings, wedding planning checklists, and wedding planning tools from The Knot. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [email protected]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend.
What money lessons did Sean and Elizabeth learn from their moms?
Sean, can I be a little soppy?
Elizabeth, you say soppy, I say sappy.
Either way, we're both crying, so let's do it. Thank you, because I was going to be soppy regardless. So, Mother's Day is around the corner and I get so emotional thinking about all the values that my mom instilled in me and all the values that I get to instill in my son. Mother's Day also had me mulling on the money lessons that I learned over the years watching my mom.
I feel that. My mom and I are really close, and I feel so grateful for all the lessons that she's taught me over the years, financially and otherwise.
Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Elizabeth Ayola.
And I'm Sean Piles. This episode, we're chatting with a listener about budgeting for a wedding, including who you should tip and how much.
But before that, let's talk about lessons we learned from our moms when it comes to money. Sean, was your mom open with you about her finances growing up?
Yes and no. She taught me the importance of being frugal and how to be creative when money was tight. But I didn't have a deep understanding of our household finances, which is probably a good thing.
My mom didn't tell me much about her personal finances, but she did tell me about the cost of her bills often, with an emphasis on how expensive things were, of course. And she'd add somewhere, that's why you have to work hard.
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