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Have things changed so much or gotten so expensive that some people feel that it's normal to charge

people like a fee to attend their wedding like a club? Like I don't know. That's so tacky. Sorry.

There's been a lot of reporting over the years about how costly weddings are for couples.

But recently, I've also seen a lot of chatter about just how expensive they are now for the guests.

Here's Annie Joy Williams, assistant editor at the Atlantic.

I interviewed a woman who had been to 20 bachelorette trips.

20?

I know.

She wrote an honestly harrowing piece about how much people are spending on other people's weddings.

She had spent so much money and gotten into so much credit card debt during that process

that when it was her turn to say I do, her husband and her sat down and they said,

we pay off the credit card or we have a wedding. And there was really no option to have the

wedding at that point. So they paid off the credit card and they eloped. Annie Joy herself says

she spent almost $20,000 over the years.

And it seems like this experience, it's a little too common.

A survey by lending tree found that 31% of people who'd been to a wedding in the past five years had accrued debt to attend.

But what's driving up the cost of weddings for guests?

How has the culture around weddings changed and what makes it so hard to say no to these expenses?

I'm getting into it with Annie Joy.

Thanks so much for having us.

And Allison Reese, senior analyst at trend forecasting firm WGSN.

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