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You had your best-laid plans and then COVID-19 came along and hammered the entire economy. But you’ve got this – if you have the right information. Join Rob Carrick and Roma Luciw on Stress Test, a podcast guiding you through one of the biggest challenges your finances will ever face.

ROMA: Weddings represent a lot of the good stuff in life - family, love, partnership. They are a feel-good event, and who doesn’t love that? But somehow, weddings have also come to represent the not-so-great stuff, like peer pressure and over-the-top consumerism.

ROB: The pandemic ruined many wedding plans over the past year. Today, we’re taking a step back to ask: What is a wedding worth?

[THEME MUSIC]

ROMA: Welcome to Stress Test, a podcast about personal finance in the pandemic for Gen Z and Millennials.

I’m Roma Luciw, personal finance editor at the Globe and Mail.

ROB: And I’m Rob Carrick personal finance columnist at the Globe.

ROMA: Well, Rob, it is wedding season. I mean, it barely really registers because it would involve me wearing something other than stretch pants and onesies.

ROB: I’m concerned that if I’m invited to a wedding, I’m going to have to wear a shirt with a collar, and even more awful a tie. And I cannot picture that right now. What do you think about getting into more formal wear after 18 months of casual attire?

ROMA: I am into it, bring it! As long as I can go somewhere and get my nails done and get a pedicure and wear an open-toed shoe. I’m so into it. Now, let’s talk a little bit about the cost of weddings. I think the average is $30,000. But of course, there’s a huge range. And I think you and I both agree that if you can afford to have a huge wedding or a small wedding, then you should have it. This is your chance to have the wedding that you want. What is it about spending for weddings that makes you nervous?

ROB: When people spend more than they should and I guess the gauge for that as you’re borrowing for the wedding, or you’re tapping all your savings and you’ve got nothing left over. I mean, I think, you know life is very expensive today. Buying a house, which I know a lot of couples will want to do, is very expensive. And I think if you over-allocate money to the wedding, you’ve put yourself way back for so many other goals that will matter more in the long term, I think like home ownership versus your wedding, I think you really got to weigh those two, those two objectives.

ROMA: I think the other element here is that you don’t want to come out of that one day, which is essentially an amazing party and super special. But it’s one day. And then you have to spend the rest of your life building things together. And so, that’s a tough start to a marriage. If you come out of there. You know, disagreeing about something are worried about money or stressed.

ROB: Let’s talk a bit about how the pandemic has caused problems for couples who are planning to get married over the past 18 months. Roma, what stories have you heard?

ROMA: I’m hearing a lot about disruption and uncertainty. Couples fighting for refunds after their venues were canceled, there’s talk of taking them to court.

ROB: You know, I think a lot of people had huge plans and it must be incredibly stressful to have all this money in plans in play, and then boom, you had to cancel it with no, no idea when you could get this get this all up and running again.

ROMA: I would find that so stressful. And a wedding is stressful enough, I remember that. But it’s been awhile. So we set out to find someone who got married during the pandemic, so we could ask them how that went from a financial perspective. And we found someone who made a major decision right in the nick of time. That’s next.

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ROB: We wanted to find someone who was very cost-conscious about their wedding and got married during the pandemic. And we did.

JASMINE: Hi, my name is Jasmine. I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and I am 24 years old.

ROB: Jasmine Fares is a social media influencer. Jasmine and her husband, Dawoud, and their cat are all over Tiktok, YouTube and Instagram, where she has 400,000 followers.

JASMINE: What I love about the work that I do is that I get to connect with people all over the world. And just the fact that I get to represent people of my like, look, and people who are Muslim, people who wear the hijab. It’s truly a blessing because we don’t see people like me in the media as much. I am Lebanese Canadian. My parents were born in Lebanon, I was born in Toronto, Canada. And culture is a really big thing in our household -- the same thing goes for religion. In my upbringing, there was definitely a hybrid of Islamic culture and Lebanese culture, and it definitely played a really big role growing up.

ROB: If you already follow Jasmine on her socials, you know her relationship with her husband Dawoud moved pretty quickly.

JASMINE: I met him in March of 2018. And then by June or July, we were already decided, like, Okay, this is the person for me, we’re gonna go to the next step, which is in our culture, kind of like a little gathering with the family just kind of talking about the relationship and how it’s going to move forward.

ROB: Both families were rooting for the new couple.

JASMINE: And then that’s when the wedding planning hits you in the face. Because in our culture, everyone is very into moving things a lot quicker than normal. So they’re very excited for you. They just want things to get started. And I totally get that. But that is when I realized, like, oh, shoot, I am about to get married. And I have no idea what I’m getting myself into in terms of the wedding planning. I was solid on the relationship. But when it comes to the wedding planning, I was not.

ROB: But there are social expectations when it comes to weddings, right? We all feel them.

JASMINE:We were like, Okay, well, I guess tradition dictates that we have to do a wedding party. So it was kind of the normal thought process for us and never occurred to us that there was any other option.

ROB: At first, Jasmine was excited to be engaged.

JASMINE: But then when the actual real wedding planning happens, the reality hit me so hard. We were looking at somewhere around, like, minimum 400 guests. So it was a lot of people. When people tell me like, Oh, we had a huge wedding, and it was like literally 150 people I’m like, right, you have never been to a Lebanese wedding [laughs]. So we were looking at around $50,000, just for the number of people that we were going to invite.

ROB: $50 000 is quite a price tag. What was their income at the time?

JASMINE: So I would say combined, we were probably making around 80K, I would say, like maybe he was making 40K I was making 40K at the time.

ROB: Jasmine’s partner is a great saver. They were only in their early 20s, but he’d been working at his family restaurant for years. He was saving with a goal.

JASMINE: He wanted to eventually put that money towards something useful, like a house. So when we realized that we had to put down on the wedding, the same amount that he had saved for so many years, it was definitely a stressful moment. And we were trying to, you know, think about how we do this? What are we supposed to do? Do we get another job?

ROB: Then Jasmine got some unexpected feedback.

JASMINE: So I had a phone call with my mom, and mind you, my mom did not have a wedding.

So it was always her dream to see me at my wedding. But when she realized that I was just really stressed about the finances, she came out of nowhere and was like, Well, how about you don’t do a wedding? And I was like, What? Like, Is that even a thing? Like, what do you mean, people don’t do weddings? Like, you know, and I always thought like, my mom didn’t do a wedding. And that was a bad thing. But she’s like, when you have the choice and you don’t want to yourself, it’s a very different story.

ROB: And that wasn’t all Mom had to say.

JASMINE: She basically told me, you know, why not just do a little kind of gathering with a family and call that your wedding day and, you know, save that money and put it towards your house? Wouldn’t you rather be buying a house than renting it? And so I shut the phone and I called my husband right away and he was at work. So I was like, hey, so I was just talking to my mom. And she said something like, we shouldn’t have a wedding if it’s stressing us out. I was very nervous saying this. He’s like, Are you serious? He literally almost started crying. He’s like, Oh, my God, this is the best thing you’ve ever said to me [laughs].

ROB: I think he was pretty relieved. They started house-hunting and found a pre-construction house, which they bought in 2019. Financially, this was more their speed.

JASMINE: We didn’t have to put a huge sum of money right there and then in order to secure the house for closing. We started off with 10k just to secure and sign and then they asked for another 10k after a few months. And then by the time you close we had to put down $110 000 because we had to put down 20% because my husband’s income at the time was not enough to close or at least get a mortgage. So we also had to have a cosigner so we did that and thank God my father in law was willing to cosign with us, which was really nice of him. So we ended up securing $110 000 because my husband had some money saved up and then I had to really push super hard to save because I am the worst at saving. But I managed to save around 20K - 25K within that time period because I just stopped spending money on makeup and clothing and all that kind of stuff that I normally do and I just focused on the goal.

ROB: Even though they ditched the huge wedding, they still celebrated. First, they had a small group in their backyard to celebrate their engagement.

JASMINE: For my engagement, everything all together probably cost us around like 2K to 3K it wasn’t anything really

ROB: Then they marked their wedding date with a photo shoot and a dinner at her husband’s family’s restaurant.

JASMINE: The photo shoot obviously costs us money. And then the dinner was free because it was at my husband’s restaurants. We really didn’t have to put much money towards that either.

ROB: But there was one way that Jasmine decided to splash out a little.

JASMINE: I actually had three dresses because I was like, I’m not doing a wedding. So why not have a photoshoot with three different dresses and just have fun with it? And I think honestly, that was the best decision to do a photoshoot because we have something to look back at. And we had that like, “white dress, black tux” type of moment without putting so much money down. So we were still able to experience that magical moment, but just for ourselves.

ROB: In the end, their choice to go with a down payment instead of a wedding has been a happy one.

JASMINE: Because I’ve now learned that a wedding can be anything you want it to be.

ROB: I think Jasmine may have the best mom on the planet, what a gift she gave them by taking the pressure off letting them make a decision that suited themselves. More parents should take a note on that. What do you think, Roma?

ROMA: I think it’s amazing Jasmine and her husband got to do what they wanted and have parents celebrate and be happy or them. And really, it boils down to what’s about you and the fact they got to do that and feel supported, it’s a win all around.

ROB: Sounds like they had a great wedding and they have a house. Take note everyone.

ROMA: Now I’ll talk to an expert who says that the pandemic is actually giving us an opportunity to rethink weddings in a big way, something that was past due. We’re talking about that. Next.

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ROMA: When Karen Cleveland went through with planning her wedding, it opened her eyes to what she calls the “wedding industrial complex.” It inspired Karen and her co-author Michelle Bilodeau to write a book called, “The New Wedding Book: A Guide To Ditching All the Rules.” I spoke with Karen to get the personal finance perspective on how we should rethink weddings.

Karen, your book is great. In it, you question the need for this elaborate, expensive, perfect day created by what you call the “wedding industrial complex.” And you encourage couples to chart their own course. Why did you write this book on ditching all the wedding rules?

KAREN: Well, thanks for saying nice things about the book, Roma. The book is really rooted in my experience and my co author, Michelle’s experience of getting married, and really feeling like we were duped almost -- that there was this expectation of how it would look to plan our wedding that just didn’t fit with who we were as women. And the more we talked about it in our social network, we realized that this experience was a shared experience. And there was almost something confessional about it. That if you picked away at the veneer, the whole thing came crumbling down. And that turned into our book.

ROMA: So you said you felt duped? Why?

KAREN: I felt duped on the other side of planning my wedding. Roma. Yeah. Because I felt as if I had this huge industry to be really crass, like treating me like an airhead on a spending spree. So everything from the experience of trying on dresses. You know, like, money was never talked about, of course, it was assumed I would be like blowing the bank on a dress, and that’s not who I am, through to expectations that if you’re not eating and sleeping and breathing your wedding, you’re doing it wrong. So I felt like everything from my financial goals were challenged through to my feminist values were challenged. And this idea that I was one half of a couple getting married. Yet this industry was like down my throat marketing to me. And I was like, Where’s my other half in this? This isn’t anything I care to shoulder by myself.

ROMA: Okay, walk me through the numbers in Canada. What does the average wedding cost?

KAREN: The average wedding cost, it’s a bit of a range depending on where you’re looking, but between $28,000 and $32,000, that’s pre-pandemic. So taking into account a year of micro-weddings, I’m assuming those costs will come down. But prior to that hovering around $30,000.

ROMA: $30,000 is a lot of money. Tell me how low you’ve seen it and how high you’ve seen it.

KAREN: I’ve seen weddings and I can say anecdotally friends that have gotten hitched for a couple hundred bucks at City Hall and borrowed an outfit. It’s really it’s as long as a piece of string, you can do it on a shoestring you can elope or it can be as grand and as lavish and as over the top as imaginable.

ROMA: So we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of people and thousands and thousands of dollars.

KAREN: That’s right. Yeah, it’s really easy to snowball. So what separates a $30,000 wedding from a $50,000 wedding, right? And why not have 500 people if you’re going to have 300, it’s easy to see how things can get blown out of proportion and escalate.

ROMA: Yeah, let’s back it up a bit. How many couples do you think have a budget and when I say budget, I mean, a realistic set amount when they start planning a wedding that they are intending to spend?

KAREN: I think most couples go into the wedding planning experience having a budget but the problem, Roma, I think, is that those wedding budgets look at the wedding in isolation without taking into account a couple’s overall financial goal. So it really doesn’t matter if you’re going to allocate 20% of a budget to floral if you have no idea how much money you have to spend anyways. So that’s something that we really devote something to in the book is encouraging couples to zoom out and look how their wedding fits into their overall financial plan. I can share that there was a survey from Zola, which is an online wedding registery website. That says 95% of couples stress about how they’re going to pay for their wedding. So it’s not as if having a budget saves you from any of that stress. Clearly, there’s something not clicking, something is wrong if most couples getting married are sweating money.

ROMA:

So what tends to drive up the budget? Where do you start seeing the red flags or things going sideways?

KAREN: This is gonna sound a bit alarmist, but I think it’s, it’s already sideways out of the gate. So from the time couples decide to get married, they’re bumping up against not only their own expectations of what they want for their wedding as individuals and a couple, but that’s confounded by parental expectations, maybe cultural pressures. And then that meets this tsunami of the wedding industrial complex, which is obsessed with sort of, we call it the arms race of weddings, like, is your wedding cooler, more interesting, more Instagram worthy than

your friends’? There’s this myth that it’s your one day, you know, you’re one day to have it your way to do it how you want. And that’s simply not true. I wish we celebrated other days with the same degree of enthusiasm that weddings get. But I think there’s something about the pressure of weddings, and the sort of the romance of them, because who doesn’t love a good wedding. And that makes it a really slippery slope. And when money and emotions collide, it’s really dangerous.

ROMA: Talk me through a breakdown of where most of your costs would go, if you’re planning a wedding.

KAREN: It depends. So I think, if we’re looking at sort of the older model that sort of call it traditional wedding budgets probably going to be where you’re having your party, and if you’re going to feed people. So that’s going to be a large outlay of cash -- your venue, your catering and your bar bill. But we’re now seeing things where, for example, like there’s this trend of brides having two or three wedding gowns, so again, this is the arms race right, this one upmanship that really just drives those costs through the roof.

ROMA: What about all of the stuff around the day? In addition to what happens on the day you actually say I do?

KAREN: Yeah, there’s a lot of hidden costs. And we do explore that in the book and ask couples like What do you wish you knew before your wedding that ended up tipping you over budget? So everything from the expectation that you have to pay for people’s hair and makeup, which again is a construct, through to like an entire cottage industry of bachelor and bachelorette parties. So this is news to me, like I guess I lived under a rock for a long time, but I didn’t know that all your friends, you know, for both sides of the couple are supposed to go to Cabo or go to Nashville for a party. And then if you have six people in your wedding party, you’re probably going to do that trip six times, because everyone gets the same sort of celebrations. Who can afford that? Right and it’s become normalized to the degree that of course everyone goes on these trips and of course everyone can afford that when that’s just not realistic.

ROMA: So when we’re looking at the overall wedding cost, who pays?

KAREN:

It depends. I’ve seen research that says, as much as 90% of couples pay for some degree of their own wedding. And then I read something recently, the International wedding trend report reports that 68% of couples pay for their entire wedding themselves. But I do know that most couples go into debt. And that’s the problem. So BMO reported recently that 60% of couples dip into their savings and their investments, which is quite scary. And then a lot of couples are borrowing, they’re maxing out their credit cards, or they’re even getting wedding loans.

For what? For a six-to-eight hour party. So I think the important thing is that we have to remember, I think coming out of a year like COVID to which really kneecapped a lot of people financially, someone’s footing the bill for that wedding. I know money is the antithesis of romance. And we’re not supposed to talk about money in the context of weddings, but we have to, because do you want your parents to go into debt for you to have a lavish wedding? Are you comfortable with that? Do you want your parents to remortgage their house? Do you want to take every penny you’d had planned to buy a condo and double down on a party? If you do, that’s okay. But I think it’s important to have those really uncomfortable conversations so that couples are making really informed thoughtful decisions, that they know how their wedding is going to impact their overall financial future.

ROMA: I feel like, in some ways, planning a wedding is a really good test run for having financial discussions that you’re going to have once you’re married

KAREN: I couldn’t agree more. A review of 115 studies about divorce found that couples that argue about finances at least once a week are 30% more likely to get divorced. And couples who spend liberally on their weddings are more likely to divorce than couples who stick to a tight budget. So this is real stuff here. This isn’t just about your financial future, this can actually impact the success of your marriage.

ROMA: Interesting. Now, I feel like from my end, I have seen and heard of fewer people having big elaborate weddings in recent years and that’s even before the pandemic. Am I wrong? Or is the wedding industry starting to change a little?

KAREN: I don’t know. I think it depends on your sort of each of our own echo chambers. So no, I’m still seeing really large lavish splashy weddings, obviously pre-pandemic.

There’s a couple of things happening in society. I think the best thing is that couples now have an alternate path because of the pandemic. There’s now a year’s worth of really beautiful, really lovely, intimate weddings that couples can now point to and say, that looks like a great alternative, I’d like to have that. But we’re also butting up against that pressure that like return for that pomp and grandeur that comes from everything from social media, to celebrity culture, to cultural or family pressures too, so I think all those things are happening concurrently, which the great news for couples is they can choose. There’s something dead romantic about a small, intimate wedding. And these micro-weddings out of the pandemic have allowed couples to do just that, and sort of liberate them from all these other pressures that sort of pervasively sneak into wedding planning.

ROMA: What are some stats that stand out to you when you have researched the current state of weddings?

KAREN: I think the thing that really makes me pick my jaw up off the floor is that the wedding industry globally hums to the tune of $72 billion, with a “B,” dollars globally. That’s a huge, huge industry. And I think when couples are able to sort of parse themselves out from that industry, and really get to a place where their wedding is a reflection of their values, I think there’s hope and the pandemic has sort of forced this reckoning. But nothing sets me back in my chair more than looking at the numbers of just how large this industry is. It’s a well-marketed, well-oiled industry.

ROMA: One part of your book that I thought was really interesting. Tell me about sneaky wedding markups, with a specific example in there. Let’s talk about flowers.

KAREN: Sure, so flowers are super beautiful. I love fresh-cut floral as much as the next person. But they’re terrible for the environment and really, really terrible for your wallet. Why do you need flowers shipped in from Holland that aren’t in season? Why do you need that at all? So we advocate for alternatives to that. There’s a great story called, we’ve dubbed it The Sisterhood of the Traveling candles. So a friend of ours, years ago, got married and spent a fair amount of money on white pillar candles. And then after her wedding because they were only lit for a couple hours, they were in perfectly good condition and I offered to buy them off of her. I used them for my wedding. Then I stuck them on Kijiji and sold them for like 30 bucks or something, six months after my wedding. This idea that you don’t have to blow thousands of dollars on flowers that, while they’re really lovely, are a perfect waste of money.

And that’s not to sound unromantic. But like they kind of are. Another example in the book, it’s not a happy story, but we advocate for couples to sort of pressure test their vendors by telling them that they’re planning a party and just happen to withhold that small detail that it’s a wedding. So someone that we profiled in the book lines up this great photographer that they really like, they get a great quote from them to come and shoot for like six hours, they agree on a budget, there’s a good fit. They’re feeling happy about that. About a month before the wedding, the photographer pops up and says, Oh, hey, by the way, What am I shooting this day? The couple says, “you’re shooting our wedding”. They immediately doubled their rate. Their deliverables aren’t any different. They’re not sending any additional crew, they’re not renting any additional equipment, they’re not giving them anything, at the end of the day, that isn’t what was already agreed upon, and had the audacity to double their budget, because it’s a wedding. And that happens everywhere. So dresses are an example of that. Hair and makeup for a for a bridal occasion, cost more than if you’re just going to go get an updo or your makeup done. And I think the more savvy couples are, and start to question that, the industry is going to have no choice but to respond to that pressure.

ROMA: I noticed in your last answer you used “bridal cost” as opposed to “wedding cost.” And one of the things you cover in your book is the gendered nature of wedding costs. And you wrote, “The wedding industry plows ahead as a feminism had never happened.” Tell me a bit about why this is marketed very much as “her” day as opposed to “their” day.

KAREN: There’s so much to unpack there. But weddings are absolutely gendered. I mean, by very nature, we don’t have a groom industry, right? Weddings are synonymous with brides. As women, we get this message, this really pervasive narrative, that it’s the happiest day of your life. It’s this one big day, this is the one day you’re going to be celebrated and you’re going to be put on a pedestal. And of course, you know, women are often slag for being vain. But your wedding day is the one day you should obsess over your appearance.

So you better pull out all the stops. It’s not enough for you to, you know, get a blowout that day, you better invest in like, six months’ worth of deep conditioning treatments to make sure your hair is amazing. And now it’s even gone further like, this pressure for women to get Botox, for example, leading up to their wedding, that’s become like the new facial, right? Which is, yeah, it’s heavy to talk about because it’s not just hitting women in their wallets. It’s hitting them in their identity.

ROMA: And that’s a powerful, powerful incentive to spend.

KAREN: Totally 100% it’s incentive to spend it normalizes overspending in a way that is really gendered. It’s definitely problematic because it leaves no place for couples who don’t identify is cisgendered heterosexual couples. And that’s, I think, an area that weddings really need to evolve. And they need to evolve quickly. Because so much of these constructs that we we take them as tradition, are really post World War Two constructs, they’re invented, that really only speak to heterosexual couples.

ROMA: Now, I’m going to pare this back to financials because this is something that I feel really strongly about. We have young adults coming into, sort of, their traditional wedding ages, even though of course, weddings happen at all ages. But young adults are coming out of school with high amounts of student debt. They’re starting out in their careers, you know -- the big thing that a lot of them are doing is trying to save for a down payment for a home. To then have to save $30,000 for a single day or a single weekend. That seems very stressful, financially for a couple. Why do we keep doing it?

KAREN: We keep doing it because weddings matter. And I think we’ve as a society somehow blended weddings and marriages into one thing. But if you think about it, no other institution gets the same respect as marriage when it comes to everything from immigration to health care to, to finances, like we still really value marriage. Now, of course, divorce rates would suggest that we maybe don’t value marriage as much as we do weddings. But there’s this really like high-grade pressure for couples to have that wedding when you’re totally right financially, it’s just not viable for most, most couples, like $30,000 is a shocking amount of money. Weddings by some measures have doubled in 10 years, that’s not a long time. Our incomes certainly haven’t doubled in 10 years. And the, you know, housing prices have absolutely skyrocketed. It’s unattainable for most people, at least in the city in which I live, which is Toronto. So for a couple to be forced with this sort of like, emotionally laden choice, like do you want to have this one day to celebrate your romance? Well, who wouldn’t want that? Right? But then you juxtapose that with a really sort of practical, like, where you gonna live in 10 years? Where do you want to if you want to build a life with this person, which is the point of marrying them? How do you see your financial future unfolding? And unfortunately, Roma, that sort of uncomfortable conversation doesn’t make it into the really beautiful wedding iconography, there’s no place for uncomfortable conversations about money in the average bridal forum, or in a magazine, for example, or a website, because weddings are only supposed to be perfect and romantic. But you have to have those conversations as couples.

ROMA: And you know, at the end of the day, one of the things that I always from a wedding is how happy the couple looked. And if they are on budget, and if they’ve created the day that they want and that they can afford, then they’re often quite happy.

KAREN: Well said.

[MUSIC]

ROB: I think Karen was an awesome wedding truth-teller, and maybe it’s her background at Weddingbells, but she has the wedding industry down cold and like nobody’s business, she has exposed all the pressures that are put on people getting married, and I think they are, after listening this podcast, they have to be well-armed for making better wedding decisions. What do you think?

ROMA: I think that anyone that’s getting married would do themselves a favour by listening to this and spending some time thinking about what they really want, what they’re feeling pressured to buy, and how to communicate well with whoever they’re getting married to, in order to set themselves up for financial success as a couple, which will obviously lead to marital bliss, Rob, right?

ROB: Correct.

ROMA: Now we’re going to jump into my three takeaways.

  • If you want a big wedding and can’t afford one, go for it. But whatever you do, avoid going into debt to pay for your wedding. It will set you back from achieving other life goals.
  • Think of your wedding as a test run for how you as a couple would handle your future finances. Don’t look at it in isolation, but see it as one part of your overall financial plan.
  • Your wedding should be about the two of you. Resist the urge to get pressured into spending on things you don’t need. Start your married life on a stress-free financial footing.

ROB: Thank you for listening to Stress Test.

This show was produced by Hannah Sung and Latifa Abdin.

Audio post-production by Kyle Fulton and Carlay Reem-Neal.

Our executive producer is Kiran Rana.

ROMA: Thank you to Jasmine Fares. You can find her on Instagram @JasmineFares.

And a big thanks to Karen Cleveland, who along with Michelle Bilodeau, is co-author of “The New Wedding Book: A Guide To Ditching All The Rules.”

ROB: If you enjoy Stress Test, help other people find this show by leaving us a rating and review at Apple Podcasts.

And if you know someone who is planning on getting married, go ahead and send them this show. Every episode, we take a look at all the ways you can improve your personal finances, yes, even in a pandemic.

ROMA: You can find Stress Test at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or your favourite podcast app.

And find us at the GlobeandMail.com, where we cover all things financial.

Thanks for listening. And here’s to hoping we’ll all be celebrating a wedding in person soon.

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