Questions and Answers

Lucky,

This should be pretty easy, but I am wondering your opinion on the best available credit card (sign-up bonus, category bonuses, etc) for paying wedding expenses with. My fiance and I are in full-on wedding planning and will have more than enough expenses to cover any minimum spent. The majority of that will be at a hotel for food/beverage expenses…so maybe a good card would get more than 1 point per dollar spent…but I am open to your suggestion. Figured we could leverage the sign-up bonus and actual expense points to help do the honeymoon.

Thanks for the help!

Chris

I think you need to have a game plan for the wedding venue and the honeymoon location and then go from there. If you have that part worked out let us know and I’m sure the resident braintrust here will give you excellent advice on which cards will give you the best results. Probably a combination of cards offering great signup bonuses and greater points on hotel and restaurant spend.

Hi Chris,

I’m also in the process of planning my wedding. Depending on how your venue(church, hotel, restaurant, etc) codes for payments, it will determine what category bonus you fall into. For me, my venue is at a golf course so even if the food/beverage cost say…30K, I won’t be getting 3x if i swipe with my chase sapphire reserve card. However, I will be getting 2x since the golf course venue codes as “entertainment”.

I have the same thoughts as you, getting as much sign-up bonus as I can by paying for the wedding. Currently, myself and my fiancee have applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card(Both got in on the 100K bonus), Chase Hyatt Card(4 nights at Hyatt for our honeymoon). I’m currently thinking about the refreshed Alaska Credit Card as well. I would say the Hilton cards are pretty good right now too as they are having their highest sign-up bonuses ever.

[QUOTE=”Chris H., post: 30622″]Lucky,

This should be pretty easy, but I am wondering your opinion on the best available credit card (sign-up bonus, category bonuses, etc) for paying wedding expenses with. My fiance and I are in full-on wedding planning and will have more than enough expenses to cover any minimum spent. The majority of that will be at a hotel for food/beverage expenses…so maybe a good card would get more than 1 point per dollar spent…but I am open to your suggestion. Figured we could leverage the sign-up bonus and actual expense points to help do the honeymoon.

Thanks for the help!

Chris[/QUOTE]
Chris,
I just got married myself and paid for almost my entire honeymoon with points. I will echo what others have said in that it depends on how your venue is coded. But you also want to consider what airline/hotel partners they can transfer too. So you will want to think of where you want to go and who goes there, then you can decide which cards are best able to get you there. So depending on how many credit cards you and your fiancee are willing to sign up for you cover a lot of the honeymoon expenses. My fiancee and I each signed up for one premium card(Chase Sapphire, Citi prestige, or Amex Plat), one hotel card, and one airline card.

Agreed with the above! My husband and I were married at a hotel / winery that was all inclusive, so while the single bill was HIGH, it all coded as hotel expense. We each opened a Chase Reserve card and were able to fund RT first class tickets to Europe, as well as several of our hotel nights and still have points leftover.

We both travel for work extensively, so we both opened SPG accounts as well.

Best of luck in planning! Enjoy this special (and sometimes stressful) time!