Earn Travel Points for a Honeymoon with Your Wedding Expenses

Do you want to turn your wedding dress and photographer costs into a dream honeymoon? Your wedding expenses can rack up a lot of travel points. Follow the below to see how it is totally possible to get a nearly free honeymoon! One of the biggest hurdles for wedding couples is the cost.  According to Forbes the average cost of a wedding in 2024 is $33,000.  While you can absolutely plan a wedding for less than that, there are still going to be expenses.  In this post, I’ll explain how you can maximize your wedding expenses to earn a nearly free honeymoon just by using travel credit card strategies.  Most major wedding vendors will allow you to pay for your services with a credit card.  I allow my clients to pay for their wedding photography with a credit card or personal check and the price is the same for the client either way.

Using Credit Cards for Wedding Expenses and Travel Points

This strategy does involve opening a few credit cards.  Don’t get scared and stop reading! There are a lot of myths out there about credit cards, but if you are responsible and manage things correctly, opening credit cards can actually help improve your credit score over time. (If you want more information on credit scores read this article here.) BUT you have to be real with yourself and know your credit score and your spending habits to make sure this is going to work in your favor.  For this to be successful, I’d recommend you have a credit score of at least 700. You also need to be able to pay off everything you put on a credit card in full every month.  If you put spend on the credit card and incur interest fees. This will mean you are no longer getting free travel – it will cost you a ton in interest! If you are the type of person who will be tempted to overspend, do not attempt any of the below.

Why use Credit Cards for Wedding Expenses?

Ok, we’ve established you are a responsible spender and you are committed to paying off your credit card every month. Let’s get going on how to do this and score your nearly free honeymoon!  For this example, we are going to use some pretend costs just because it will be easier to explain that way.  We are going to assume the wedding expenses total $16,000 just for easy math. (It could cost more, could cost less – you plan whatever wedding you want that works best for you and your partner).  If you put that $16,000 on a regular credit card that you already have and earn 1 point per dollar on, you’d receive 16,000 points.  Which sounds like a lot! BUT in most cases this cashes out to be $160.  Not enough to take the honeymoon of your dreams.  If you maximize the opportunity, following the strategy below can get you over 300,000+ points instead and can easily get you an incredible honeymoon.

Step One in Your Travel Points Journey

Alright, here we go. Before you book any of your vendors or buy anything for your wedding, I recommend you apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. This is frequently the most recommended travel card out there and the standard sign-up bonus is for 60,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points.  At the bare minimum this is worth $750 in travel but there are many ways to make that worth $1500+. The sign-up bonus is awarded to you after you spend $4,000 on the card in 3 months or less. There are a TON of benefits to this card including a $50 annual hotel credit and bonus categories to earn even more points.  

Once you receive the card, you are ready to use that card to book your first wedding vendor. You pick a wedding date and typically the first major cost for a wedding is the venue.  Let’s assume your wedding venue costs $4,000. You put that cost on your new credit card and BOOM! Sign up bonus has been met. You will be credited the 60,000 points plus an additional 4,000 points for the spend you put on the card.  Now you have 64,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points.  

Recap Step One:

1. Sign up for Chase Sapphire Preferred Card (linked here)
2. Spend $4,000 on the card (or a little more) to meet the sign up bonus
3. You will have 64,000 points in your Chase account!

Step Two

What now?  Next, you refer your partner to the same Chase Sapphire Preferred card.  Credit card companies send you bonus points when you refer someone to a credit card, and they are approved.  At the time this was written, Chase offers 10,000 as a referral bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.  So, you send your referral link to your partner, they click on it, sign up for the card and are approved – you get an additional 10,000 points! This would bring your total to 74,000 points.

Your partner repeats what you did with the card.  They spend $4,000 toward your photographer, dress, flowers or whatever else comes next in your wedding planning journey.  They earn 64,000 points just like you did!  Now between the two of you, you have 138,000 points!

Recap Step One:

1. Partner signs up for the same card using your referral link
2. Spend $4,000 on the card (or a little more) to meet the sign up bonus
3. You will have 74,000 points in your Chase account and 64,000 in your partner’s account.

Step Three

Ok, what’s next? You’ve spent $8,000 toward your wedding and have $8,000 left in expenses. Your cake, rings, bridesmaid gifts and all the other things you have left are a prime opportunity for more points! If you really want to maximize the opportunity, I’d open up one more card each and repeat the above.  If you aren’t comfortable with that, put the rest of your expenses on the cards you just opened and you will still have a solid bank of points to cover part of the cost of your honeymoon. This is totally up to you and your personal choice.  If you do want to open another card, it is recommended to wait 90 days in between credit card applications. This isn’t mandatory, but is the safer route.

If you want to open a second card for each you and your partner, I’d highly recommend the Capital One Venture card. I love this card because you earn 2x points on every purchase. It also has no foreign transaction fees and a $120 credit for TSA precheck! (TSA Precheck is absolutely a game changer and getting it for free is incredible.) This credit card has a standard 75,000 welcome bonus with $4,000 spend on the card. So if you and your partner repeat steps one and two with this second card, that would be an additional 83,000 points each! (75,000 from the bonus and 8,000 from the spend since you earn 2x points.)

Step 3 Recap:

1. Sign up for Capital One Venture Credit Card 90 days after you applied for your last card
2. Refer your partner and have them sign up for the same card. (20,000 referral points with Capital One!)
3. Meet your sign up bonuses by spending $4,000 on each card
4. Earn 83,000 points each + 20,000 referral bonus

Summary of Your Wedding Expenses and Travel Points

Now you and your partner have each opened two credit cards. With this you have amassed a lot of points for your dream honeymoon.

Recap of what you’ve earned and the credit card benefits:

1. Each partner has earned 64,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards (128,000 Points)
2. 10,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Bonus points from referral
3. $50 hotel credit on each Chase Sapphire Preferred card
4. Each partner has earned 83,000 Capital One Miles (166,000 Points)
5. 20,000 Capital One Miles bonus points from referral
6. Each partner can get TSA Precheck for free!
7. So many more great perks from these cards!!

TOTAL: 324,000 points!! So much more than the 16,000 points you’d earn if this you put all of the expenses on an existing credit card at 1x points.

Plan Your Dream Honeymoon With Your Travel Points

Now you’ve used your wedding expenses to earn travel points. How do we spend these points and get the most value out of them? The best way to maximize the value is to transfer points directly to hotel and airline partners.

Hotel Options with Your Travel Points

My number one use of Chase points is transferring points to Hyatt. There are a lot of properties with incredible value!

Here are a few Hyatt examples:

1. Resorts across Mexico and the Caribbean. There are Hyatt Zivas, Secrets, Dreams, Breathless and more. Many options cost around 25,000 points per night and your Chase points could get you 5 free nights! This could easy cost $2,000+ if you were paying cash.
2. Hawaii! Hyatt has some amazing Hawaii properties and your points could get you 4-5 nights at one of these. Favorites include Hyatt Regency Waikiki, Grand Hyatt Kauai and Hyatt Regency Maui.
3. If the beach honeymoon isn’t your style, there are great Hyatts available for skiing or outdoorsy adventures as well. Favorites include Grand Hyatt Vail, Hyatt Place Keystone or the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek.
4. Europe! Hyatt has some great options like the Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile, Hyatt Centric Milan, and Grand Hyatt Barcelona.

Flight Options with Your Travel Points

Now you have a lot of great hotel options, what about flights? Well, one of the best things about the Capital One card is the purchase eraser. If you want a really easy way to use your points, book your flights like normal. Then redeem the points to erase the charge on your card. 186,000 points is $1,860 worth of flights you can erase! This can also be used to erase things like car rentals and rideshare apps like Uber or Lyft. Capital One does also have several airline transfer partners you can simply transfer your points to and will get more value for your points in a lot of cases. Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and Air France are a few that I have transferred points to!

Wedding Expenses and Travel Points Recap

You planned a $16,000 wedding, married the person of your dreams and also earned a dream honeymoon! Congratulations on your new life together – I can’t wait to hear about your honeymoon made possible by travel points.