How we used our wedding expenses to pay for our honeymoon stay

The venue can be one of the biggest expenses of your wedding, but it can also be a great opportunity to earn a lot of points which you can use to finance your honeymoon or other future trips. Today we're going to tell you how we used our venue expense to fully fund our honeymoon stay at a luxury Marriott property! If you're having a hotel wedding, this is a great way to maximize your points & rewards from your venue expenses. 

Many hotels have associated credit cards that give you additional points beyond the normal rewards programs. 

Since we were hosting our wedding events at a Marriott property (the Westin), we applied for the American Express Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card. Although the annual fee may seem high, the benefits we got from the welcome bonus combined with the points we earned not only made up for the cost of the fee, but also left us with thousands of extra points to redeem for our honeymoon at the Edition (a luxury Marriott brand). With hotel brands like Marriott, there are so many different properties to choose from, so there's a lot of flexibility on where and how to redeem your points.

Here are four reasons to consider applying for a hotel's top tier credit card when you're paying for your wedding: 

Welcome Bonus 

Usually these top-tier credit cards have a very generous welcome bonus, but have high spending-thresholds required to qualify for the bonus. Your wedding is the perfect opportunity to apply for one of these cards, since you should be able to meet (or at least get significantly close to) the spend-threshold just with the venue expenses. We actually each applied for a Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card, so we were able to essentially double our welcome bonus by splitting the deposit into two payments on separate cards!

Points Multiplier

As a regular Marriott rewards member, you accrue 10 points per dollar spent at Marriott properties. The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card gives an addition 6 points for every dollar spent at a Marriott property. If you're having a hotel wedding, this includes:

• Venue costs & fees (Ballroom rental, outside catering fees, etc.)
• Bar expenses (Usually the bar is also handled by the venue, which means all of your bar/alcohol costs are also eligible to earn points!)
• Rooms / lodging for your stay and any guests' stays that you are covering

With the points multiplier, you're essentially getting 16x points for every dollar you spend toward the venue for your wedding! 

Complimentary Status

A lot of these top-tier credit cards will give you complimentary Gold or Platinum status for their rewards program. Thanks to opening the card, we were eligible for Platinum Elite status with Marriott. With this status, we got a free upgrade to an Ocean-front suite when we checked into our hotel for our honeymoon, as well as some extra perks including complimentary breakfast, a welcome gift, late checkout, and more!

Other perks

There are usually many other perks included with these hotel credit cards. For example, with our credit card, we got airport lounge access. We started celebrating our honeymoon right as we got to the airport -- instead of waiting at the gate, we enjoyed complimentary cocktails and snacks in the lounge.  This really upgraded our whole honeymoon experience as soon as we arrived to the airport.

Additional perks include property credits, travel credits, and many other personalized offers that ended up offsetting the high annual fee, and leaving us with enough credit to fully expense our honeymoon with an upgrade and points leftover to enjoy this year!

If you are having a hotel wedding, definitely look into your hotel's credit card options before you pay for the venue!

@arushihariani Reply to @poopsie134 hotel credit card perks! #creditcard #marriottbonvoy #marriott #honeymoon #luxurytravel #prioritypass #westin #honeymoontrip #weddingplanning #travelhack ♬ original sound - Arushi Hariani