My father in law offered to pay for a $10,000 wedding ceremony or give my wife and I a $50,000 interest free loan (pay back in about 10 years) toward buying a home. (We paid him back in about 5 years.)
We couldn’t get down to the Court House fast enough. The $30,000 we had saved became an $80,000 down payment on a $175,000 home.
Is this what you would have done?
Hell, yeah!!!
YES! The only part I’m interested of the wedding is the food and cake, and that can be dispensed with a nice family reunion later down the road. A down payment on a home… nice. Nice FIL too.
You did the right thing.
No. I would just ask for an amount of money that didn’t need to be paid back.
I’m never getting married and will never own property.
Good call. I’d do the same, and be glad I had a fiance who is like-minded.
1000x yes
Absoposilutetively!
Talk about a no-brainer! Of course, I would have!
Yep, total no brainer.
Is this a trick question?
My husband’s uncle made a similar offer to his daughters - a fancy wedding or a chunk of change for a house. They both took the weddings!!
Thankfully, spousal unit didn’t inherit that particular stoopit gene, not that his parents ever made him such an offer. We just eloped and bought our own house.
I would never be so confident in my continuously having enough income to pay a mortgage for long enough to pay it off.
So, only if I could find a $50K house to buy.
So you’d be ok stiffing your father in law if it came to that?
My parents bought a house for £2,500 and sold it 50 years later for £250,000.
I bought a house costing £60,000 and it was worth £180,000 10 years later.
I’ll take the interest-free mortgage loan, please! 
Nuh uh, I’ve seen The Wire, that’s how Clay Davis went down. $10k bender for me, nobody ever went to jail for one of those.
With the wedding, you get memories. But even if you paid next to nothing about the wedding, you’ll still get memories.
Go for the house.
Not only should a couple take the house, they shouldn’t be given a choice.
I don’t often do these calculations so I wouldn’t be surprised in a bit of an error, but assuming a 4% mortgage and a 2% inflation rate, it seems like $10k up front would be worth (very slightly) more.
That’s assuming you’re going to spend at least $10k on the wedding no matter what.’
I’m thinking I need to move where homes cost $175k and weddings cost $10k.