Wedding or MBA

[TheHappyShark]

So this is a long one. My fiancé and I are planning our intimate wedding for summer 2025. Quick snap shot of our lives, I am 29 and DP is 33. We own a 1 bed flat in Zone 2 in London and have a combined salary of £156k. We have £35k in savings with potentially £20k coming from my parents when / if they sell their home and downsize (waiting for the market to improve) both our parents said they would gift us £5k each for our wedding (we are very grateful). For context I currently pay their mortgage as they have hit hard times, so I’m not able to save myself. This is not inheritance.

Anyway, we feel like we are at a very strange part of our lives. The last few yrs, DP has been going to Ireland for work every week (flying out on a Monday and back on a Thursday) this is coming to an end and we want to get into a normal pattern at home and live as a couple more than just visitors at the weekend. A big part of that is buying a bigger flat / house which we are aiming to do next year. This would take the majority of our savings which is fine.

this leaves us to most likely taking out a loan to pay for the wedding. We have costed a wedding at an iconic london venue for 60 people to be £26k (£16k after parents gifts) this doesn’t include our outfits which we would self fund from our salary or credit cards. Speaking to DP, he’s frustrated at his lack of work progression - this is totally self inflicted. He’s on £91k and is an Associate Director at 33. I’m so proud of him and tell him so, the issue is he wants to take on more responsibility at work and thinks he needs an MBA to do so. Looking online, this will cost about the same as a wedding from a decent uni.

I actually don’t care about the wedding, I want to be married to him and start a family. A £25k wedding seems frivolous to me but it’s important to him as he wants a day to share with his friends and family / wants to have a memorable day which he can look back on. I have said let’s take out the same loan amount but pay for the MBA but this has caused fights - he feels like I’m trying to avoid the big wedding when actually I’m trying to provide a solution for him. also I see it as a long term investment- it will enable him to make career progress , that is worth more than one day. Especially as we want to start a family soon.

what do you think ? Wedding or MBA?

I can't get over 26k for a wedding 🤯. What a waste of money, especially when you don't have it. We saved and scrimped for a year and paid for everything ourselves. We did a lot of the work ourselves and saved a fortune. At the end of the day, the marriage should be the important thing, not the amount spent and how grand or iconic the venue is.

Sorry I realise that's not the advice you're looking for.

Innit. Fur coat and no knickers springs to mind.

I‘m in Europe and in a senior role, I would say that if the company are suggesting MBAs as a path then they should be willing to sponsor. In honesty MBAs are becoming increasingly passé as other paths become more useful and I’ve never met an MBA who was better because of it, and many who were maybe worse.
26k on a wedding is absurd when memories are made in any scenario just marrying the person you love most in this world perhaps surrounded by the people who love you both most. 60 people is neither intimate or realistically just people who love you most.
I‘d reduce wedding costs and rethink the MBA for a different leadership program (MIT, Harvard and Oxford do good ones)

Will his employer fund the mba? There are also mba essential type courses or does he want to go the whole hog and do an exec mba? I used to work for a business school and they were quite trigger happy handing out scholarships/bursaries. Especially if you applied late. Not LBS. Good luck

This exactly.
the wedding will cost more than 26k when all is said and done.
photographer, video, cake, entertainment, accommodation, hair, make up, dress, suits, shoes….etc etc

Has your partner spoken to his work about potentially funding an MBA for him? Sometimes they offer things like this, or even part funded if they feel it will benefit the business going forward. My Husband got his MBA in his 30’s and it’s changed his opportunities for the better. Obviously it depends on the industry too.

I spent about £3k on my wedding 14 years ago. Everyone I loved came. That's the important thing, that you share it with people you love. It's not purely for the photos. It's for your life afterwards.

So get married, on a budget, and do the MBA.

Maybe learn from the fact that your parents have such poor money management skills that they have taken on a 2.5k mortgage (madness in itself) that they now have to get their daughter in her 20s to pay off for them.

See a financial advisor, stop contemplating more debt, have an attitude adjustment about memories only being worthwhile if they've costs tens of thousands of pounds, make better decisions.

Going against to prevailing opinion so far, I do see the point in an MBA if your dp is planning to move from consultancy into industry c-suite without another professional qualification (ACA for example) and it is a sensible plan. May have been worth raising this on negotiating his new position, but that ship has sailed.
If you want a 26k wedding that's up to you. But save for it. I would prioritise helping your parents to sort out their financial situation so that you can then save.

OP, you’re getting a lot of responses from people who are making good points but seem to be in very different family / job / financial situations. My husband and I were in consulting and are high earners so maybe this is helpful:

you don’t need an MBA in the U.K. you can move to senior leadership at a FTSE 100 without an MBA. If you’re already in consulting there (IMO) is no benefit to an MBA unless your company is sponsoring it. If he wants one I would be looking into a part time one on the side unless his company steps up. I just worry that an MBA won’t improve his prospects and really he’ll leave his MBA £20k worse off but with no job change.

if you want a big wedding, I would go for a big wedding but don’t get a loan (your arrangement with your parents sounds a bit weird but if you’re sure they’ll give it to you then that’s fine). We had a big wedding spending £30k ish for 100+ and it was the best day of our lives, BUT we could easily afford it. Very honestly, if you’re looking for a big traditional wedding at a London venue, you may end up spending north of £20k very very easily unless you’re v strict on the guest list. People who haven’t planned weddings in the last 2 years just have no clue — wedding inflation has been insane in the last 5 years.

As others have said, MBA is not required really in the UK, 20 years ago unis here were aggressively marketing MBA courses, now you hardly hear of them.

Working in education myself I get a lot of prospectus from various universities, and back then you almost always got a glossy brochure about said uni's MBA programme, there were even frequent posters on underground escalators and railway stations "the Bath MBA" or some such, can't honestly say I've seen mention (I'm sure if they do it, it will have a page or two in the general prospectus) of it for at least 10 years.

It just didn't take off here - within reason, the words of a senior lecturer I used to work with, to a long time student were wise, "stop chasing bits of paper (qualifications) and get out there and climb the ladder".

Don't pay out of pocket for an MBA. Ever. If your DP's employer feels one is necessary and that he is on the senior leadership track, they will pay. It's not a good investment as an individual.

Your wedding budget is your business, but I think most people look back and would happily have spent less, tbh. The marriage is what matters and the quality of the marriage is what determines the happiness of the wedding day. The food and fuss fades in importance very, very quickly.

That's a crazy mortgage anyway, but especially for a couple who cannot afford it. I hope there's other plans afoot op. They're lucky you can pay it but it's clear it's affecting your own ability to make life choices. Fine for now but you shouldn't be in this position long term.

I'd still do wedding from savings, look at other study options and move later.

Will the MBA solve it or will it lead on to more frustration. Well I have that, now what? I've improved myself x amount but how do I improve myself x+n amount? So you think frustration is merely about the external ability to progress in his job?

Do you know anything about mortgages? Taking a loan out would also effect what you can borrow? I love how you've started a thread saying wedding or MBA and then argued and defended both options when people have disagreed. Just do both! Also tell your parents to pay the £5k off their massive mortgage that you're paying for! Don't take money off them that makes no sense at all.

Please for gods sake don't borrow money for a wedding. It's not up to you to solve his career issues. You must have loads of money, why is he so obsessed with progression? Doesn't he have other interests / goals in life? And the higher he climbs career wise, the less time he will have for parenting, if you do have kids.

I think your set up is unusual, particularly paying £2.5K on your parents mortgage. But that’s your business.

I think you won’t be swayed from having the big wedding, no matter what it costs, but you did ask for opinions and most people have said a wedding is not worth getting into debt for. Several have also questioned whether the qualification will be of long term benefit, but you seem set on your fiance doing that too.

I don’t think an intimate wedding is 60 people. That's a medium sized wedding. If you want children, a one bed flat will quickly be too small, so I’d prioritise moving to a larger property, having a small wedding and then the family you want.

What your DH is reporting is not unusual.
I reached the Director level in 2009 and it was made clear in my industry from the late 1990s that you needed an MBA to get to and past the Director level. It’s a real ceiling and no amount of working hard, asking for more responsibility would have got me there. You have to do both- be extremely competent and hard working plus have an MBA.

The only exceptions are
CTOs-they need doctorates in the relevant scientific field.
Global VPs- they need an MA or higher in International Relations or MBA

potentially £20k coming from my parents when / if they sell their home and downsize (waiting for the market to improve)
But meanwhile paying their £2.5k pcm mortgage?
You seem to make a lot of strange financial decisions.

you don’t need an MBA in the U.K. you can move to senior leadership at a FTSE 100 without an MBA

Many of us work for foreign owned companies and they DO require the MBA to move up. Only 15 businesses on the Fortune Global 500 are British owned. Seems silly to limit yourself to British only when we live in a global economy.

That is also true. But I would argue that the MBA is far less relevant now than it was even 10-20 years ago. So I would still try to get sponsorship via the company.

I don't understand why your parents haven't sold their house. Will you keep paying their mortgage when you downsize? They're only going to give you £20k (when the market has "improved") which you've probably spent already in mortgage repayments. It's costing you a fortune for no benefit. Sell the house, parents get a mortgage they can afford and you can start saving £2.5k a month. Problem solved.

Argue on what basis? It is true that you need work experience plus an MBA to move up. No one is going to come straight out Uni and walk into a Director position- you still have to climb the ladder. The MBA is still a common tie breaker between equally experienced and competent candidates, and the more people get MBAs, the more it is seen as a box that should be ticked.

I agree the company should be willing to provide tuition assistance for an MBA.