Wedding loans: Should you take a personal loan for your wedding? All you need to know

Indian weddings are renowned for being extravagant events with multi-day festivities, featuring traditions from both sides of the family and rituals filled with color, music, dance, and love. They are grand spectacles that often require families to spend their savings, take loans, and plan for years.

With rising expectations, elaborate outfits, long guest lists and fancy venues, weddings in India usually lead to major financial stress, which now encourages couples to consider personal loans. 

While these loans may offer short-term relief, they might become a financial burden in later years of marriage. Careful assessment of finances can help you with this, but only if you foresee a stable financial future. So, are wedding loans worth it? 

How expensive are Indian weddings?

Indian weddings cost significantly more than they did a decade ago. The cost of an average modest Indian wedding lies anywhere between ₹5 lakh and ₹20 lakh. In many cases, for the upper middle class, weddings may go beyond ₹50 lakh to ₹1 crore for destination and premium weddings. 

What is a wedding loan?

Many couples and families take out marriage loans, which are often done in the form of unsecured personal loans offered by banks and NBFCs. In practice, there’s no separate legal category for a wedding loan.

Features of a personal loan

• No need to pledge your property or assets, as no collateral is required in most cases.
• You can get a loan for up to ₹20 lakh, or more, at some banks. This depends on your income, credit score, requirements and other factors.  
• Depending on the credit score and lender, interest rates generally range from 10% to 25% on personal loans. 
• Repayment terms can be set as per the requirements. Generally, 1 to 5 years is preferred for personal loans. 
• Documentation required for personal loans is often limited and easily accessible, and funds are disbursed in 24-72 hours.

Top banks offering personal loan interest rates for weddings in 2025

Big wedding or small wedding?

Post-COVID, small weddings with limited guests and even court marriages have become more common than before. With lower cost and no financial strain, some couples prefer spending on other things, like a house, rather than on big weddings. 

While big weddings make the celebration more memorable, they often end up causing a large financial burden on the couple and their families if not managed wisely. 

Should you take a personal loan for a big wedding?

Wedding loans in India are essentially personal loans with interest rates around 10-25%. This means that a ₹10 lakh loan could actually cost ₹12-14 lakh by the time you finish paying the EMIs.

Things to consider before taking such a loan

When should you take a wedding loan?

Personal loans can be of help if used responsibly. You can consider a wedding loan if:

• You genuinely need short-term cash flow to cover part of the wedding budget. This can help you avoid exhausting your long-term savings or investment corpus for a one-time spending. 
• You have a repayment plan and a predictable and stable future income.
• You have no other urgent financial liabilities and can afford the EMIs.
• Many young Indians have low or no credit history; taking a small and manageable loan and repaying it on time can help them build a good CIBIL score. This can also help them while taking a future car and or home loan at better interest rates.
• The loan amount should be small, and the EMI should be less than 10-15% of their combined income.

What can you do with the saved money?

Skipping a big fat Indian wedding can help you change your life, as you can spend it on other things like: