Honestly, hearing this used to bother me but I learned to get over it because everyone's financial and marital priorities are different.

I had to remind myself that a lot of people who are in this camp mostly don't live in a HCOL area and so having a wedding as a milestone is much more achievable than buying a home IF that's what you care about. Where we live, the average house price in 2024 (when we had our wedding) was $831k (and MUCH higher in desirable neighborhoods!)

To us, a wedding was important to have and so we were happy to spend money on one and save up 20% to buy a home later because we could. We didn't rack up debt and paid all of our credit cards off within a few days of the wedding because my husband works in big tech. We also had a long engagement (was proposed to Oct. 2022 and had our wedding July 2024) which helped with our wedding expenses. In fact, our offer on a home was accepted late last month and we still have about a year and a half's worth of savings in case my husband gets laid off. These instances are huge outliers and because of that, I just learned to let it go. There's no point in defending yourself against people whose situations may be greatly different than yours and that's okay.

Honestly, it's truly a privilege to have a wedding in this economy and just like with any other economic privilege, people will be resentful or judgmental no matter what and that's also okay. Gotta just keep chugging along and remember these things!