I'm getting married in July and am spending a decent chunk of money on the big day and honeymoon. I should be able to put a decent amount of money onto a credit card (or a few) and expect to have roughly $15-$20K that I'll be charging (and maximize that spend for points for future travel).

While I don't have a honeymoon planned yet, I'm open to any potential ideas of sign-ups for cards that will provide enough points for offsetting my honeymoon.

I currently have about 100K spg points from past business travel, but not a large volume of airline miles or a large enough chunk of points in hotels for a long & fantastic trip.

I'd love any thoughts on how to maximize that future credit card spend & ideas on how to quickly accumulate points for a summer honeymoon.

Congratulations.

I just went through the same thing and what I discovered is that a lot of vendors don't like credit card payments. So make sure to verify who does and who doesn't accept credit cards (or charge a fee).

With that said, depending on your future plans, you may want to target certain cards. What I did was plot out my next few months according to what I had to pay and when, and do a churn accordingly.

My first one included the Ink Plus, Starwoods Preferred, Barclays US Airways, and Citi AA x 2. I already has a Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Hyatt, but all those together gave me a pretty healthy starting balance that has allowed us to travel to Paris for 10 days and still have some leftover for another trip in the fall.

Am I the only one who read the title and thought "well, that's easy..."?

Just don't do what I did and charge $3000 to a debit card from a vendor coded as a restaurant...two years later, I still have daily regrets...

Since you are a member of FT, this should haunt you for the rest of your life

You are not alone. I was going to say "just buy the most expensive stuffs" lol.

I'm in the same boat, wedding in July... but I've been at it since June with the first deposit. Would you believe a place we look at in June 2012 was already booked for our date in July 2013? Crazy!

I got 6 cards my first round: 2 x AA Citi 50k, 2 x SPG 25k (personal + business, sadly a couple of months before it briefly jumped from 25k to 30k), and BoA/BoH 35k Hawaiian cards.

Second round, end of November: Chase Ink Bold 50k, Chase Priority Club 80k, Amex 65k Hilton.

The 2 SPG cards + a ton of wedding spend + a referral + existing points got me to 100k for 5 nights at Vedema, Santorini. 80k PC points + existing points got me 3 nights at Intercontinental Geneva.

The rest of the points it seems will be used somewhere other than the honeymoon. 100k AA miles (+ spend) coulda gotten us coach tickets, but I used UA miles from Months of Miles for business the whole way, and 3 nights in Paris thanks to Radisson's Big Night Giveaway last year.

Only thing left to book is a hotel for 2 nights in Athens, and 5 nights in Mykonos. That's gonna be an expensive one, as it seems only Starwood has a property there and I'm all outta points. (I do have 1000 so I could do half rack rate at Santa Marina, but I think we'll end up elsewhere.)

I am hoping for one more: US Bank Club Carlson card. 85k signup is nice, plus would save me 50k on my existing reservation. But I gotta wait a few more months before another application.

I was annoyed I was finishing off my Ink Bold spend requirement at the hotel we're getting married at instead of using my Sapphire... then discovered it also gets 2x at hotels when I was checking my statement! Saved me from the same fate.

Not to sound like a major noob, but why does it matter if the vendor is coded as a restaurant?

Because lots of cards give 2-5x on restaurant spend.

I would suggest these.
2 x citi AA (50K + 50K)
chase shappire + chase ink bold (40K + 50K UR) - can transferred to airlines or hotels
US Bank club carlson - 85K

One other thing I just thought of (or realized, planning my own honeymoon): If you're staying at a hotel that doesn't have a rewards program (or it's one you'll rarely use because they only have foreign high end properties), book at hotels.com through Chase UR mall (4pts/$) with the Sapphire Preferred (2pts/$). That ends up being 6 points per dollar back on the hotel. Plus you get Welcome Rewards worth 10% of the value once you hit ten nights...

Just booked 5 nights in a honeymoon suite on Mykonos, and while it was expensive, it will totally be worth it, especially with the UR points return.

Depends on where you want to go for honeymoon. We charged 30K to the BA VISA card and are flying BA First Class ( or the Best business class) with the 2 for 1.

Or, as someone else mentioned,
1) Get a pair of AA visa and amex for you and the wife to be. Get SPG AMEX for the 25K bonus. And fly CX J to asia.
2) Get the United Card and Chase Freedom and Sapphire and fly ANA J to Asia...

Sign up for a pair of Hyatt cards with the 2 free nights after 1000 spend. That is 4 free nights to boot.
100K SPG point can go a long way... If C+P is available, use it.

i just put 20k on CCs for my wedding.

Got the to not charge me a surcharge, put it all on my UA club card for 1.5 miles, mainly because I value UA miles more than BA miles and those where the only 2 cards I had with no forex charges

A friend of mine just got married - the wife and bridesmaids were all MAKING their decor, favors, etc - all supplies were put on my card. Hell yeah.

So, it could pay off making a bunch of stuff yourself.

FYI, I recently tested using the Citi Forward card to pay a wedding caterer but because they were labelled "restaurant - caterer", I did not get 5X. I know a lot of friends, however, who got their catering down by a restaurant that doesn't operate solely as a caterer, and I recommended they use the Citi Forward card, and they did get 5X.

congrats! like others have said, I wish I could have put my wedding spend on rewards cards. I paid in cash for everything