Paying for wedding, need to maximize rewards
 

OK, so the fiance and I are about to pay for a wedding reception totalling about $30K. I need to know how i can maximize my hotel/airline rewards. I have SPG AMEX and i can put everything in there for 30K SPG points. I also have Marriott Chase card and I can get 30K Marriott points but its less valuable than the SPG points so its probably not a good idea. Any suggestions? Thanks.

SPG Amex is a good place to start.

Also consider the cards that have valuable annual threshold bonuses. For example, HH Amex awards Diamond status at $40k annual spend. BA Visa awards a 2-for-1 award cert at $30k. SPG Amex awards SPG Gold status, although in that program Gold doesn't mean much at the hotels.

But most importantly of all: don't let CC rewards overly influence your decisions about the reception. Get the right vendors for your event and if they take cards, great. Remember, Starpoints are worth maybe a nickel apiece used well, but frequently a small cash-only vendor will be well more than 5% cheaper than a bigger company.

We did well with our reception, in part by using a Marriott for the catering. But what led us there was that we had strong positive experience with that catering manager - not the Marriott Rewards points. (Although those were nice. :)) On the opposite end of things, we did about 5 cake tastings and ended up going with a lady who worked from home and only took cash.

yes we are only considering credit cards because the catering place takes it. we decided on the venue becuase of the venue, not the credit card benefits. i know i can get at least 30K SPG points, just wondering if theres anyway to earn something better or more.

If you were having the wedding at a marriott, and they would take the credit card, and treat the charges as stay charges, you could get 600,000 marriott rewards points -- more than enough for 2 travel packages (240k miles and two 7-day hotel certs).

But, since it looks as though you're not doing it at a Marriott, I would think SPG is the best way to go, unless you have another card that offers bonuses of particular use for you. For example, with the USAir card, a 25k spend gets you 10k EQM and also other benefits (5,000 mile reduction on awards, etc.)

wow, 600K at marriott? thats 20 points per stay. i thought it was 10 points per dollar on marriotts behalf for stays and 5 points per dollar from the credit card. how did u get 20?

I was assuming platinum, which perhaps was not the right assumption. Plats earn 15 points per dollar at a stay (plus the 5 points for using the visa).

Still, OP says they have the marriott visa, if it's the $65 annual fee it gives you automatic silver. So that would be 17 points per dollar, or 510,000 points on a 30k spend.

i was told by the categoring manager at a marriott nearby that its only 3 points per dollar spent at events hosted at marriott to max of 50K points. oh well, that sucks...

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I wonder whether if you also booked a room and tried to make it a room charge if you might be able to eek out more.

Don't forget Hilton and HH AMEX. You can get up to 9 points per dollar spend with Surpass card on top of points from Hilton itself.

I get the sense that every catering/event contract is a bit different. If points are of maximum importance you might be able to trade off something else but I'm not sure I'd try to do it.

With my Marriott reception back in the day, the best "extras" I received were the on-property room upgrades during the event. The Presidential Suite plus a couple other nice suites for people in my party... The catering manager seems to have a lot of direct power there - probably a simple phone call or two to a colleague down the hall. Getting some sort of unusual points deal into the contract probably involves more people, more hassle, more paperwork. Maybe a card you don't want to play...

That's awesome that your vendors will accept CC. Virtually all of ours required checks :(

I've had my own small business in the wedding industry for over 10 years now and even though it's a part-time thing I still take CCs through PayPal. As a consumer, I want to use my CC primarily for the points/miles but also for the protection it offers. I think any vendor in any industry should take CCs, even if it is just through PayPal.

credit card fees
 

Don't forget fees..I am getting married soon and every vendor we tried to use our credit card with it seemed wanted to charge 2-4% of the cost for the credit card merchant fees. I don't care how many points you would get, paying hundreds of dollars in fees on top of an already expensive catering bill is not worth it, especially if you need to float the debt for a while.

Wow, I've never thought to tack on a fee for a client to pay with a CC. Taking a client's CC is just the cost of doing business.

If anyone tries to tell you they're going to charge you a fee for using a card, you should remind them it's against their merchant account TOS to do charge a fee.

It's extremely rare that I would ever use a cash-only vendor.