In the $100 Billion Wedding Economy, Hiring a Witch Is More Than Hocus Pocus

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1:17Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. In May, U.S. inflation accelerated at its fastest pace in more than three years. and the consumer price index climbed 4.2 % from a year earlier. Things are getting more expensive, including having a wedding. The wedding planning website The Knot reported that the average cost of a wedding is now over$34 ,000. Newlyweds are spending nearly$300 per guest. And Bloomberg's Dina Katgera says, In this economy, some couples are willing to pay a little extra for anything that can make them feel more in control on this big, expensive day. There's also just generally a lot of uncertainty in people's lives with the rising cost of goods and with housing costs going up.

2:14There's a lot in their heads. That's a big question mark. So if they can lean on anything that can provide them some kind of stability, people will do that. For some, stability is coming in the form of a spell. I don't truly know what powers lie within the Etsy witch community. I certainly don't want to dismiss that it is possible for them to dramatically change the day. It might sound a little woo-woo, but wedding spellcasting is actually a growing industry. On the online marketplace Etsy, witches are selling their services to spouses-to-be, promising to ward off bad weather at the wedding, or at least manifest good vibes.

3:01It is a little bit of peace of mind. You're not paying that much. This makes you feel like you maybe have done everything you can to ensure the outcome you want. As Sarah Schenken and her fiancé planned their outdoor wedding in Brooklyn this spring, Rain was in the forecast. So her friend ordered them a spell off the internet for$7.49. And would you have bought it for yourself if it wasn't a gift? I think we were at that point where, yes, we would have. And we actually had more than one friend buy it for us from different people. So it was, you know, everybody was thinking. So you had multiple witches on your side.

3:38Yeah.

3:45I'm Sarah Holder, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, planning a wedding in a time of economic uncertainty. How newlyweds approach spending on their big day amid rising costs. And why some are turning to magic.

4:06Josiana Joshua covers personal finance for Bloomberg. She spends a lot of time thinking about what people spend their money on and why. That's how she found out about the Etsy witches. So it actually kind of started because one of our co-workers was getting married and we were on a call and I was like, oh, weather doesn't look great. Like, I'll buy an Etsy witch for you. And then everybody on the call was like, what are you talking about? So I think that's kind of how it got started. Josiana had been seeing newly married social media influencers giving testimonials for the spellcasting services on TikTok.

4:42Welcome to my wedding. My Etsy witch works. No rain. It's been raining all day. Look at the weather right now. Table salt she put in her spell. It works. We love you, Etsy witch. And on Etsy, the online marketplace for small businesses, there were pages and pages of listings advertising things like a powerful good weather ritual and clear skies spells. You can just go to Etsy.com, type in weather witches, and you'll see a whole bunch of different little thumbnails for different Etsy witches come up. That's Dina Katgera, who reported the story with Josiana. And a lot of times they cost anywhere from like a dollar to twenty five dollars.

5:25So it's relatively cheap cost here. Etsy's house rules actually forbid metaphysical services like spells and rituals. So when you buy a good weather spell, the actual product you're getting is essentially a PDF. A lot of times it says different things like here's the best way to manifest the good weather for your wedding day. Here's what happens if it does rain. A lot of it is, I think, talking and positive manifestation so that you feel less anxiety about the big day. Yeah. The other thing for the PDFs is a lot of them will actually tell you, like, what they did to do the spell. So it'll be like, oh, I lit a candle and I said, let's have Catherine's wedding be 60 degrees and sunny.

6:08Like, they'll put that in there, too. So people, like, will not be worried that it's, like, a full scam. Dina and Josiana spoke to several recent brides who'd hired these weather witches. Not all of them believed in magic, per se, but they'd all invested a lot in their weddings. And they looked at the spell as a spiritual insurance policy. Welcome back to vlog three of me chronicling the weather changes leading up to my February 14th wedding in Chicago. We are a wedding week. Cammie Danaher posted a TikTok video in February. She was getting married in Chicago, and Chicago in the wintertime obviously isn't the best weather.

6:49But she wanted to do the wedding on her seventh anniversary with her wife, so she wanted to do it on Valentine's Day. She, of course, was expecting it to be cold, but she was hoping maybe if she could hire an Etsy witch, it could be good weather. How much was she willing to pay? I think she was honestly at this point kind of willing to pay whatever, but it only ended up costing her$14, which in comparison to her$100 ,000 wedding, I feel like is minuscule at that point. It is going to be 49 degrees on Valentine's Day in Chicago. Real feel high, 55 and sunny. Hire the Etsy wedge. Cammie's$100 ,000 wedding is on the high end of wedding spending.

7:35According to data published this year by The Knot, the average wedding in the U.S. costs over$34 ,000. That varies a lot by region. In Manhattan, a typical wedding costs$88 ,000. In the Midwest, it costs closer to$30 ,000. Getting married in Alaska or Idaho can cost less than$20 ,000. Any way you slice it, it's a lot of money to spend on one day or one weekend. The cost of venues, the cost of food, catering, the cost per plate, if you want to get a band, if you want to get a musician, these costs add up very, very quickly. That's Sam Borgi, a senior financial analyst with Investors Observer. And he says, across the board, these costs have been climbing.

8:24What we're seeing is that overall, the rate of inflation is reflected in weddings. I mean, you take a look at food costs, for example, a lot of these prices per plate have gone up significantly because of the cost of food. You take a look at the cost of steak, the cost of all these different meal items have gone significantly higher over the past five or six years. You're starting to see it on the service side. Any kind of service inflation has kind of gone significantly higher, people charging a lot more. Josiana says there are other factors that have pushed wedding-related expenses up recently, like high gas prices and tariffs on things like food and flowers.

9:00People are passing down, vendors, should I say, are passing down those costs. Then there's the constant pressure to keep up with the Joneses on social media. You see other people being able to post, like, having a live painter or, like, having, you know, a DJ with a saxophone or having a live band. And then you're like, I want to be able to do that same thing. So you're getting introduced to a lot of new things. But then when you get to actually paying for those things, you're like, OK, that's actually a lot of money. But you've had it in your head for so long that you're just like, OK, I want it for my day.

9:31I'm going to pay for it. The wedding industry is incredibly resilient right now. That's Esther Lee, the Knotts editorial director. It's actually$100 billion with two million couples getting married last year alone. Couples spend an average of$292 per guest, which is actually up$8 from 2024. And that doesn't seem like a lot, but per guest, like it adds up together. After the break, we unpack why weddings are such an enduring expense and how the U.S. economy's K-shape is showing up in the wedding industry.

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12:03As inflation pushes up the cost of essentials like housing and food and gas and U.S. consumer sentiment declines, you might assume people would think twice about spending so much on a party. Financial analyst Sam Borgi says that's not exactly what's been happening. What we've been seeing is that, you know, a lot of discretionary spending has kind of gone down over the years because of inflation. But weddings are an odd category because they're not as impacted by a decline in discretionary spending because it's a highly emotional decision. It's a major milestone. So people are still willing to spend.

12:39But like the rest of the U.S. economy, Sam says wedding spending is K-shaped. It's an economy of haves versus have-nots. The middle class is increasingly being hollowed out. And we see that across various different verticals. And obviously, wedding planning is one of them. So on the high end of the K, you still see larger guest lists. You still see more opulent food choices. You see much larger venues, much more prestigious venues, maybe even still destination weddings. Those are the couples spending over$41 ,000, according to The Knot. They're inviting an average of 141 guests. and they're typically getting help from their families to cover more than half of the bill.

13:21On the other side of the K, you see people having much smaller venues, much smaller wedding celebrations, especially on the number of guests. You'll start to see savings on the actual venue itself and also on the decor. People at the top can just throw money at customization and people at the bottom of the K can, you know, work on DIY bouquets, write things for their guests, things like that. Bloomberg's Dina Katgera again. So they can still, you know, make their day as special as they want it to be. But people are finding different avenues to get there. Sarah Schenken, the woman who got married in Brooklyn this year, said she and her partner were pretty budget conscious throughout the wedding planning process, making spreadsheets, making compromises.

14:05But there were some costs they didn't prepare for. We've been joking, like in the last two weeks before the wedding, money just sort of becomes a concept and not a reality. You're so close to the finish line. You're really stressed. You're trying to coordinate lots of logistics at the same time. And sometimes you end up just being like, will that make my life easier in this moment? Or will that make that problem go away? Ubers, extra beer, and of course, Etsy witches. The witch part of it, you know, that was not a budget item that would have even really even made the spreadsheet because it was so small.

14:43It would have been a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. In the grand scheme of wedding spending, good weather spellcasting witches can seem like a steal. Here's Bloomberg's Josiana Joshua again. When we talk to some of the witches, like they've kind of tried to keep costs low because they think that's part of the way they attract folks is like if you're people who want something cheaper, if you have a super expensive spell, but there's someone else on Etsy offering a$5 spell. Like, I don't know if that's going to be great competition for you. Yeah. And a lot of it is you learn about these witches through word of mouth.

15:21Like we spoke to one witch in Florida. His name is Hank. We love Hank. We love Hank. And we asked him, would you raise your prices because you're seeing this influx of demand? And he said no. So he seems to be dedicated to his craft and wanting to make sure that people can purchase his services no matter where they are on that K. Not everyone in the industry is so committed to accessibility. There was this one guy that's starting this company to rival the Etsy witches. and he has a new company that's supposed to like be an upscale version of these Etsy witches selling these boxes for like$222.

16:01For Sarah, despite her friend's magic wedding gifts, nature ran its course. I mean, I don't want to blow up the spot here, but like it rained our whole wedding weekend. So it's a funny thing. I think we did kind of hope even up until the last day, like maybe it'll turn. No such luck. They had to move the whole ceremony inside. But Sarah says the wedding was still beautiful. It was a really special, special weekend. When I was back in the studio with Josiana and Dina, I had to admit something. These conversations were making me kind of anxious. It's so funny, I came into this conversation like, oh no, like we're going to be talking about rain on the wedding day, like we're jinxing it.

16:47I'm getting married in 10 days. And now I'm kind of feeling like a deep sense of calm that whatever happens is going to happen. But given that, I can recommend you some. Do you think I should hire an Etsy witch for next week? Yeah, why not? Yeah, I mean, I think if you believe in it and you're willing to shell$15, then why not?

17:16This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all of Bloomberg.com, subscribe today at Bloomberg.com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

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