6 Wedding Expenses you Should Always Charge on Credit

Wedding-related mishaps can turn any mild-mannered bride into a bridezilla, but they happen all the time, no matter how prepared you thought you were for the big day.

The florist may deliver your bouquet to the wrong address. Or the reception venue goes out of business just days before your wedding. Or maybe the caterer's appendix bursts and she's laid up in the hospital.

Whatever the disaster, you may be able to prevent an ill-timed snafu from turning into financial regret if you use a credit card, rather than cash or checks, to pay for certain expenses.

"I paid for my 2005 wedding with a credit card and I am glad I did," says one-time bride Alexandra Chauran of Issaquah, Wash. When the beer keg she rented jammed at her reception, Chauran asked the vendor for her money back. No luck. "The company that rented it to me refused to refund my money," she says. "So I just disputed the charge with my credit card company and got all my money back that way."

The federal Fair Credit Billing Act gives you the right to dispute billing errors, including those for goods and services you didn't accept or that weren't delivered as agreed, as long as you dispute it within 60 days after the first bill containing the disputed charge was received.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors.

In addition to the limited protections provided under the law, if you are unsatisfied with the quality of the goods or service, and aren't able to get satisfaction from the merchant, most credit card issuers will investigate, and may step in on your behalf and charge a purchase back to the vendor.

There are limits to the charge-it wedding strategy, however. For one, make sure you don't charge more than your wedding budget allows, says Gail Cunningham, vice president of public relations at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. "If you do charge your wedding expenses, commit to paying them off in no less than three months," says Cunningham. "Starting a marriage with one foot in a financial hole is not a honeymoon."

Unless you're planning a quickie elopement or a simple backyard affair, you can expect to spend a lot on deposits, often months in advance of your wedding.

Most vendors require a deposit upfront in order to reserve their services on your wedding date. However, a lot can happen in between the time you sign up with a vendor and your wedding day.

The wedding venue you scoped out months before your wedding may file for bankruptcy, leaving you without a place to get married. Or the makeup artist you hired may be missing in action just hours before you're supposed to walk down the aisle.

That's why it's usually a good idea to charge your deposit, rather than pay for it in cash, says Gail Johnson, a wedding planner based in Decatur, Ga.A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case. That way, you can file a dispute with your credit card company and potentially get your money back. The card issuer is not obliged to repay you on behalf of a bankrupt merchant, since bailing you out would leave the issuer holding the bag, not you. But it might.

Unlike some deposits, however, "retainers are not refundable," says Johnson, which can make choosing the wrong wedding planner an especially costly mistake.

Most planners will charge extra fees for services well in advance of the wedding.The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important. That can add up to thousands of dollars in lost fees if your wedding planner fails to provide the services he or she promised. To minimize the costs of picking a bad planner, it's a good idea to charge any additional fees with your credit card. Check the agreement carefully -- before you pay that nonrefundable retainer -- to make sure you're not required to pay for some services in cash.

Problems with wedding-day vendors, including photographers,The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. florists and DJs, are the top cause of claims filed by couples under their wedding insurance policies, according to an analysis of claims released in March 2013 by the insurance company Travelers.

If you're not willing to shell out for wedding insurance -- a type of policy that covers unforeseen disasters, such as bad weather, shady vendors and sometimes even cold feet -- it's a good idea to pay for those services with a card, especially if you're expected to pay in full before your wedding day.

Paying vendors by plastic could also relieve some stress on the day of the wedding if the vendor asks for more money than you anticipated, says Chauran. "We rented out a whole ski lodge for our wedding and about halfway through the reception, the lodge people said, 'We'll have to charge you more money.'" Chauran told them to put it on her tab and went back to her reception.

Wedding dresses are often custom-ordered and may take months to arrive from the manufacturer.We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. In the meantime, the shop you ordered your dress from could fail to make the necessary alterations in time for your wedding when the dress does arrive.

Wedding planner Gail Johnson says there's also another reason why many of her brides decide to charge their wedding dresses. They're confident they'll be able to sell them after the wedding. "There are a lot of really good consignment shops," says Johnson. So brides who pay more for their dresses than they have in cash may be able to recoup some of that money shortly after the wedding to pay down their credit card purchase.