Average couple spends $26,989 on wedding; many break budget

— -- This summer wedding season, a new song could rival Laura Nyro's bride-yearning classic Wedding Bell Blues.

Call it Wedding Bill Blues.

Even with a slight drop in "I Do" spending during recent tough economic years, many couples are beguiled beyond their budgets.

The average couple has a $26,989 wedding, according to Brides magazine. Even though that's down from a peak of $28,082 in pre-recession 2008, nearly one-third of all brides still bust their budgets, Brides says.

Couples are victimized by their own fantasies, cajoled by media visions of celebrity nuptials, and pressured by friends, family, even strangers posting idyllic photos on Pinterest.

"It's emotional. Practicality goes out the window," says David Jones, president of the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies.

Jones sees many ways debt entraps people. As a grandfather, however, Jones still found himself a shocked participant in runaway wedding spending for his granddaughter's wedding.

While Jones and his wife contributed cash, their son, father of the bride, "had to work overtime for months after the March wedding to pay off the credit card bills," Jones says.

The "lovely but not outlandish" spring wedding "went 15% over budget," Jones says, starting with the first purchase — a $6,000 gown, when $3,000 was planned.

Linda Morado knows all about that. She owns Le Dress Boutique, a luxury gown consignment shop in Atlanta, where she serves a parade of women suffering "bridal guilt" after going overboard on the first major purchase of their wedding.

Typical: A client who can't unload a never-worn $4,800 duchess satin designer gown after she downsized from a formal wedding to a simple beach ceremony. Indecisive brides trying to unload three dresses because they couldn't stop shopping at one. Brides whose weddings never happened. Morado tells them better to lose on the dress than wed a loser.

Kari Nesbitt, 28, of Atlanta, says she wed the right man in 2010.

But she did it in a lavish $6,000 designer gown from Rivini — far above her $2,000 plan. When she neared the cliff's edge of budget disaster a month from the wedding, she slashed the plans to fit the finances.

"I started out thinking I would have a big blowout wedding. Crystals everywhere. Flowers everywhere. Lots of drapery and fancy lighting, ice sculptures and all that jazz," says Nesbitt, who works weekdays in marketing for a non-profit group and Saturdays at Le Dress.

The couple thought they would spend "about $30,000, but suddenly I looked up, and we had 200 people coming, and the costs were heading for $10,000 to $15,000 over budget," Nesbitt says. "We cut the up-lighting. We cut the draping. We cut the special wooden dance floor, and no one missed it."

Resisting is hard, say brides, citing wedding planners who overwhelm them with choices for décor and doo-dads that seem irresistible. Couples can also be lured off their financial feet by bank commercials that encourage borrowing for wedding costs.

Royal Bank of Canada advertises a spend-now-pay-later "MyProject" MasterCard with images of a dazzling bride, "like a passport to a grandiose wedding you'll pay for in money stress later," says Rob Carrick, personal finance columnist for Toronto's The Globe and Mail and author of How Not to Move Back in with Your Parents.