2023 Edition: Best Credit Cards for Weddings

So you’re getting hitched. Congratulations!

You have many important questions ahead of you, like what part of Punggol to stay in, which small space to build an altar to St. Josephine, and how to deal with in-laws (two men are in a bar, one says to the other “my mother-in-law is an angel”, the other says “you’re lucky, mine’s still alive”). 

But the most important question by far: how can you get the most miles out of your wedding?

In this article, I’m going to focus on the biggest expense of any wedding: the banquet. Even a medium-sized affair of 40 tables, assuming S$1,500 per table, will cost more than S$70,000 after service charge and GST. Assuming you can recoup most of that through hongbaos, however, it’s a great opportunity to mint some miles for your honeymoon. 

So what’s the best credit card to use for weddings?

Premarital text

In the analysis below, I’m going to make several assumptions.

1. Your banquet venue allows you to split the expense onto different cards (and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t, really)
2. Your banquet venue allows for monthly instalment payments, which is the standard practice in most places. This is crucial for maxing out the monthly caps on specialised spending cards
3. Your banquet venue accepts in-person, contactless payments. The vast majority of places should by now, but it’s never a given.

You might notice that some of the cards mentioned below have elevated income requirements. The key thing to remember, however, is that anything above the MAS-mandated S$30,000 is essentially an arbitrary figure (income beyond S$30,000 does affect the credit limit that can be granted, but not approval for a card per se).

It means there’s no harm submitting an application anyway, especially for cards which are known for not enforcing their official income requirements (e.g. UOB Visa Signature, UOB Lady’s Solitaire Card).

Max out your sign-up bonuses

A wedding banquet will be a big-ticket expenditure, and big ticket spending means an opportunity to hit some credit card sign-up bonuses.

Sign-up bonuses regularly change, so there’s not much point copying and pasting a static table that will quickly go out of date. Instead, do bookmark the Credit Card Sign-Up Bonuses page or look out for the monthly sign-up bonus roundup for all the latest. 

A few general points to note about sign-up bonuses:

• While some cards may allow you to enjoy a sign-up bonus without paying the first year’s annual fee, most will require payment. In that case, you’re essentially buying miles at a price of bonus miles/annual fee
• Most sign-up bonuses will only be available for new-to-bank customers, and you can enjoy a new-to-bank bonus only once for a given bank (i.e. if you apply for two cards from Bank A at the same time, you’ll only enjoy the bonus on the first approved card)
• “New-to-bank” typically entails not holding any of the bank’s credit cards (as a principal cardholder) now, or in the past 12 months. The exact definition may vary from campaign to campaign, so always refer to the T&Cs

You’ll also need to decide whether it’s better for you and your partner to each sign up for a card, or for one of you to sign up and then give the other a supplementary card. 

• If you’re confident that you and your partner can both hit the spending threshold, get one card each so you can double the bonus
• If you think you’ll have difficulty hitting the spending threshold, then get your partner a supplementary card so that his/her spending will pool with yours

Max out your category bonuses

The first thing you’ll need to do is confirm the MCC of your wedding venue.

While I doubt your wedding coordinator will be able to answer this question, you can look up the MCC of a given merchant before spending using either of the methods listed below:

• HeyMax
• DBS digibot

Since this is a big-ticket item, I highly recommend using the DBS digibot method to be extra sure.

There’s two main possibilities:

• Your venue codes as a hotel (MCC 3500-3999, 7011)
• Your venue codes as a restaurant (MCC 5812)

If venue codes as hotel

Card	Earn Rate	Remarks
💳 Income Req: S$30K
HSBC Revolution Apply	4 mpd (use contactless)	Cap S$1K per c. month
UOB Pref. Plat. Visa Apply	4 mpd (use mobile contactless)	Cap S$1.1K per c. month
UOB Lady’s Card Apply	6 mpd (choose travel as bonus category)	Cap S$1K per c. month
💳 Income Req: S$50K
UOB Visa Signature  Apply	4 mpd (use contactless)	Min. S$1K Max S$2K per s. month
💳 Income Req: S$120K
UOB Lady’s Solitaire Apply	6 mpd (choose travel as bonus category)	Cap S$3K per c. month
c. month= calendar month, s. month= statement month

If venue codes as restaurant

Card	Earn Rate	Remarks
💳 Income Req: S$30K
KrisFlyer UOB Credit Card	3 mpd	Min. S$800 spend on SIA Group in m. year, no cap
Citi Rewards + Amaze	4 mpd	Cap S$1K per s. month
HSBC Revolution Apply	4 mpd (use contactless)	Cap S$1K per c. month
UOB Pref. Plat. Visa Apply	4 mpd (use mobile contactless)	Cap S$1.1K per c. month
UOB Lady’s Card Apply	6 mpd (choose dining as bonus category)	Cap S$1K per c. month
💳 Income Req: S$50K
UOB Visa Signature  Apply	4 mpd (use contactless)	Min. S$1K Max S$2K per s. month
💳 Income Req: S$120K
UOB Lady’s Solitaire Apply	6 mpd (choose dining as bonus category)	Cap S$3K per c. month
c. month= calendar month, s. month= statement month, m. year= membership year

Regardless of whether your banquet is in a hotel or restaurant, here’s a few common points to note:

• All of the cards above offer first year fee waivers, or don’t have annual fees
• Don’t let the income requirements deter you; as mentioned earlier, income requirements for these cards are loosely enforced
• You can only get either the UOB Lady’s Card or UOB Lady’s Solitaire, and will need to declare a bonus category (one for Lady’s, two for Lady’s Solitaire). If your banquet is in a hotel, choose “travel”; if it’s in a restaurant, choose “dining”
• The HSBC Revolution, UOB Visa Signature and UOB Preferred Platinum Visa all require you to pay via contactless to earn the bonus:
  • For the HSBC Revolution or UOB Visa Signature, tapping the physical card or adding it to your mobile wallet will qualify for the bonus
  • For the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa, you must add the card to your mobile wallet to qualify for the bonus

In an ideal situation, both you and your spouse-to-be will get all the cards above, and then each month pay off your banquet in chunks.

For example, if your wedding is in a hotel, the monthly payment plan would look something like this.

🧾 Monthly Banquet Payments
	🤵 Him	👰 Her
UOB Pref. Plat. Visa Apply	S$1,110	S$1,110
UOB Visa Signature  Apply	S$2,000	S$2,000
UOB Lady’s Solitaire Apply	S$3,000	S$3,000
HSBC Revolution Apply	S$1,000	S$1,000
Total Spend	S$7,110	S$7,110
Total Miles	34,440	34,440

You’d be looking at 68,880 miles for S$14,220 of spend each month, which is a very tidy return. 

If your wedding is in a restaurant, the main difference is that you can add in the Citi Rewards + Amaze pairing, and also bring in the KrisFlyer UOB Credit Card (thanks to Joseph in the comments for pointing this out). By spending at least S$800 on SIA Group transactions in a membership year (SIA, Scoot, KrisShop), you can earn an uncapped 3 mpd on dining.

The catch is that only 1.2 mpd are awarded upfront; you’ll need to wait until two months after the end of your membership year for the bonus 1.8 mpd to be credited. Hopefully that won’t wreck your honeymoon plans!

Conclusion

The wedding banquet will likely be the most expensive component of your wedding, but can also be a great source of miles. It does pay to sit down and plan when your instalment payments are due, when you’ll need to apply for each card, and how you’re going to split the amounts between cards.

It may take some doing, but it’s far from rocket science. And hey, wedding planning is a one-time exercise right?

Right?