For advisors, client weddings can be a chance to plan

Full disclosure and the power of stories

The opportunity that Nault sees in helping clients, or the children of clients, getting married is in getting them to lay out their full relationship with money. The wedding can be a route to greater financial literacy and deeper understanding between the clients. It can also be a chance to encourage greater financial independence, such as separate chequing accounts.

Nault is also quick to point out that weddings are not the sole domain of the young. Having recently got married herself, she’s seen firsthand how two separate, developed financial and family lives can be complicated to blend. Advisors for those couples need to be prepared to help advise on the expense of a wedding, but be more prepared to reconcile two separate financial plans.

Just as Nault emphasizes advisors’ value as a voice of reason in wedding decisions, she notes that advisors can fall into the trap of emotion that comes with a wedding. Getting too excited about the emotional side of things can result in oversights that the couple may come to regret later. When it’s time for an advisor to intervene on a couple’s decision, she emphasizes the power of storytelling.

“I would tell them that at our wedding, we had people there, we had drinks and all these great things, but the main memory that both my husband and I have is that that moment that we were saying our vows to each other,” Nault says. “I would joke around with them a little bit, asking, ‘will people remember that you arrived on a horse?’ Will they remember that you paid for the best band, when they sound like another one?’ I approach it more from a questions and examples perspective and I let the plan tell the story.”