Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos Have Blunt Advice for Couples Planning a Big Wedding — 30 Years After Their $179 Las Vegas Elopement

After 30 years of marriage, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have reached a fairly uncompromising conclusion about lavish weddings: they still don’t understand spending a fortune on one day.

The Live with Kelly and Mark co-hosts revisited their famously inexpensive 1996 Las Vegas elopement while discussing one of 2026’s growing wedding trends — smaller, simpler celebrations designed to keep costs under control.

Their own ceremony cost just $179, including airfare. Three decades later, they say they would still choose the same approach.

“This is the year of the cost-effective wedding”

During a prerecorded segment of Live with Kelly and Mark that aired August 20, Ripa discussed the rise of so-called micro weddings.

Instead of enormous ceremonies with elaborate floral displays and expensive formalities, she described couples embracing smaller gatherings, quirky cakes, candles instead of flowers and other money-saving choices.

“This is the year of the cost-effective wedding,” Ripa declared.

She also pointed to other increasingly economical choices, including secondhand wedding dresses, buffets and simplifying the traditional engagement-and-wedding-ring combination.

For Ripa and Consuelos, none of this sounds particularly revolutionary. They effectively embraced the same philosophy 30 years ago.

Their entire wedding cost $179 — airfare included

Ripa and Consuelos met in 1995 while starring together as Hayley Vaughan and Mateo Santos on All My Children. After dating for less than a year and briefly splitting, the couple reconciled and made a remarkably spontaneous decision: they would get married.

They eloped in Las Vegas on May 1, 1996, rather than organizing a traditional ceremony surrounded by family and friends.

“I loved our wedding,” Ripa recalled during the recent discussion.

She then revealed the figure that still surprises people all these years later: “Our wedding was great. $179, including airfare, thank you!”

Ripa has previously explained that they were able to keep the total so low partly because they had airline miles available from a canceled trip. The couple had considered going to City Hall, but Las Vegas offered something considerably more appealing during a miserable winter: warm, sunny weather.

It was simple, spontaneous and inexpensive — and it worked for them.

Their advice to couples considering an expensive wedding: “Don’t do it”

As the conversation continued, Ripa jokingly suggested that she and her husband could turn their experience into a business by starting a wedding service.

Consuelos took the idea one step further. Couples contemplating an enormous wedding could come to them for counseling, he joked, and their recommendation would be simple: “Don’t do it.”

Behind the humor was a serious financial argument.

Ripa pointed out that money destined for an elaborate wedding could instead go toward something with lasting value, such as buying a house and building equity.

Consuelos agreed. After three decades, he remains unconvinced by the amount couples can spend on flowers, dresses, rings and parties for a single celebration.

“The money spent on these parties and flowers and rings and dresses, it just doesn’t make sense to me,” he said, explaining that this was one of the reasons they chose to elope in the first place.

Kelly does have one regret about their ultra-cheap ceremony

Ripa may happily defend their $179 wedding, but there is one detail she wishes they had spent a little more money on.

Flowers.

While looking back at their wedding during a June episode of Live, Ripa admitted that she still wishes they had bought a bouquet.

Without flowers to hold, she felt awkward about what to do with her hands in some of their wedding photographs.

“Flowers are extra,” she joked before teasing Consuelos for apparently not wanting to pay for them.

Ripa has even said there is a particular wedding photograph she doesn’t like showing because of how awkwardly she believes her hands are positioned.

Beyond that small detail, however, she has repeatedly spoken fondly about the decision to elope.

Ripa once admitted a big wedding might have tested them before marriage even began

Their latest comments aren’t the first time Ripa has questioned the value of a traditional wedding.

While discussing their elopement in 2022, she suggested that the stress involved in organizing a major ceremony — from venues to seating charts — might have created unnecessary tension between them.

She even joked that she wasn’t certain they would have made it to the altar if they had attempted an elaborate wedding.

For Ripa, skipping all that planning didn’t make their marriage feel less meaningful. If anything, the decades that followed became far more important than the ceremony itself.

Their families weren’t necessarily thrilled with the original decision. Ripa later acknowledged that their parents disliked the fact that the couple eloped, something she has jokingly warned other couples to expect if they follow the same path.

Thirty years later, the $179 gamble clearly lasted

Ripa and Consuelos celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary on May 1, 2026.

Over those three decades, they have welcomed three children — Michael, Lola and Joaquin — built successful television careers and eventually found themselves working together again, this time as co-hosts of Live with Kelly and Mark.

Their approach certainly won’t appeal to every couple, and Ripa and Consuelos delivered much of their wedding “counseling” with their familiar on-air humor.

Still, there is a straightforward point beneath the jokes.

Their wedding lasted only a brief time and cost $179. Their marriage has lasted 30 years.

And if Ripa and Consuelos were advising a couple today on whether they should spend heavily to create the biggest possible wedding, their answer appears to be much the same as it was back in 1996: they’d rather put the money toward the life that comes afterward.