Wedding Payment Plan Financing Service

(Post: English)
"A wedding is one of the most important days of your life. It can also be one of the most expensive, running $28,000 on average, according to some estimates."

For those who don't have that much, there's a new company out of Norwell, Mass., that could help: Wedding Payment Plan will finance your wedding.

Scott Almeida, 35, says he got the idea from watching a family friend succeed at financing orthodontia and Lasik eye and cosmetic surgery.

"My first thought wasn't weddings; it was funerals," he laughs.

"But weddings are a lot more fun."

He wrote up a business plan as a nighttime MBA student at Babson College and began raising money from family and friends.

He also tapped $100,000 from an account that he and nine former classmates had set up to back whoever came up with the best startup idea.

In 2007, he left his day job as a venture capitalist to work full-time on Wedding Payment Plan.

The average loan runs about $10,000 with a fixed 9.9% interest rate paid back over five years.

The company hasn't yet financed 500 weddings, but in the last year applications have jumped 333%.

Almeida is raising $500,000 to go national and says the lending venture could turn profitable as early as mid-2009.

Source: BusinessWeek