How much did you pay towards your child's wedding?

[boozybirds]

One of my children is getting married and this is a first for me. I am going to offer money towards it, and wondered how much. Me and her father are not together. I know many people will say, it depends on what you can afford, but I'm just trying to gauge what would be the norm, as I have no idea what her Dad will offer, nor the grooms parents. Cost of wedding is Circa £11k. Taking place Spring 2025, so plenty of time to save.

Our parents paid for specific items, eg my DP paid for my dress, the venue & meal, DHs parents paid for the band and kilt hire, we paid for the bridesmaids dresses and honeymoon etc.

I didnt give anything for my DS wedding as they eloped and it was a very cheap wedding.

Gave them 15k for house deposit instead.

My parents paid half the cost (about 14k)

I have set a mental budget of £5k per child for this. I have 3 daughters, 2 adult, one teen. I think £5k is enough for a decent show, any more they can save themselves! Our parents had no money, neither did we so we had registry office followed by buffet at my parents house.

Married twice. Both sets of parents gave us £2k first wedding (sorry dad 🤣).

Second time round we paid for it ourselves but my dad put some money behind the bar.

I only have my Dad. He gave nothing. My in-laws paid for travel from church to reception for their family.

We didn't spend a lot on our wedding though. Less than £5,000 (plus £3,000 on the honeymoon).

Married 19 years this year.

I paid for it all

I got married 15 years ago, my parents paid for the church and sorted the car, my in laws paid for the photos and flowers. We covered the rest which was around £7K.

We have £3000 to each of our daughters towards their weddings ...18 months apart .
Then a few odd things on top as we went along.

We gave ours £20k to spend as they chose fit when they married.

We gave £4000 towards my sons wedding plus £500 to each of my sons ( other son was best man) to pay for the stag weekend in Portugal, I don’t know whether the brides mum contributed.

None of our parents paid for anything.
None were in the position to.
But we married cheaply anyway minimum fuss.

Give what you can afford. Or offer to pay for a certain part ie. Cake, transport or something

We are paying for the meal which will end up as about £5000 . It wasn't expected or asked for by DD.Her STBILs have given them a large sum of money to use towards buying a house.The whole event will cost us more in the end as we , and our DSes , will buy new clothes and have to find hotel rooms for two nights.

My parents paid for the food - two meals (one in a restaurant, one self catered) - we "only" had 24 guests (including parents, 26 people including us) but it probably came to just over over £2000. My mum also paid for a dress for my sister because I didn't want to have bridesmaids but my mum ignored that and unilaterally decided to tell my sister she was one, which I was prepared to go along with but not to finance 😂😜.

The rest of the wedding was relatively inexpensive and we paid ourselves, but even including dress and rings that was only another £1000 give or take. Neither of us really enjoy "big" theatrical weddings.

My eldest is in her late teens and I hope she won't get married for another ten years or so, and we have several children... I don't know what we'll put towards their weddings but probably a few thousand - we definitely don't have enough cash splashing around to finance a big pageant, especially for all the children, but would probably offer about 3k I imagine. Enough to make a big dent in the costs of a modest wedding, and if they want a huge party they can fund that themselves.

My parents gave us £5000. They also paid for the flowers. Husbands parents also gave the same amount and paid for the chair covers and venue decorations. They don't have daughters and wanted to contribute to our day as he was the first of the sons to be married.

Thanks everyone. Very varied responses, but middle of the road seems to be £3-5k, which is in the region I'd been thinking, so this is helpful. There are 2 children, so I will match that with the other child, although there are no marriage plans there at the moment.

We paid for it ourselves.

My mum paid for my dress and alterations (probably about £800). MIL and FIL paid for the photographer. We paid everything else ourselves

My parents wanted to pay for my dress we paid for everything else ourselves

My daughter earns twice as much as I do so I paid for the celebrant and the page boy and flower girls dresses. There's little point in putting yourself into debt if your financial status is quite different to your child's.The flower budget for the wedding was 5k which I thought was really high so paying for aspects I cared about made more sense.

@4EyesandBigThighs Haha oops! That’s what happens when you type whilst following a toddler up the stairs!

My parents couldn't afford to contribute a chunk of money, and I didn't expect them to. They instead gave me a budget for a wedding dress which they paid for. My father in law paid for our honeymoon. Sadly and unexpectedly, we came into some inheritance money from my husband's side of the family which we ended up using to pay for the wedding (approx 15k in total) and the money we had saved for the wedding ourselves went on home improvements instead.

There is no norm. PIL gave us £10k and my parents £5k 15 years ago.

1996
my parents gave £3000
DH parents gave £500

We paid for everything, and I don't even remember considering that either set of parents might contribute. We had a small and unconventional wedding, it was great.