would you "pay " for a place at a wedding ?

[BahrainB]

My cousin and his long term girlfriend are marrying at the Ritz in London in the summer and at Christmas asked us to save the date and for our boys to be involved . Most of her family live in Austraila
I booked flights from our home in Dubai and a extortionately inflated ( Olympics are on at the same time ) holiday let .
Today I recieved the official invite which along with Harrods wedding list details was a little printed note - I want to give an extrodinary day surrounded with all our beloved friends and family I am asking for the more fortunate amongst us to contribute £500 per couple so everyone can be here .
We promise exceptional wines and a lovely time . Ax

OMG - Am I livid .
I'm being asked to fund other guests travel ? or pay for our place at a wedding
that is really too OTT in my opinion .
I'm too embarrassed to discuss with my husband .
What would you do ?

I agree outraged that they should have turned down the posh wedding. The OP seems to think that MIL is controlling the wedding. And that she doesn't want her DILs relatives at the wedding because they're poor. If you're interpreting that as anything other than nasty then we must have a different moral compass to mine.

I'm not seeking to minimise the cats bum reaction to the note, I totally agree with that. It hasn't come out of the blue though, so I'm interested in why this has come about. OP has said that the bride appears to be a nice girl normally.

And yep, I think if you've offered to pay for someone's dream wedding then making sure family can attend is top of the list. Something tells me that MIL would refuse to pay for flights even if the couple agreed to a Wetherspoons Wedding.

Bahrainb - why don't you them your acceptance along with a link to this thread? That should surely give the Bride a reality check.

The thing is, the bride and groom are adults. They really ought to be capable of arranging a wedding- either one that both families attend together, or a ceremony in the UK and one in Australia- without expecting non-immediate family to pay for it. Surely they are able to budget- if it can't be paid for as it stands, then the plans need to be changed. It really cannot be a surprise to anybody that the Australian bride has Australian relatives- why is this being dealt with now, at the invite-sending stage?

If the MIL is exerting too much control over arrangements, then the bride and groom are perfectly at liberty to say "You know what- stuff this, we'll have and pay for the wedding that best suits us". Though that would piss off a lot of people who have booked flights and hotels.

If they can't even sort the wedding out without resorting to passive-aggressive behaviour, it doesn't bode well for marital success.

My parents are rich too. Self-made. They still have to work, but have a very good lifestyle. They could sell their business tomorrow, and live an amazing lifestyle, but choose to continue working.

We're not rich, my parents money is not enough to give their children a luxury lifestyle. People sometimes assume that I do not have to work, its not the case. Parents money is enough to help their children with good deposits on a house, and provide us with jobs in the family business, if we so wish. They had too many children, for us to be in the position of being rich!

I digress. My parents insisted on paying for our wedding. They interfered on how it should be, as they were paying. We could have told them to get stuffed, but didn't. As the cost of say a 5k wedding, would be a lot to us, but inconsequental to them. We just accepted, that they paid, and they got a say in the day. The wedding cost them about 20k in the end. We got married, with all our family and friends with us, and no debts! Happy bride and groom.

I understand where your SIL is coming from, with interfering MIL. However once she decided to let the in-laws stump up, so has to go along with it. If we'd cared enough about having the day, our way, we'd have just paid for it ourselves.

The bride and groom are rude to put a £500 request. They could have just got married in Australia, paid for it themselves, or at least chosen a cheaper time of the year to get married.

I totally get where you are coming from with having to go to the wedding, we're having to go to a wedding in Italy this summer. Sometimes you feel obliged to go, and would have a terrible guilty feeling if you missed it.

My dad paid for our reception and my mum paid for the drinks. I'd have been a bit surprised if either of them dictated to us what we could have at our own wedding! I did pay for my wifes parents to fly over because they couldn't afford it. After paying for the church, immediate family was no.1 concern, before reception. Maybe I'm wrong and the brides immediate family are coming. If this was for extended family then maybe MIL shouldn't pay, but I think she should for close family.

Feral people in Australia-Going Tribal
What google has to say regarding the term "Feral Australians"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_(subculture)
The feral movement is strongly associated with radical environmentalism and a communal lifestyle, with many members residing on multiple occupancy properties. In common with the hippies before them, many members of the feral movement rely on a system of crash pads, squats, and extended networks of "friends of friends" throughout Australia to travel with a minimum of financial outlay.[6] Although the itinerant lifestyle and environmental beliefs most associated with the feral movement are akin to those of the earlier hippie movement, the ferals adopted a confrontational, politically charged style of dress, music, and philosophy more often associated with the punk movement.

My parents were well off (like anew... Too many kids to make us all rich!) And when we planned to get married it didn't occur to me that they would pay. I wouldn't have asked but they insisted (nicely). My mum and sister organised the whole thing - I couldn't really care less beyond having a nice bouquet - and it was bloody brilliant. The photographer was a pain in the arse, but they couldn't have forseen that he was an annoying man!

They paid for the invitations,venue,, church, food, booze, band, photography, flowers, cak, hairdressers and busses back to civilisation (the reception was somewhere remote). They even booked all the hotel rooms in the venue so that some folk could stay over (close family and friends).

When we were leaving next day to go on honeymoon, dad handed me a nice card. When I opened it later, it had £400 spending money. What a pair of stars! We were sp spoiled, and they would never have thought of asking for awhipround!

That sounded a bit boastful... But they are both no longer with us and they were such lovely folk. Much missed (and not for their wallets).

I can't believe people are saying the In laws should pay for the brides family to be there!

Why?

If the bride and groom were getting married in Australia, woudo you expect the Australians to stump up for the English relatives to go? Including the ones in Dubai?

It's ridiculous to expect that they should pay just because they want to contribute to the wedding. When my dc get married, I'd like to be able to offer to pay for something for them, like the flowers or the drinks or something, but I would be mighty pissed off if that then meant that I was going to be expected to pay for relatives that live elsewhere to get there.

I thought it was normal for couples to pay for their own weddings these days, especially as so many are marrying in their 30s or 40s, and are probably often earning more than their parents ever did!

Of course many parents like to contribute in some way, but there shouldn't be an expectation, certainly not for them to pay for the entire thing!

Because the Australian relatives can't afford it and the MIL can, outraged. I am of course discounting the possibility that MIL would have paid for a cheaper do and spent the remainder on bringing her family over. Because it doesn't sound like that was ever a possibility. That's about the size of it. Isn't that what families do, look after one another?

The bride and groom should pay for the flights for her father and step mother.

As for the other relatives- plenty of MN threads give advice about saying no to wedding invitations in far flung places when finances are tight. I have never seen the advice get the other wedding guests to pay for your flight dished out. Though perhaps that will change now .

I am still curious to know what the groom's parents think of this demand for cash.

Inabeautifulplace why should the parents of the groom pay to fly any relatives of the bride to the wedding?

Surely this is the bride and groom's responsibility if they want them there.

If wedding guests don't want to spend money travelling a long way then they decline the invitation. End of matter.

But they aren't even family yet, the MiL will probably only see these people once or twic in her lifetime. Paying for the wedding is more than generous without having to pay for other peoples flights as well. The couple could pay for the flights if they wanted to with what they will save in not having to pay for their own wedding.

My family is better off then DHs, should my parents have paid for DHs to get to our wedding?

I don't think the in-laws should pay either. If anyone should, it should be the bride and groom.

Best. Bridezilla. Ever.

The most expensive bit of our wedding was "having" to fund my H's relatives to the extent of paying for their flights and accommodation as well as suit hire for the chaps. It still causes me pain, 12 years on.
If I read your quote correctly, your cousin is not asking you directly, but for the more "fortunate". In this case I would have no qualms in counting myself amongst the "less" fortunate.
If you really need to respond, I would say that you are delighted to be invited, but that your costs as a family will mean that an additional £500 "donation" isn't on the cards.

In my world if you can't afford to get to a wedding, you just don't go.
I don't understand why the bride and groom don't fly themselves out to Australia for a ceremony/party with her family there. That is two air fares only. They could save that money by downgrading the Ritz wine from Exquisite to Drinkable.

How about sending them this, from Harrods
www.harrods.com/product/harrods/clotted-cream-all-butter-biscuits-200g/000000000002100644?cat1=foodhall&cat2=food-biscuits

and
not attend the wedding?

Fucking hell. That is beyond belief. It is at the Ritz. They have a Harrods wedding list and they want you to fund their wedding [Faints clean away]

My friends got married twice so that their friends didn't have huge travel bills and they kept both families happy. The first time they got married in the UK, then new DH moved back to Australia to start his new job. 6 months later my friend finished her job in the UK and went out to Malaysia for wedding number two with his family (and the Aussie friends contingent flew out to that one and a few friends from the UK) and at the end of the wedding she carried on out to emigrate to Australia.

They could have had a complete culture clash, but both families made a real effort - immediate family (parents and siblings) went to both - and they had two beautiful days and it didn't cost the earth. Her parents dressed up in traditional Malaysian style to keep his family happy and learned their roles in the ceremony - and they are really shy and had never been that far abroad, whereas his parents are pretty rich. Her family also made a real effort to make the UK wedding something easy for his parents to enjoy and left the church out of it (even though they are religious).

To me that is how it should be done. So it is beyond me why B&G can't do the same ........ so I think they are taking the piss in style!

I've been mulling this over again this morning and can't help wondering if the groom's mother parents have been rather Machiavellian about the arrangements in order to exclude the Aussies.

Perhaps they said something along the lines of "if you get married in the UK, we'll pay for it all, but if you get married in Oz you can't possibly expect us to organise and pay for a wedding on the other side of the world". I wonder, also, if they somehow gave the bride the understanding that they'd, at least, fund her Dad and stepmum's travel costs.

So posh wedding organised and booked for the UK, then groom's parents say "goodness, whatever gave you the idea we'd pay your parents' travel costs on top of paying for a wedding at the Ritz?"

By this point the bride is desperate and comes up with the novel idea of begging their 'better off' friends for money to fund her Aussie family's travel costs.

It's actually quite a sorry tale, when you think about it. And such a shame that the bride and groom didn't take a step back from the 'blackmail' and make their own, less expensive, arrangements.

I am actually quite shocked at the number of people on here who have decided its the bride's fault or the mother in law's. The note is apparently from the groom and gives the impression the bride knows nothing about it. The groom has 2 parents.