Who pays for Wedding conversation

[swimmer4]

Has anyone’s children recently got married? As I’d like to know how you go about broaching the subject of who’s paying for what and how much.
We’re more than happy to contribute but don’t want to embarrass our DS partners family. How do we say we’ll give this amount as it’s our budget & not willing to give more if they overspend?
Also I know I’ll have to hand over the money and bite my tongue if it gets spent on stuff I think is unnecessary. I’m all for it being a very special day for the couple but would like some sort of sensible checks to be made at this stage in their lives as they have no home as yet or F/T work.
We also need to bare in mind our other DS. If he chooses in the future to have a wedding/civil ceremony or not, we would want to support him with same amount of money for whatever.
Thanks for your thoughts...

Cuddling57 - I like your thinking.
I suppose it could mean we could be a little picky where our money did go - not a fan of paying for everyone to get hammered but don’t mind paying for food!!
We’re going to have to be sensitive to what they ask as their wedding gifts - if they want guests to pay for honeymoon we don’t want to scupper those plans.
I’d love to contribute to a nest egg but would have to time it so it did actually go towards something useful ie house deposit

If you want to contribute, decide what sum you want to spend, and offer to pay suppliers up to that amount.

So £2k for example, might cover the dress and the photographer, or the venue and fees - or whatever.

In your situation tho tbh, I wouldn't be contributing more than the registry office/registrar fees. If they want to get married they can do so for about £400.

We worked out what lump sum we could afford, bearing in mind we'd be doing it for 3 DC. We then gave it to them without strings - how they spent it was entirely up to them. X

SleepingStandingUp - my thoughts exactly - maybe once they’ve looked into the costs they may wait.
ILs may not be able to contribute as much and that was why I was asking how you go about it

WilheldivaHater - lovely idea & will do that but we will have to contribute far more or there won’t be much of a celebration 😂

Thank you rhowton - you get what position we are in and yes I’m going to have to work really hard NOT to be THAT parent 😂
How do we go about paying for things without ILs knowing though?

My parents rang me up a week or two after we got engaged and explained they would like to give us a large sum of money as a wedding present. They said there were no conditions attached and if we wanted to spend the £40 in the registry office and the rest on a holiday or furniture or whatever then that was up to us.
They knew without their gift we would have had to have a much longer engagement to have the sort of wedding that they hoped we would have.
They didn't try to impose on any of our choices beyond my mum strongly advocating for a seating plan, which we were happy to go along with. That said, we did basically what they wanted which was a big family party including lots of relatives in key roles and a free bar.

misspiggy19 Oh dear, never mind.

Thank you CatTidflerUprising
Choosing specific things means I don’t have to fork out for 15 piece orchestras and unicorn pulled carriages - we can stick with the boring stuff that is essential 😂😂

Oops sorry that didn’t type right .... CatToddlerUprising

Just to add, in my case the in laws didn't contribute at all, they just gave us a small gift on the day. It was absolutely fine. We never discussed how it was being financed with them, no reason to. We didn't discuss any of our choices with them but that's just because their tastes are very different from ours. We just asked them to show up and have a good time and did our best to facilitate that by providing food they'd enjoy and sitting them with people they'd wanted to catch up with.
I'm also much closer to my parents who I speak to every day, my husband just talks to his every couple of weeks or every month.

saraclara - thank you - I don’t wish to be MIL from hell, so that approach is useful

Lulu1919 that is EXCITING - congratulations 🥳
I like your approach - as parents of the groom we’re not sure where we stand though - yet

CuriouslyPacific - I like that idea.
I just want to be prepared when the time comes to say ‘this is what we can do’ and not cause offence.
There’s no risk of us wanting to take over the guest list but means I don’t feel comfortable paying for loads of guests invited by ILs😬

When DH and I got married last gear we planned the wedding we could afford (more or less) then when we booked a venue my parents offered to pay. My mum also bought my dress. She didn’t want to give us a lump sum so we could go wild and spend it on things she didn’t agree with, or for us to think we had even more budget than we’d planned so spend to it (if you see what I mean?) DH’s parents told us how much they’d give us. It was about the same as we’d budgeted for decorations so we asked if they’d like to pay for them. Then I made sure that MIL was involved, came to the consultations etc and felt included. We paid for everything else so we ended up spending less than the budget because of the help. Would that work OP? Then the other parents won’t need to know how much you’ve given, the couple don’t even need to tell anyone that you’re paying for specific things if you’d prefer to keep it quiet.

Thank you SaraClara.
I have no idea what their actual plans will be. So I will keep quiet until it’s clear what’s happening.
Just wanted to sound people out as it’s all new to me😊

IggyAce yes I’ve just gone back to the statistics I found and it just says % of parents that contributed NOT pay for the whole event - so thanks for that

We got married last year. The plan was to pay it all ourselves, then when it was all booked and sorted fil handed us a cheque for 3k and said that's how much he had put towards his other sons weddings too. We were so grateful, it replenished our savings. We still had the wedding we wanted with no conditions or strings. It was more of a wedding gift. My dm isn't in a position to pay anything

KaptenKrusty 😂😂😂😂you’ve caught me out.
I’m always overthinking things. Love what parents and ILs did.
🤞that’s what we’d be able to do

Ragwort 😂😂don’t get me started - but maybe I’ll be mistaken & plans will be put on hold 🤞

DH and I always thought we'd be the generation who didn't pay for a wedding - my parents paid for ours and we thought our DC would get married when they were older and earning. However, DD1 decided to get married when she left university so it was obvious that they were not going to be able to afford a wedding.

We met with her fiancés parents and worked through everything together. There was never any question of them having a very extravagant day so they got quotes for the kind of thing they wanted (church wedding + a reception for about 100 in a church hall) and we went through the costs and decided who would pay for each thing. We paid for most of the meal (his parents contributed a fixed amount which was about 40% of the total), the drinks, the dresses for bride and bridesmaids, hairdresser, flowers etc. We split the cost of hiring the hall with his parents. DD and her fiance paid for the photographer and for the ceremony costs. His parents bought quite a lot of decorations for the hall and possibly the ties etc for groomsmen.

That was maybe more detail than you wanted but it sounds as if our DC are at a similar stage. It's all very well saying they should wait until they can afford it but we wanted them to have a great day (to some extent it was a day for us too) and supported the marriage without hesitation.

Thank you StellaBelle - so it’s a conversation with the couple.

Love how you treated each of your dc individually but very fairly

Unless we win the Lottery we won't be paying for the weddings, other than buying the dresses (if they want us to). We've paid for cars and their Masters and the rest of life's big expenses will be up to them.

I'm getting married this year my mum offered to pay for my dress and accessories and my future PIL offered a lump sum. But we're paying for about 85% of the wedding of ourselves :)

ThighThighofthigh thank you - they’re probably not expecting us to - it’s me just being prepared AND overthinking 🙄