Wedding costs - who pays for what!?

[blistering]

I am preparing for my marriage with my long term and was wondering about expenses and who pays for what etc. I know this is clearly a personal matter and down to the individual couple but am curious to know how other couples have done it.

So in most cases, to start with the engagement ring would be purchased solely by the man. There are some couples who do actually share the cost is that right?

What about other stuff/expenses in relation to who pays for stuff -
e.g. honeymoon (is this generally shared?)

The other tradition that I'm aware of is that whilst most men pay for the engagement ring, at the very least the couple should pay for each other rings, is that correct? Is it fair to expect the man to pay for the engagement ring and both the wedding rings?

Also I hear that the father or family of the bride, again traditionally, foots the bill mostly for the entire wedding (venue etc.). I'm just going on western tradition here, so not making any judgements or opinions either way. I'm just curious as to how you (if you are married or have got married or are getting married like myself) navigates finances and funding and who pays for what....

Traditionally, man buys engagement ring. Bride’s father pays for the rest.

These days .. couple usually pay for everything, maybe with a contribution from parents.

DH bought my engagement ring. Both sets of parents gave us the tax-free allowance amount for a wedding and we paid about the same, so it was split three ways really. Honeymoon we paid for ourselves.

DH paid for a piece of jewellery for engagement (couldn’t wear an engagement ring at work and couldn’t be bothered with the faff of on/off, prob would have lost it so decided something else would be more sensible). When engaged we pooled our money so from that point we both paid for everything. No money from anyone else which was/is completely standard with everyone we know. The brides father paying is very outdated, from a time when women were ‘owned’ and transferred between men, not at all applicable these days!

We got married late in life, so just paid for everything ourselves.

In my 30s my dad had already despaired of me ever settling down and gave me a lump sum towards a car "instead of your wedding" 😆

If you had £10k in savings , would he suddenly have half of that to spend on his hobby, nights out, new clothers etc. I dont think so.

I say this on every wedding ‘thread’ …there’s so many deserving charities, honeymoons isn’t one of them!

You decide what you can afford and if you’re paying for it yourselves, I’d be splitting it down the middle.

Dh paid for my engagement ring. I paid for both our wedding rings (I had more money at the time and he’d already paid for one ring). My family paid for the whole wedding (wealthy), except I think the cake, which MIL asked to buy for us. Dh’s grandad paid for the rehearsal dinner the night before.

If we’d been paying for the wedding ourselves, we would have split it roughly in half, taking into account if one of us earned significantly more than the other.

@blistering , I got married over forty years ago and my husband and I had long since pooled our money by then. We paid for everything, my husband’s family contributed nothing (other than trouble) and my parents made a contribution which was equal in value to my dress, it was admittedly a pretty expensive dress.
I should imagine that nowadays it’s best to assume the couple will shoulder the entire expense jointly but be very grateful for any financial assistance offered.

Don’t be silly. You don’t see people saying, oh, don’t buy me a birthday present or don’t take me out for a birthday dinner, just send that 50 quid to charity instead. A wedding happens once in a lifetime. It’s nice to give a gift to honour that. We genuinely had nothing when we got married, we needed linens and crockery because we only just moved in together and came from student accommodation with nothing. But over the years, I’ve contributed to lots of honeymoons. Travel is a wonderful thing to do and no less valuable than a teapot.

My niece is getting married in a month. She’s 27 and they’ve lived together in their large house in Pimlico for 3 years. She’s never worked a day in her life and her husband to be is very wealthy. Her parents (my sister and her husband) are paying for the entire wedding. It’s a destination wedding that’s costing us £10k to attend. Yet we still got the schmaltzy ‘your presence is our present, but please give us cash’ in the invitation paraphernalia. 🤨

combine money into one pot and pay from that. The "tradition" when it comes to paying for specific things each is very outdated. Women are no longer passed from parents to husband with no time to earn their own money in between.

No those are outdated ideas. I would say yes the man buys the engagement ring. They buy each other wedding rings. After that? If very young they may get parental contribution, it might be the reception, or the flowers or the alcohol etc. Honeymoon the couple pay together, though it seems the trend to ask for a monetary contribution as a wedding gift or experiences (for my stepson I got them a cooking class in Italy and a dinner their first night).
I married at 40, my first my DH’s second. I was the only one of three girls in my family to get married. My father gave me £10k. My DH earned 20 times what I did and paid for the rest - it was a black tie wedding in central London, and we honeymooned in South America. No idea how much it cost him but he wanted to give me the wedding I wanted - such a generous man! He even flew a friend over from the US who couldn’t afford to come.
His parents contributed nothing, fair enough he earned more than any of them and it was his second marriage and in his 40s.
My other stepson has put off getting married even though they have a house and child together because they can’t afford to - I mean they can on a budget, but don’t feel it’s a priority (they have been engaged a couple years). They don’t expect any parental contribution and will share the expense when the time comes.

There used to be all sorts of rules about who paid for what - the costs were basically shared between the bride’s father and the groom.

If I remember rightly, the groom traditionally
paid for:

his own clothes and the clothes of the best man and ushers,
the engagement and wedding rings,
the church fees,
the honeymoon, and
the car from the church to the reception (but not from the bride’s home to church).

Everything else was paid for the bride’s father.

I’m not sure there’s any point these days in trying to stick to that!

My daughter has recently become engaged. We have told her how much we can give them towards the costs of the wedding, but we haven’t said what we want them to spend it on. It won’t be enough to pay for everything they want so they will have to decide how much they can afford to spend themselves and then plan the wedding according to the overall budget.

Over thirty years ago my father said the same to me. In practice it worked out that he gave me enough to cover the costs of the reception, and my husband and I paid for everything else between us.

My OH will pay for my engagement ring, everything else we’ll both pay for jointly.

I don’t think there should be any expectation that anybody other than you and your partner fund the wedding.

We paid for everything ourselves. My mother always told me if I wanted to get married I'd be paying for it myself (I think because she never got the wedding she wanted), so when me and long term DP decided to do it we just did and paid for everything together. The good thing is no one else gets a say!!

I don’t think the brides parents are expected to pay for the wedding these days. If they are quite wealthy they might

My mum bought my veil £162, my dad paid £1000 towards the venue, and fiancé 's mum paid £500 towards the venue. Everything we're funding jointly.

I’ve never seen the appeal of big weddings. There are a million better things to spend money on other than that.

The whole wedding process put me and soon to be DH off for decades.

I think your starting point is that you pay for it all, except your engagement ring, and then see what happens. My parents paid for the reception, my MiL gave is some money for the honeymoon- they were not in a position to help, which was fine. We paid for everything else.

DH bought my engagement ring. Once we were engaged we both put £200 a month each into our wedding pot and after a year we had nearly 5K. Our wedding was very basic and we did most of it ourselves, but we didn't want any family help. Despite not paying a penny, both our families made it very clear they wanted us to indulge their ideas and overall it was a pretty stressful experience! If I had my chance again I'd just elope.

The father of the bride used to pay for everything in the days when the bride still lived at home and was comparatively younger than most brides today. The parents would invite their work colleagues and friends so the bride and groom know few people there. DiL paid for her wedding herself in order to ensure that she could do everything her way. The invitations were split three ways - bride and groom, parents of the bride and parents of the groom. We did give them a contribution but never asked about the details at all.

My husband bought my engagement ring, I bought him an engagement watch, they cost roughly the same. My parents gave us a set amount which was about 40% of what we spent in total on the wedding and honeymoon (including rings). The other 60% was from our joint money.

My parents then expected a say in the guest list and the venue which did end up with conversations along the lines of “we won’t lay if you do that / don’t invite them ……”. In hindsight I’d have done it cheaper with no strings!

I think the view that father of the bride pays for the wedding venue is a bit outdated. We have been married 36 years and our parents split the cost of all that. We paid for the flowers, cake, photographer, rings and other sundries ourselves jointly. The engagement ring is paid for by the person who is doing the asking.

As a general rule, the man should pay.for everything. Rings, location, honeymoon, the whole lot.

If he can't pay i dont expect the.marriage to last very long.