If one side paid for your wedding, did they pay for everyone?

[User09876543217]

Im planning a wedding, my DP is an only child and his parents are very excited and want us to have a huge wedding.

We started looking at places and MIL found an incredible but very expensive place. We agreed on numbers and most details, let MIL know how much the deposit is and she transferred half the amount. DP asked about other half and MIL assumed my parents were covered the other half. They are not. I said that information would have been useful at the beginning, but she assured us this is how it is in most families. We will work it out, it’s not an argument but I just wanted to know others have sorted this.
Thanks.

Among the people that I know , those who were gainfully employed adults paid for their own weddings. Among those who married young or directly out of college or professional school, the brides family paid for the wedding and the grooms family provided some funding and a generous wedding present.

Your future MIl should have been specific as to the terms of her offer, but fortunately, it does no seem to late for you and your fiance to take over and manage as you fully intended.

I would return the deposit and thank them for the willingness to assist, but let them know that the 2 of you have this.

Plan the wedding that you and your partner want and and can afford.

Have the wedding you want at your own expense.

You get to chose. Maybe:

• 8/10 people at the wedding plus a nice tea and cake.
• 20/40 people on a beach bare foot with a glass of decent bubbly then go home or stay and get pissed on the beach with their own drink.
• 4 people at a registry office and then a meal somewhere really swanky.

All roughly the same cost.
All the same result = you're married by the end of it 😊

Because up until the last 30 years, a wedding was seen as the parents’ event at which the bride and groom were guests of honour.

As the hosts, the parents issued the invites (Mr and Mrs John Smith request the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Anne to Mr. Charles Brown). They therefore set the guest list, chose the menu etc.

It means there are a lot of women whose daughters are marrying today who had minimal input into their own weddings and are now being told they also have no right to have any input into their daughter’s weddings.

When the rules change (and I absolutely accept they have changed and thank goodness for that), there will always be some confusion.

If you are living pre-1970 or so, sure. Not usually in modern times.

It means there are a lot of women whose daughters are marrying today who had minimal input into their own weddings and are now being told they also have no right to have any input into their daughter’s weddings.

This would go some way to explain why a certain generation of mothers/MILs expect to have such control over the guest list. They feel it's their 'turn'.

Perhaps this phenomenon will die a death in the next 10/20 years. With women nowadays organising and paying for their own weddings, their children won't have this weird issue to navigate.

Among my friends who mostly got married about 15 years ago:
Most had both sets of parents contributing
A few paid for it themselves
1 bride - her parents paid for everything

Thankfully our parents gave us some money and requested a couple of their friends to attend (who we were going to invite anyway).

I think it was really unfair for your MIL to take you to a fabulous place and just expect your parents to pay for the other half. Also for her to assume you are going to have a huge wedding and them inviting a shit load of people.

You need to take this in hand right away. You and your DP need to set a budget and discuss what kind of wedding you want. Please take control of this right away - you have agency, use it!

@MyOtherCarIsAPorsche I also find it interesting that you are pissed off your future SIL is inviting many guests without any contribution from his parents, but you don't seem to be expecting your DD and SIL to contribute anything, why do you just assume parents should pay, for what is in reality a big party for DD and SIL, the legal bit can be done very cheaply?

When we were married around 20 years ago my parents paid for everything; there was no contribution from DH's side for various understandable reasons. Thinking through my immediate friend group there was only one couple who paid for their own wedding, the rest of us all had full or very significant parental contributions.

I was happy to have DM plan the whole thing, she's better at event planning than I am anyway!

Gosh, I don't think I have ever experienced this. Is it more in the middle classes/upper classes? (I am working class born and bred, and have never experienced parents taking over the whole wedding.)

Isn’t that every MN thread these days?!

I also know very few whose parents paid in full. Just one neighbour some 35 years ago, and the bride and groom still made most of the choices/decisions...

@gwenneh do you have DC, will you pay for their wedding and plan it, will you make a distinction between a daughter or a son. If the tradition is that the bride's parents pay for it in full, what happens if there are 2 brides and no groom, and also what happens if there are 2 grooms and no bride!

I got married 20 years ago and there is no way I would have expected my parents to pay for the whole wedding, I was an adult who had a good job, why would I expect my parents to pay for the whole thing, do people not have any self respect?

I actually don’t know. It’s certainly my understanding of how things used to be but whether there were regional / class variations is a good question.

Married 15 years ago, in my early 30s. Both sets of parents gifted us large lump sums with no strings attached - which was enough to pay for sit down meal and open bar for 100 people. Very lucky.

My parents paid for our wedding, my husband's mum paid for our Honeymoon.

My parents expected to host the whole event and were most put out that we insisted on making our own decisions and deciding on the guests. We told them repeatedly that we would pay for the wedding ourselves if there was an issue but they were insistent. I would have hated having no input in such a big life event, although I am very grateful that they footed the bill.

Traditionally, the Bride's parents pay in full I believe. I have no idea what's most common now, but I agree that if she was only putting up half then she should have made this clear. If she offered to pay then I would have assumed this would be a set figure/the full amount.

We paid for ourselves but accepted contributions for "things" from both sets of parents eg my dad covered the champagne / wine and the capped tab for the bar bill. I think that's pretty normal these days, especially if you're earning substantially more than retired parents.

We paid ourselves. In laws had previously offered to pay towards it but it was more of a "We pay, so we say" situation which I couldn't handle. Our money = our decisions.
Maybe ask what they're willing to contribute to the wedding and together with what you wanted to spend, that's your budget. Remember that their names need to go on the invitations then though!

My parents paid for everything. MiL always claimed to have no money - despite seeming to have plenty to spend of herself. She didn't offer a penny towards anything.

My DM paid for our venue and my dress. My in laws paid for the cars. We paid for everything else ourselves.

We only have one child and I hope that we can contribute when/if the time comes.

Forget what everyone else wants, it’s your and future DH’s day. We paid for our own to have the day we wanted. Parents were involved in things like menu and cake testing and my DM in shopping for my dress, hair and makeup trials. We were married many years ago, however we saw relatives last week for the first time in a while. They brought up our wedding and were in agreement that it was the most enjoyable wedding they had attended, so we must have done something right.

Was helping financially?

So they can save/spend on other things - like my parents did?

We do have 3 DC and yes, if they choose to be married we plan on making a level of contribution depending on their needs, whether it's in part or in full.

Interesting question about gender roles and contributions; when my sister got married there were two brides and both families just agreed on what they wanted to contribute ahead of time.

When my dd got married, the only thing I requested was that one couple be invited and I gave a generous contribution (money I had been saving since she was a little girl), that more than covered the cost of all the Wedding meals, drinks package and evening buffet. She cried when I gave her it, as she hadn’t known I had been saving for her. I offered my help, but the only thing she wanted was for me to help her choose her Wedding dress, which I also paid for. After that, I happily butted out and just let them get on with everything else themselves.

Her future mil wanted to be more involved and made lots of suggestions on places to have the Wedding, menus etc., plus made a large list of those she wanted to be invited. She then transferred her contribution of….£500.

Before anyone says it, I know it was up to her to give whatever she wanted, but the place she really wanted them to use would have cost an extra £2.5-3k for those mil personally wanted to invite! She was pretty miffed when dd and sil chose somewhere she hadn’t suggested and only invited 2 of the people on her list! There was a massive fall out as she asked for her money back, when she didn’t get her own way. Sil transferred her money back and told her that her only involvement would be turning up on the day, if she wanted to come.

OP, don’t have the Wedding your parents or in-laws want you to have, have the Wedding you want to have. Any contributions should only be accepted if there are no strings attached and make sure of this before accepting, or it might come back to bite you on the bum later on.

@Jumbojade would you have saved the same amount for a son?

This.