Expense, stress, stress, expense, and problem upon crisis! Surely not all weddings preparations get caught up in this. Do they? |
 It has to be easier these days with all online help too (That’s if the mother’s will allow any kind of virtual intervention!). Wedding money is always a concern of course and I found a great little wedding web site which had all kinds of money saving tips and tricks on planning your own wedding but without making it look like any cost cutting measures were taken.
However, wedding money still remains one topic that seems to be a little confusing for most couples and families. Basically, it comes down to the question, who pays for what? One would think that sources of wedding money are common knowledge, but I recently was put to the test, and failed miserably.
First of all, I was shocked that most of the expenses seem to fall on the bride’s family. This side of the party has to come up with wedding money for a number of things. They pay for the reception hall, the caterer and the entertainment for the reception festivities. Not only do they provide wedding money for the food and entertainment, but for the decorations, too.
It’s also the parents of the bride who pay for the church or location of the nuptials. I was really surprised by this because I just assumed that the bride and groom would be responsible for this. I was equally surprised that the parents of the bride come up with wedding money for invitations as well.
It seems as if the parents of the groom have to come up with a lot less wedding money for the occasion. They pay for the rehearsal dinner and for liquor served at the reception, if any. I was surprised that this was the only things on the list of responsibilities for this side of the party.
However, this does make some sense if we look at the history of wedding money in general. Years and years ago, the bride’s family would offer a dowry to go with their daughter. Perhaps the division of duties among the families reflects that basic concept. In fact, in many parts of the world a dowry, plus gifts of gold are still exchanged between the families and failure to agree on such could actually determine the results on the future marriage of the loving couples.
I continued down through the rest of the list and was struck by the groom’s responsibilities. I think that we can let his parents slide on some of the wedding money. The groom may need a loan from them after all is said and done. The bride was not responsible for any wedding money whatsoever.
After reading about wedding money in the etiquette book, I began to think how lucky my husband and I were that we simply financed the whole thing ourselves and I have to say we thoroughly enjoyed preparing and organising it all.
A close friend of ours helped us with the wedding video, DVD, and still photos. However, we still gave out a bunch of disposable wedding cameras to some of the guests to ensure we had a good variety of pics for our album. I bought a magazine which had tips on how to make your own wedding invitations and we saved on the ridiculous expense of titanium wedding bands (our first choice) for a traditional yellow gold.
I have to say that when all said and done, we had a fantastic and very memorable day. After reading up on the problems some folks go through concerning the wedding money, we must have saved an absolute small fortune but without missing out on anything. We also avoided the problems associated with the reliance of the parental pot and I think this made the whole thing stress free
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