Can Wedding Etiquette Allow the Bride to Pay?
Dec 10th, 2008 by Belle B. Carrclum
Getting married these days is very costly. For brides, before you buy from suppliers of your choice or hire the most costly services of makeup artists, wedding coordinators, coutourier, etc, talk to your husband-to-be first and discuss your budget. Before you go bridezilla by demanding this and that for your wedding, determine who pays for your wedding and will cover the largest percentage of your wedding budget. This will serve as a guide for couples who would like to know the basic etiquette in who pays for what.
Traditionally, wedding etiquette authorities said that the bride’s father should pay for the entire wedding. However, Wedding Etiquette for who pays for the wedding has evolved for the last century. This is because society has evolved and women are no longe kept at home and kept from working and going to school. In the old days the young girl was kept at home to do housework and learn manners and good etiquette.
A daughter was ‘given’ out by her father to a boy or a man who his father thought could feed or fend his daughter when he was gone. And since he would be giving his daughter away, he would host his daughter’s wedding and pay for everything as a sign of his agreement to his daughter’s marriage. This is the traditional wedding etiquette on who pays for the wedding.
Today, wedding etiquette on who pays for the wedding is not as rigid as it was before. The bride and the groom can go traditional, and thus should ask the father of the bride to host the wedding and pay for the entire wedding expenses. Or if the parents of the groom have expressed their desire to be a co-host of the wedding event, they may do so, especially if the parents of the groom are wealthy and are able to cover some of the expenses.
But since most couples nowadays are both earning their own money, it is not a violation of wedding etiquette if the bride and the groom decide to pay for their own wedding. Some couples prefer to pay for the their own wedding so that they can have more control over the number of guests and who are the persons to invite and how the celebration of the wedding should be held. Wedding etiquette on who pays for the wedding is, most of the time, being set aside to grant the wishes of the couple and immediate family members.
Due to increasing costs, paying the entire share of the wedding may be beyond the means of either set of parents. For this reason, if both the bride and groom have jobs, they will most likely want to pay for the entire expenses for their wedding event.
Some parents, however, actually want to contribute to the cost of the wedding. Both brides and grooms should be aware of this and think of the feelings of their parents. Don’t tell your parents no just because you think they may pay too much. Often, it is a great job for them to see you get married and they may even have money set aside for it.
A better way would probablly be to arrange a time to talk the matter over and present a budget to your parents. Discuss the projected costs. Let them tell you what portion they would like to fund. With this method the parents feel comfortable knowing how much they must pay and the bride and groom also have a better idea of what they will need to come up with.
