Who should pay for the wedding?

[CableChick]

My dad footed the bill for everything except the brides flowers and the bar tab. My mother-in-law paid for those. He tried to talk me out of having a reception and offered to give me money for a down payment on a house. I declined. I still got the house a year later.

 

[kwillia]

But I wouldn't want to do that, either. :shrug: People should pay for their own damn wedding.

Hmmm... I guess it's all in whether or not the familes are supportative of the marrying couple.

In my case, I got married at the age of 23. We were engaged for 1 1/2 years to give us time to work on the wedding and purchase our first house together. If it hadn't been for the financial help of my parents and other family members who each contributed in their own way, we would have still gotten married but we would not have been able to afford to have the 370 family and friends celebrate our day of marriage. I'm very thankful to have been able to share that day with each and every one of them.

 

[CMC122]

I was married at the ungodly age of 19. We paid for our own shindig. It was small and included all the people who were very important to us. (mostly friends because neither one of us is close to our extended families) We were also building a house at the same time so the money was limited. I made all the food for the party, a few friends played bartender and everyone had a blast! We're getting ready to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary and people still talk about what a great time they had at our wedding!

 

[migtig]

My ex and I paid for our first and only wedding each. We let people know that we would rather have something for our reception in place of a traditional wedding gift. So we accepted a lot of "gifts" from family members for our reception. My dad bought all the meat. My ex MIL bought our wedding cake. My co-workers bought us a keg. We had lot of older people on fixed incomes in both our families who contributed by bringing silver dollar biscuits, mints and fruit trays and so on. Of course one of my uncles did bring 6 mason jars of moonshine. :shrug: Needless to say we had a great and very inexpensive reception, plus a lot of family members were excited that they were able to help make eveything such a success. I have to say also, one of my dearest friends was working as a professional gardener at the time and with my help, did all of the flowers for the church, reception and bouquets for free. All in all, out total costs for our wedding was $800 and we had over 400 folks in attendance at our reception. We had a ton of food left over, but no booze (and we had two kegs and had filled up the back of a pick up truck to transport it all).