Weddings are a ginormous industry in the U.S. That’s right, an industry. Did you know there are roughly 2.5 million weddings each year? That generates a whopping 40 billion (yes forty beeeellion) dollars every twelve months. That is nuts. Which begs the question, who should pay for a wedding? If you’re engaged – congrats, it’s probably you!
The Bride, The Groom, His Parents, Your Parents – Who Should Pay For A Wedding?
You may not like the answer, but the vast majority of couples that get engaged today pay for their entire wedding out of their own pocket. Why is that you may be wondering? Independence and age. Many couples live together now before getting married, or have their own separate apartments away from the nests of their parents. And a lot of people are getting married when they’re older and have stable careers, instead of during school or in their early 20’s. All of these changes have shifted the cost of weddings from the bride and groom’s parents to the engaged couple themselves.
If paying for your own wedding comes as a shock, you may want to pop that bubble in your head right now if you’ve been wishing for something akin to the glamorous $230,000 NYC Sex In The City wedding. Even if you were lucky enough to get a $24,000 Vivianne Westwood wedding gown on the house, hollywood style weddings are best left to the movies. They just aren’t practical! Even without that amount of glitz, the average wedding cost is crazy.
Receiving Wedding Money? Surprise, There Are Strings Attached!
If you are mature enough to get married, you better be financially independent of your parents. If you’re young, just wait and give yourself more time to get on your own feet. Get educated on personal finance and pay down debt. There’s really no need to rush to get married. Relationships that prematurely turn into marriages with rocky financial situation are in for rough and stormy waters. Anyway, that’s a topic for another day…back to who should pay for a wedding.
If you’re engaged, it’s totally possible that your parents may want to contribute to some of the wedding costs, but please realize as an adult you should never expect them to. It’s your wedding, your relationship, your celebration, your wish list, and yep your responsibility.
And always keep in mind, if you do accept money from any parent regardless of which side of the family he/she is on, you’re also accepting their involvement in the planning and guest list. Ha that may not be what you want at all, so think very hard before accepting money if you want to have total control over your wedding plans. There’s invisible fine print that comes with “yes that’d be great if you could help pay for xyz mom and dad!”
Alternatives To Paying For Your Wedding Entirely On Your Own
If you have a financial hardship, personal reasons, family pressure, or other grounds that prevent you and your fiancé from paying for the entire wedding yourself, there are some other options you can explore and discuss. For example, each family can pay for the costs associated with the number of guests from their respective sides. Or costs can be split three ways between the couple, and each set of parents.
I must advise against going into a lot of debt for your wedding however. Getting married is a big step, and you don’t want to put unnecessary financial strain and extra debt on your relationship and lifestyle.
Prioritize Your Wish List And Plan Frugally
If you have a wedding to plan, decide with your fiancé what’s most important to you. For a lot of couples, priorities are a talented photographer, delicious food, or a special location. There are lots of ways to save on all the other things. For example if you don’t want to pay thousands for a venue, you can choose a public locale like a beach or park that only requires a local permit for a couple hundred bucks. Some places don’t require permits at all.
What About Costs For The Wedding Party? Bridesmaids, Maid of Honor, Groomsmen, Best Man
It’s a nice gesture to give the members of your wedding party a thank you gift for their participation, help, and friendship. They most likely organized and paid for your shower or bachelor/bachelorette festivities, so it’s a nice way to say thank you on your wedding day. For the brides out there who have photography high on the list and want to go to the salon with your bridesmaids, it’s good etiquette to cover this cost for all your girls.
If you have the means, it’s also a nice gesture to cover the costs of tuxedo rentals and bridesmaid dresses, but it’s not an expectation. Tux rentals aren’t that expensive for the groomsmen to cover on their own. Bridesmaid dresses can range vastly in price, so if you agree on an affordable dress they can cover the cost themselves. At the last wedding I was in, we agreed on a dress together that was under $100 so we paid for our own.
It’s common for the wedding party to pay for their own shoes, accessories, transportation, airfare, and hotel accommodations.
Who Should Pay For A Wedding: The Old School Way
If you’re stuck in the past, have an extremely traditional family, or are just curious how wedding costs used to be divvied up for older generations, the below summarizes how expenses were often split out the old school way.
Bride
- Wedding band for the groom
- Gift for the groom
- Salon treatments
- Bridesmaids gifts
- Bridesmaids bouquets
Groom
- Engagement ring for the bride
- Wedding band for the bride
- Bride’s bouquet
- Gift for the bride
- Groomsmen gifts
- Boutonnières for the groomsmen
- Corsages for the moms and grandmas
- Officiant and marriage license fees
- Honeymoon
Bride’s parents
- Announcements, invitations, programs, postage
- Engagement party
- Bride’s wedding gown
- Flowers
- Reception
- Ceremony, decor, rental fees
- Photographer
- Transportation costs
Groom’s parents
- Rehearsal dinner
- Gift for bride and groom
- Family members’ corsages and boutonnières
There’s no right or wrong way to have a wedding. You can elope, have a church wedding, get hitched on the beach, or whatever you can dream up. Try and be sensible with wedding costs because they can add up quick. After all, a marriage is way more than what a wedding looks like. And who should pay for a wedding? It’s your wedding, your circumstances, and your family, so ultimately you have to decide.
Untemplaters, how have people in your immediate and extended families handled wedding costs? For those of you are married, did you pay for everything yourself? What are your thoughts on who should pay for a wedding? Have you ever considered creating a wedding fund for your kids?
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My wife and I were fortunate enough to have our parents bank roll our wedding, and if we had been paying for it ourselves it would have been very different. I guess the question I would pose to you is this, do you think there is a right way to pay for a wedding? I don’t know if my wife and I will offer the same generosity to our kids, not because we are selfish but because we want to teach them financial independence and combat entitlement. What do you think is that just a jerky way to live?
I’m definitely in the camp of the bride and groom pay, but if both parents want to chip in then great.
I just think the $25,000 average wedding figure amount in America is absolutely absurd for the average household income. Like buying a car that’s valued at more than 25% of your gross income.
Make it a special day, but not a day you get reminded of due to debt!
Yes, that’s so well put “make it a special day, but a day you get reminded of due to debt!” 25k can be put to much better use than just one day of celebrating. You don’t have to spend a lot to be happy and celebrate!
I think it all comes down to the individual situation. So much has changed in the past 5-10 years about traditions and how society looks at marriage. I don’t think there is a “wrong answer”, but rather it comes down to the bride and groom’s personal preference and ability to pay. Personally, I’d prefer to have something smaller and pay for most of it myself, but am perfectly fine if the other person wants something more significant. Great topic!
Weddings sure are a fun topic aren’t they?! 🙂 I’ve just been amazed at how much some of my friends have spent – and most of it their parents money. As a frugal and very independent person, I just can’t imagine asking my parents or in-laws to pay for a wedding. It would make me feel really uncomfortable.
We paid for our own wedding and that’s why it ended up being so cheap. And guess what, we’re still happily married after eight years, unlike a few of my friends who had lavish celebrations.
That’s awesome Holly! I love stories like yours. Goes to show that a happy marriage is not based on an expensive wedding.
We never even thought about asking our parents for wedding. We had a small ceremony fitting our budget because we didn’t want to wait until we make money. Now, we paid for our daughters private school education and paying for her university education as well.
Somehow she thinks that we will pay for her $30,000 wedding dress. I don’t think so. With the education she received she should get a job with 6 figure salary. We don’t expect anything from her and she should not expect from us either anymore after the university finishes.
Your daughter is lucky that you’ve been able to send her to private school and have paid for her university tuition. But yikes – she wants a $30,000 wedding dress? That’s not even close to a reasonable price tag. This is one of the things I think about a lot – if I have kids someday, I want to provide them with nice things like quality education and private lessons, but how can I do that and not have them grow up expecting things?
That’s great that your daughter should be able to get a high paying job after graduation. Even if she scores a six figure job, I think it will be a mistake for her to get a 30k dress even if she tries to pay for it herself. That much money is best put towards buying a property or starting an investment portfolio.
Meh, I paid for the wedding.
Quiet ceremony, a few guests, used bridal dress, and not a whole lot of fuss.
Considering the rates of divorce, this is one hugely avoidable extravagance.
I like small weddings. Simple and sweet!
As you point out, the wedding industry is ginormous. We wanted no part of that, So my wife and I paid for our wedding. Perhaps that’s why it only cost $3,000. It was actually a wonderful outdoor wedding in a local county park up in the redwood forest of the coastal mountains of California. You can read about it on my blog at Our Wonderful, Frugal Wedding. The president of our company said it was the best wedding he had ever been to, and hoped that his daughter would do something similar when her turn came. (She did eventually have an outdoor wedding on the coast, but I am pretty sure it cost more than $3,000.)
We are the only people we know to have paid for our whole wedding ourselves (it was a small affair by choice – $5k for wedding $30k for travel/extended honeymoon – easy choice!). The most recent wedding I went to was a reasonably small one by Indian standards, only a couple hundred people but I believe my friends paid for part of it. The good thing about paying for our wedding was we did not have to worry about pleasing anyone else.
I don’t plan on paying for my kids’ weddings.
I know several people who paid for everything on their own. I think that’s so cool you guys spent a small amount on your wedding and a nice chunk on your 6 month RTW trip. Yeah, not having to worry about pleasing anyone is nice. One of my coworkers is struggling with her mother in law on planning b/c the mother is paying for a portion of the costs and wants things done a certain way.
My parents paid for my sister’s wedding but I wouldn’t accept money if I got married. First because she got divorced 5 years later so it felt like they spent thousands for nothing and then because I am too old and independent to ask them for cash. I’d take their offer to pay for part of the honeymoon though. I guess paying yourself for your wedding helps you realize how crazy it is to spend $30,000 on one day of your life and limit the costs.
Oh that’s too bad about your sister. My friend’s brother had a giant wedding that cost goodness knows how much and sadly they divorced in less than a year. I’m sure the parents spent quite a lot on that wedding too.
Yeah it’s easy spending someone else’s money but a lot harder to spend your own.
Fair answer? Both!
🙂
We’re getting married in the summer, and we are paying for the vast majority. My mom is paying for the venue, which is so nice of her. We can handle to pay for it, but we’d rather cut back on some of our wedding costs and have an amazing honeymoon!
That’s so exciting! That’s nice your mom is able to pay for your venue. I think that’s smart that you’re keeping expenses down on the actual wedding so that you can have more funds for your honeymoon. That way you can really relax!
That’s a great topic! I really like your articles, Sydney!
In my country (Romania) there’s a habit that the newly weds pay a lot of the expenses like the restaurant, flowers arrangements and even the music band in the morning after. Unusually at the end of the wedding they stay with the parents and start counting the money received as gift from guests and pay off they “debts”.
Have you heard of something similar?
Thanks Laura. Some other cultures do have wedding gifts of cash. I’ve seen this at my Chinese and Indian friends’ weddings where guests bring envelopes with cash or checks. These weddings were very large too, over 200 people. I’m not sure if the bride and groom count the money with their parents after the ceremony or just on their own.